Rosenzweig Jahrbuch / Rosenzweig Yearbook: Transzendenz und Offenbarung / Transcendence and Revelation 9783495995532, 9783495995525

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Rosenzweig Jahrbuch Rosenzweig Yearbook

Carvalho | Meir | Wiese [Hrsg.]

Transzendenz und Offenbarung Transcendence and Revelation

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495995532 .

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495995532 .

Rosenzweig Jahrbuch | Rosenzweig Yearbook Im Auftrag des Vorstands der Internationalen Rosenzweig-Gesellschaft Redaktionsbeirat | Editorial Board Stefano Bancalari (Rome) Luca Bertolino (Turin) Francesco Paolo Ciglia (Chieti-Pescara) Danielle Cohen-Levinas (Paris) Ángel Garrido-Maturano (Resistencia) Eveline Goodman-Thau (Jerusalem) Adriano Fabris (Pisa) Martin Kavka (Tallahassee) Gesine Palmer (Berlin) Silvia Richter (Frankfurt) Jules Simon (El Paso) Ynon Wygoda (Jerusalem)

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Cláudio Carvalho | Ephraim Meir Christian Wiese [Hrsg.]

Transzendenz und Offenbarung Transcendence and Revelation

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495995532 .

Onlineversion Nomos eLibrary

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Preface / Vorwort

The Rosenzweig Congress in Coimbra, Portugal in December 16-17, 2021 celebrated the centenary of Rosenzweig’s Star. Notwithstanding the dif­ ficulties caused by Covid-19, more than twenty scholars participated in the conference, most of them in person, a few virtually. The present volume contains the papers presented at the Congress. Moreover, we are happy to publish here the English translation of Rosenzweig’s article “Globus”, realized by Malcolm Goldman and initiated by Martin Zwick. At the end of this volume, the reader may enjoy Frank Hahn’s impressions of the Rosenzweig Congress in Frankfurt which took place in July 2022.

The Proceedings of the Convention in Coimbra Many articles compare between Rosenzweig and other thinkers. Four articles deal with the relationship between Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas. One article discusses Rosenzweig and Isaac Breuer, another one is on Rosenzweig and Gershom Scholem. In a most precious article on this subject, dedicated to the memory of Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, Myriam Bienenstock comments upon what is frequently mentioned as Levinas’s debt towards Rosenzweig and brings to these common insights refined and necessary nuances. She specifies that Levinas’s denunciation of totalitarianism is indebted to Hannah Arendt and to Karl Löwith’s Meaning of History. To Hans Ehrenberg Rosenzweig owed the introduction of an eschatological dimension in the philosophy of history. In a further reflection, Bienenstock argues that whereas Rosenzweig highlighted love in the Jewish tradition, Levinas worked with the idea of separation. Prudently criticizing Buber’s symmetry in the dialogue, Levinas equated “separation” with qedusha, in opposition to Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilige and to Hegel’s negative view on the Jewish “sep­ aration”. Finally, Bienenstock brings Levinas’s“love” and “transcendence” in relation with “proximity”: the Other is approached as separated. In

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ethical nearness to the Other, she concludes, Levinas comes closer to Cohen than to Rosenzweig. Edmundo Balsemão Pires also deals with Rosenzweig and Levinas. He approaches both philosophers as a specialist in the theory of soci­ ety. He argues that the notion of a “Jewish-Christian” society hides a problematic Christian view of Jews as potential Christians. He reflects on Rosenzweig’s decision to “remain a Jew.” Rosenzweig affirmed the Jewish singularity in society and deemed that the Jewish existence was anti-pagan, whereas Christians were running the risk of paganism. Bal­ semão Pires argues that Levinas continues Rosenzweig’s (and Buber’s) socialisation of religion. At the same time, he points to the limitations of Rosenzweig’s and Levinas’s view on the the social nature of religion, given their quasi-reduction of the social to the personal and their lack of properly situating the source of the religious code in the evolution of modern society, of the liberal state and of today’s tolerance. Karl S. Sen Gupta deems that, in contrast with the immovable and almighty God of the Biblical-classical synthesis, Rosenzweig and Levinas develop a non-ontotheological approach of God, who limits himself/herself for the sake of humankind. Their understanding of the divine kenosis makes theodicy problematic as the attempt to reconcile evil with a perfect God. Jacob Levi studies the relation between immanence and transcen­ dence in the Star and in Totality and Infinity. He explains how Levinas continues and radicalizes Rosenzweig’s critique of totality and his notion of transcendence. Following Derrida’s remark on Levinas’s renewal of empiricism and its inversion “by revealing it to itself as metaphysics,” he deems (with Stéphane Mosès) that Levinas’s “excendence” of being as disclosed in the face of the other is an adaptation of Rosenzweig’s “radical empiricism” with its openness to the transcendent. Levi also compares between Rosenzweig’s Gyges and Levinas’s Gyges. Ido Ben Harush juxtaposes Rosenzweig and Breuer and compares between their concepts of miracle. Considering Breuer’s critique of theo­ ries that naturalize and neutralize the miracle, he argues that Rosenzweig fails to make the miracle an actual lived experience (Erlebnis) and that Breuer’s understanding of miracle as beyond cognition and revealing God’s sovereignty could correct this flaw. However, such a rectification would come at the expense of Rosenzweig’s concept of miracle (Zeichen, “sign”) as pivotal in the structure of the Star, separating and linking philosophy as prophecy and theology as fulfillment.

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In a fine piece of research, Pierfrancesco Fiorato deals with Scho­ lem’s discussion of Rosenzweig’s theory of redemption. He analyses Scholem’s critique of Rosenzweig’s anticipation of redemption in Jewish life. For Scholem, the category of anticipation rather characterizes Chris­ tian doctrines, whereas Justice as a central concept of Judaism is absent in the Star. The conceptual framework of Fiorato’s article is formed by Scho­ lem’s opposition between anticipation and postponement. For Scholem, the neutralization of the divine judgement takes place in delay. In the Star, the Jewish festivals of redemption imply a spiritualization of the divine judgement through anticipation. Anticipation and postponement are, therefore, forms of neutralization which relate differently to the future. Seven articles focus on the Star itself. In memory of Norbert Samuelson, who was Honorary President of our Society, Stanislaw Krajewski writes an article in which he reconsiders the issue of the role of mathematics in the Star, mainly in discussion with the positions of Norbert Samuelson and Matthew Handelman on this topic. As is well known, Rosenzweig attributes a limited function to the mathematical tool and uses further a grammatical and liturgical organon. In his contribution, Krajewski proposes to solve the problem arising from contradictory opinions regarding Rosenzweig’s (and Cohen’s) use of mathematics by claiming that mathematics is essential in the Star in the context of discovery, but not in the context of justification. In his view, Rosenzweig left mathematical truth behind and rendered it inessential in his messianic theory of knowledge which asks for the verification of truth in daily life. Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho’s article creatively combines Rose­ nzweig’s New Thinking and therapy. He reads the Star from a therapeutic perspective, basing himself upon Büchlein that presents the Star as a health recovery. In his interdisciplinary and original study, Carvalho shows how Rosenzweig’s therapeutic path inspires Buber and Levinas, who emphasized the transformational potential of conversation and the call of the other who urges one to respond. He expounds on Rosenzweig’s thought as relevant for rabbis, pastors, educators and therapists. Leonardo Sandonà offers a Christian dialogical view on the Star. He reflects on Rosenzweig’s philosophy of history as a philosophy for history, on his view of redemption as commitment to history and on his negative theopolitics. In reference to Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope, he criticizes “immanent eschatologies” and perceives a promise in history that asks for a mission of love. The world is created with meaning and the human being’s task is to lead it to fulfillment against a totalitarian

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politics and the soft-totalitarianism of well-being. Sandonà also refers to Globus, where Rosenzweig deems that the greatest battles for the definiton of an authentic idea of the world still lie ahead. Eugenio Muinelo Paz shows how language and love in Rosenzweig’s phenomenology of revelation are the domains where immanence and transcendence interact. Against Idealism and following biblical anthro­ pology, Rosenzweig does not dissociate eros and agape in his discussion of revelation. Love in Rosenzweig’s perspective is above eros and agape. Revelation of love is the divine address to an always specific, free human being who is commanded to love and to become an answerable human being. Such a revelation does not annul the human condition and makes God himself vulnerable. The “bi-polar” revelation supposes the interdependence of God and the human being and a parallellism between interhuman love and God’s love for the human. Gesine Palmer examines the passage in the Star where Rosenzweig posits that Judaism maintains itself by substraction and by the formation of ever new remnants, permanently stripping itself from non-Jewish ele­ ments. In this “substraction-passage,” she argues, Rosenzweig performs a self-othering in front of the Christian other without conquering the other or becoming assimilated. His other differs from Cohen’s other as someone with limited rights and from Levinas’s other with illimited claims. Rosenzweig others himself and his people by separating Jews as the holy remnant, waiting on the shore, whereas the Christian other goes along with the stream. In this way, the otherness or strangeness of the Jew in the Star allows all others to be other. In a creative new reading of Rosenzweig, Francesco Paolo Ciglia argues that Rosenzweig formulated an innovative approach to seculariza­ tion. He deems that, in Rosenzweig’s philosophy, Greek pagan mythology and the biblical revelation are “meta-” or “trans-religious,” which suits our secular age. Greek paganism provided him with an ontology of difference, whereas the biblical revelation needed this ontology to relate what is separated, in creation, revelation and redemption. Already in a diary fragment of 1906 Rosenzweig clearly distinguished the awareness of God (Gottesgefühl) from religion itself. In the Star again, Rosenzweig does not write on religions. Greek paganism intuitively understood the different separated elements of reality: the mythical God, the plastic cosmos and heroic man. The second part of the Star shows how these irreducible elements are related in the experience of daily life. In the third part, the eternal life of the one people and the eternal way of Christians, who reach out to pagans complement each other, but the eternal truth is

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beyond them. In the New Thinking, Rosenzweig explains that Judaism and Christianity are not presented in the Star as “founded” (gestiftet): they are not closed “religions,” but a fact (Tatsache) and an event (Ereignis), open to the large field of the daily human condition. In Rosenzweig’s meta-religious perspective, Ciglia aptly concludes, God did not create religions, but the world. Emiline Durand offers us a refined reflection on Rosenzweig’s erfahrende Philosophie and his Sprachdenken in pointing to the novelty of this philosophy, moored in and oriented to experience. First, she explains how Rosenzweig develops a new concept of experience in the Star: in the lived experience of revelation, relations that constitute temporality become clear. In a second stage, she proposes to understand Rosenzweig’s philosophy of experience concretely from his teaching in the Lehrhaus and from Büchlein, where he retranslates philosophical problems in the language of experience. Finally, referring to Rosenzweig’s Halevibuch and to his use of “Jewish words” in the formulation of his New Thinking, she explores the relation between language as the place of experience and the renewal of philosophy. Two articles deal with Rosenzweig and education. Monika D. Kaminska explores Rosenzweig’s thinking on the living moment in the dialogical and educational context. She refers to a few Jewish thinkers who -like Rosenzweig- contest the primacy of epistemology and of conceptual knowledge. Eliezer Berkovits in his “Was ist der Talmud” (1938) explains that what is important is not the mere understanding of the Talmudic text, but rather the open dialogue on what the text means in the living context. Levinas too with his philosophy of the Other gives priority to proximity to the Other above mere cognition: in the ethical relationship, a teaching stems from the face of the Other. Kaminska also refers to my interreligious theology and my concept of “trans-difference” in which undeniable differences are thought together with bridging and communicating. She concludes that learning and education take place in an open dialogue in the present moment. Naomi Tanaka explores the relationship between Jewish education and Messianism in Rosenzweig’s thought. She describes his conception of the Jewish people as elected to testify to God, who started a dialogue with them and planted eternal life in their midst. God’s existence had not to be proved but to be verified (bewährt), just as marriage is verified by marriage life. Rosenzweig referred to the saying of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Midrash Psiqta de-Rav Kahana: “If you testify to Me, then I shall be God, and if you are not testifying to Me, I will so-to-say

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not be God.” In The Builders, he explained to the participants in the Lehrhaus that one testifies to the divine existence through following the divine commandments. Tanaka concludes that for Rosenzweig Jews must continue making God true and real by realizing the unity of mankind: in his Messianism Jews maintain hope in a much-divided world through dialogue with others. All the chapters in this Volume were blind reviewed. They benefited from the scientific and linguistic revision by members of the Board and of the Scientific Committee of the IRS. Thanks to all those who were involved in the revisions and especially to Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho, who coordinated the entire process.

Rosenzweig’s “Globus” This Yearbook contains the English translation of Rosenzweig’s “Globus. Studien zur weltgeschichtlichen Raumlehre.” Martin Zwick instigated the idea of this translation. His material and spiritual support for this project made it possible that many English speaking Rosenzweig researchers will benefit from this excellent translation by Malcolm Goldman. In the essay, written during WWI, Rosenzweig writes on a slow, but steadily growing global unity and on the end goal of the earth which lies in its boundlessness, a boundlessness which is “already property of the primordial sea” (p. 309). He shows how universalist thoughts pervade history and that we are experiencing a beginning of world history. (p. 346) An ever-expending unification comes into perspective through dominance, colonialization, wars and conquests. Until today, the world is not yet a globe and “[…] humanity is not yet under a single roof.” (p. 367). Rosenzweig’s “Globus” contains a meta-historical viewpoint. He does not believe that cultural spheres are separated for ever, “[f ]or God, of whom it is written in scripture is a warrior, created only a single heaven and a single earth.” (p. 346) He points to the Church as the only ecumenical power (p. 355), a task which will be performed in the Star by Christians and Jews. The first part of “Globus” is entitled “Ecumene. World-state and world of states.” The second part is called “Thalatta. Naval dominance, and maritime freedom.” In the latter part, Rosenzweig reflects on the sea in different worldviews and on the oceans which slowly become one single sea. He hails the “freedom of public, borderless oceans.” (p. 363) In a Europocentric move he concludes: “Europe is not yet the soul of the

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world” (367). As if Africans, for instance, were not always already in Africa with their specific culture, before they were discovered by the English, the French or the Dutch. John Donne has said that no man is an island. In Rosenzweig’s vision, no country is an island: cultural differences do not have to lead to permanent struggle. In his global worldview, countries are destined to be united in a global world, just as the primordial sea was boundless, since God created the world as one world. Finally, my sincere thanks go to my co-editors, Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho and Christian Wiese as well as to Maria Saam, who is now in charge of the Yearbook at Karl Alber Verlag. Ephraim Meir, President of the Rosenzweig Society

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Edmundo Balsemão Pires Transcendence as Sociability – Rosenzweig and Lévinas. . .

17

Myriam Bienenstock Revelation and Dialogue: Emmanuel Levinas on Franz Rosenzweig Coimbra Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

Karl S. Sen Gupta Levinas, Rosenzweig, and Antitheodicy: Kenotic Resonances in Levinas and Rosenzweig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

Jacob Levi Immanence, Transcendence, and Excendence in Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption and Levinas’ Totality and Infinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

Ido Ben Harush On Miracles and Experience: Franz Rosenzweig and Isaac Breuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95

Pierfrancesco Fiorato Vorwegnahme und Aufschub als Gestalten der Neutralisierung Über Scholems Auseinandersetzung mit Rosenzweigs Theorie der Erlösung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Stanisław Krajewski Is Mathematics Essential in The Star of Redemption? . . . .

139

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Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho »Eine Strophe, die nur von zwei einzelnen Stimmen gesungen wird«

Therapy as a Form of Rosenzweig’s Category of Redemption . . . . .

163

Leopoldo Sandonà 1921–2021. A dialogical Christian perspective about Rosenzweig’s Star between redemption, eschatology and history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

187

Eugenio Muinelo Paz Beyond Éros and Agápe. Reflections on Rosenzweig’s Phenomenology of Revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

207

Gesine Palmer Othering Himself: On Rosenzweig’s Self-Positioning Towards Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

227

Francesco Paolo Ciglia Bien plus que de la « religion »

Le projet spéculatif de Franz Rosenzweig . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

247

Emeline Durand « Erfahrende Philosophie » et « Sprachdenken » Philosopher après L’Étoile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Monika D. Kaminska Dialogical education and the Importance of time (of the moment) in Franz Rosenzweig’s educational writings and dialogical education after Shoa . . . . . . . . . . . . .

283

Naomi Tanaka Messianism and the Direction of Education . . . . . . . . .

293

Franz Rosenzweig Globus: Studies on the World-Historical Doctrine of Space Translated by Malcolm Goldman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Frank Hahn Der Rest, der bleibt – oder das ewige Dennoch Bericht von der Internationalen Rosenzweig-Konferenz in Frankfurt/Main . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Edmundo Balsemão Pires

Transcendence as Sociability – Rosenzweig and Lévinas.

Abstract In a notable essay on the 1913–16 exchanges between Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock, André Neher reminded F. Rosenzweig’s decision »to remain jew« and refusal of conversion as a meaningful episode in the difficult historical dialogue between Judaism and Christianity and, especially, reiterated its importance for a philosophical explanation of what Religion is1. The hybrid figure of the »Jewish-Christian« seemed to André Neher and Franz Rosenzweig as an equivocal notion, partially inspired in the Christian ambition to convert the Jews, not only to their religious rituals but to the Christianized Civilization, including the State. For the Chris­ tian faithful to the proselytism of the Christian message, the decision to remain a Jew would be regarded as an »unexplained obstinacy« and an attitude contrary to the History of Civilized Nations, a reaction that combines Religion with Politics in the fate of Europe. German Idealism, and particularly some readings of Hegel’s views on the History of Religions, could be assumed as theoretical sanctions of an unescapable incorporation of the Old Testament in the Christian History of Redemption, where the Jew is portrayed as a virtual Christian. From a Jewish point of view, the permanence of Judaism in a Christianized world is a theological and a sociological fact. Remaining faithful to the meaning of the biblical Choice, the Jew refuses what Neher called the triple Christian idolatry – the reality of a universal Church, the universal value of a »Christian civilization«, and the Father’s incarnation. The resistance to the triple idolatry also entails the triple meaning of the »obstinacy« and stimulates a philosophical discussion on the social 1 A. Neher, »Une approche théologique et sociologique de la relation judéo-chrétienne: le dialogue Franz Rosenzweig-Eugen Rosenstock« in: Idem, L‘ Existence juive. Solitude et affrontements, Seuil, Paris 1962, 212–239.

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and theological aspects of being a Jew within a systematic comparative explanation of the biblical Revelation and Redemption, in Judaism and Christianity. F. Rosenzweig assumed such task as the nuclear theme of the third part of the Star of Redemption, in the final pages, but also embracing Paganism. Emphasizing the radical anti-pagan spirit of Judaism and the accommodation of the Christians to ancient pagan idolatry, he inferred essential features of the differences between Biblical religions and between monotheism and paganism. If one seeks the grounds of the theological justification of the permanence of Judaism the keys are fundamentally given in the Election of Israel, consequently in the fidelity to one’s people and in the connected rituals. The theological and sociological explanations to remain Jew are entangled, thanks to the Election of Israel, in a time that runs parallel to the History of the Globe. By insisting in the unavoidable singularity of Judaism, The Star of Redemption follows the distinctive meanings Judaism and Christianity gave to biblical time structured in Creation, Revelation, and Redemption as different, but valid solutions to the main riddle of religion which consists in the enactment of the communication of transcendence in immanence. The Star’s initial denunciation of the all-inclusive Totality of Philosophy helps also to denounce the inanity of an exclusively rational demonstration of God, which in a sense was the temptation of Jewish and Christian Philosophies (Maimonides or Thomas Aquinas) seduced by the Greek rationality. I’ll argue that a decision to »remain a Jew«, the vindication of a right to »remain a Jew«, and religious real diversity are not abstract moral entitlements but sociological, historical as well as theological dimensions of the evolution of the codification of religion. I will address the key questions in the Star’s approach to paganism and the differences between Judaism and Christianity, within the mono­ theist religious code, along the divisions I and II of this paper. Emmanuel Levinas continued through Rosenzweig’s and Buber’s paths emancipating the meaning of religion from the logical-metaphysi­ cal proofs of the existence of God paving the way to what I conditionally call a socialization of religion. In support of my view, I’ll take into scrutiny Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974) and the Talmudic lectures and readings included in L’ Au-delà du verset (1982).

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Transcendence as Sociability – Rosenzweig and Lévinas.

I will show that Levinas’s concept of Sociability entails a version of the interpersonal relation that goes beyond F. Rosenzweig’s and M. Buber’s I-Thou, giving an alternative to the Star’s assessment of trans­ cendence in immanence and a new key for the understanding of the reli­ gious code. The division III of the essay will address Lévinas’s contributions to emphasize the social nature of religion. I will conclude, in division IV, with a summary of the theoretical limitations of Rosenzweig’s and Lévi­ nas’s attempts to fully situate religion in a social setting, notwithstanding their remarkable advances.

I – From pagan separation to Revelation – the religious schema and its binary code Religious communication is a highly codified form of communication. It entails semiotics of gesture, the use of oral and written linguistic signs in prayer, reading, and interpretation, ritualized actions, and feelings of belonging to communities. The theoretical approaches to religious communication are dimensions of such a large religious code. In its redu­ ced structure, the religious code is assembled over the binary opposing transcendence and immanence. Ludwig Feuerbach’s anthropological critique of God’s transcendence was mainly motivated by a rejection of the logical and metaphysical construction of God he could identify in the traditional proofs of the existence of God, and Hegel’s Logic, that has ignored the role of the wholeness of the human being’s faculties in the formation of the religious communication2. Also, in Soren Kierkegaard’s writings, the strategy of an anthropological reallocation of religion is assumed beyond the scope of the logical-metaphysical proofs3.In both In his 1848–49 Heidelberg lectures, Ludwig Feuerbach reviewed and restated his former views on Philosophy of Religion to stress, in a wider perspective, the anthropological foundations of the philosophical and common ideas on religious transcendence, giving a new orientation to the two poles, Human Being and God, immanence and transcendence, of the religious code. L. Feuerbach, Sämmtliche Werke. Achter Band. Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion, Verlag von Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1851, 15, 148 and ff. 3 Søren Kierkegaard’s account of Abraham’s sacrifice in Fear and Trembling is a testimony of the originality of his philosophical attitude regarding transcendence, by emphasizing the subjective meaning of faith in temptation and risky existential decision, far beyond the traditional »fides quaerens intellectum«. His account of the existential context of Abra­ ham’s faith epitomizes the crisis of the rationalist construction of transcendence in imma­ 2

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authors, the notions of existence, existence by itself, and the logical arguments used to postulate an independent Being responsible for the Creation of the World and Man were considered ancillary. In the traditional proofs of the existence of God, a connection between existence by itself and God’s transcendence was presumed. Religion was simply added as a corollary to the rational evidence of the existence of such a Being, as if religion could be understood as the practical consequence of metaphysical ratiocinations, for instance in Dogmatics. The main risk of evading the traditional theological-moral circle of the rational construction of God’s transcendence was the aban­ donment of God as the key signifier of a Being by itself and the reduction of God to fiction. Kierkegaard’s and Rosenzweig’s strategies overcome such risk by subtracting the idea of religion from its support in the link between existence by itself and the logical proofs of God’s existence. Particularly, F. Rosenzweig’s transformation of the idea of religion entails a new formula for the transcendence/immanence binary. The method The Star employed to discard the logical proofs of a Being by itself and to rebuild the religious transcendence/immanence binary is ambivalent regarding Hegel’s method in the fragments on the History of Religion dated from the periods of Tübingen, Bern and Frankfurt. Assuming the Kantian crisis of Rational Theology, but diverging from Kant regarding the correct moral foundation of religion, Hegel’s method in these texts on Popular Religion asserted the possibility of the understanding of religion and the history of religions not from logical-metaphysical arguments, or proofs, but directly from the forms of the ethical life of a people, according to a pre-sociological view, by observing the objective and the subjective, the ceremonials and the moral convictions and feelings, the History of Church, law, and morality4. Theology as a knowledge of God’s predicates and source of logical proofs should be put in the context of this institutional evolution, nence and incentives the rethinking of the traditional, philosophical explanation of the religious code relying, mainly, on the rational proofs of the existence of God. S. Kierke­ gaard, Kierkegaard’s Writings. Fear and Trembling. Repetition, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1983, »Eulogy on Abraham«, 15 and ff. 4 Georg W. F. Hegel, Gesammelte Werke (Band 1), Frühe Schriften I, edited by Friedhelm Nicolin and Gisela Schüler, Felix Meiner, Hamburg 1989, »Das Leben Jesu«, 205 -278; Idem, Gesammelte Werke (Band 2), Frühe Schriften II, edited by Walter Jaeschke, Felix Meiner, Hamburg 2014, »Frankfurter Manuskripte«, 79–99; 111–368.

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and not independently considered as a product of an abstract faculty called reason. The transcendence/immanence binary is itself an observational conundrum. One comes to different modern formulations of the same binary if one regards Hegel’s historical views, Kierkegaard’s existential decision or Rosenzweig’s dialogical interaction as hermeneutic keys to the riddle of the observational and communicative meaning of the code of religion. However, it is the merit of Rosenzweig to have stressed, across the structure of The Star, the origin of the religious observational scheme in the historical situation of the crisis of paganism and the establishment of biblical monotheism. His notion of religion was not so large that it could include social phenomena distinct from the expressions of monotheism, due to his understanding of the binary. On the other hand, from the theoretical horizon of Sociology, Émile Durkheim, in the first book of his The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), continued the late nineteenth-century anthropological dis­ cussions about magical thinking and religion, naturalism, animism and totemism. Critically relying on the influent Friedrich Max Müller’s work, he situated the social foundation of the religious code in the distinction between the profane and the sacred,5 prior and independent of the binary opposing immanence and transcendence. His distinction between the sacred and the profane excludes the magical practices from the religious phenomena. However, he didn’t realize the importance of differentiation of monotheism from the expres­ sions of the sacred of totemic origin, as a source of an entirely different meaning of the religious phenomena6. According to Durkheim and his school, the sacred, in its opposition to the profane, has the advantage of being an all-embracing category that includes beliefs of totemic, naturalist, animistic origin, and the monotheist transcendence of the unique God. This conviction was preserved in Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss’s Essay on Sacrifice (1899), and in Roger Caillois’s studies on the Émile Durkheim, Les Formes Élémentaires de la Vie Religieuse. Le Système Totémique en Australie, P.U.F., Paris 1912, I, chapter 1. See, also, regarding the context of Durkheim’s conceptual use of the sacred: William S. F. Pickering, Durkheim’s Sociology of Religion, James Clark & Co., Cambridge 2009, 115 ff. 6 In this regard, Rosenzweig’s comments on the difference between the figures of the magician and the prophet, and »Zauber« and »Zeichen«, along the division »Über die Möglichkeit das Wunder zu Erleben« are enlightening. F. Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (Star), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1988, 104–105.

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sacred and the concept of sanctity, induced by H. Hubert, M. Mauss and Rudolf Otto’s (Das Heilige, 1917) approach to the mysterium tremendum ac fascinans7. In what follows, I differ from this approach, and I will survey the rest­ ricted concept of religion that refers to the monotheist revelation as the central source of the distinction between immanence and transcendence, even acknowledging the value of a sociological account of the religious monotheist code. Therefore, I will describe religion in the monotheist sense and the sacred as two different social types, also distinguishing the religious scheme from its external milieu – paganism. My methodology agrees with Hermann Cohen’s understanding of religion in his project of a »Jewish Philosophy of Religion«8, essentially preserved by Rosenzweig in what concerns the differentiation of the essence of paganism and religion, after the monotheist revelation. Follow­ ing Rosenzweig’s construction of the first part of the Star, the opposition between paganism and Judaism illustrates the absence and the presence of the specific religious observational binary code and confers to the code the value of a foundational reference of a new form of observation, ritual actions, and a social, personal, communication with the transcendent that could be defined, accurately, as religious, in contrast with the pagan experience of the sacred but also distinguishing it from the philosophical talk about God in the ”rational proofs«9. It is a new form of observation that emerges with Judaism and not an isolated set of beliefs and rituals. This conviction justifies the notion of an observational schema, or religious schematism, since the uses of the new observational form promote (i) anticipation of perceptions, (ii) expectations in actions and (iii) a symbolic code for communication regarding a wide variety of subjects provided they are subsumed under the binary transcendence/imma­ nence. F. Rosenzweig’s account of paganism is essential to situate the experience »before« the emergence of this religious binary code. It is Roger Caillois, L’ Homme et le Sacré, Gallimard, Paris 1950, 48–54, on sanctity: 52–54. Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums. Eine Jüdische Religionsphilosophie, Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008. Concerning the manifold influence of Cohen on Rosenzweig, see: Myriam Bienenstock, Cohen und Rosenzweig. Ihre Aus­ einandersetzung mit dem deutschen Idealismus, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg/München 2018, passim. 9 Martin Buber, along the chapter 2, »Religion and Philosophy«, of his Eclipse of God, initially referring to the Epicurean deities, recognized the social context of communication with the transcendent by distinguishing a talk to God from a talk about God. M. Buber, Eclipse of God. Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy, Princeton Uni­ versity Press, Princeton, Oxford 2016, 20 and ff. 7

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used as a mark of the enclosure of the religious (monotheist) code and the reference to what is not »yet« religion, regarded as the sacred of the pagan worldview. Across the complete description of the process of conversion of the three wholes of paganism, The Star explained the genesis of a religious »view of the world« assuming a national character (in the Jewish people) and including the personal transformation of the separated ethical subject across the movement of the three wholes in Creation, Revelation, and Redemption. This means that Rosenzweig’s explanation is a phenomenological view from within, i. e., from within the experience of the ethical subject that »I am«, but it is not fideism. Due to the distinction between transcendence and immanence, religious schematism entails the four main predicates of a top-down causality, observational asymmetry, all-inclusion normative scope, and the kenoma-pleroma representation of time. These predicates were articulated in The Star of Redemption along with the reflections on the crisis of paganism and the formation of the religious attitude of monotheism. The Star’s originality consists in essaying a narrative view from within the process of becoming religious of the mythical pagan world preserving some of the most relevant characteristics of the biblical time’s sequence of Creation, Revelation, and Redemption, but abstracting from a detailed discussion of the social source of the notion of transcendence. Phenomenology in the Hegelian sense could offer to The Star the prototype of an evolutionary, narrative, description of the experience implied in the process of becoming religious of a subject, as a view from within the process of formation of the transcendence/immanence binary. Indeed, The Star reconfigured the metaphysical concepts of God, World and Soul according to a new system which should be defined as a Religious System of Experience or as a religious Phenomenology of Religion. But the differences regarding the young Hegel (before 1807) are significant since the Hegelian concept of a Popular Religion demands an account of the social, moral, legal, and political foundations of the religious attitude and was not a view from within10. Thus, the method to obtain a view from within, or Rosenzweig’s reli­ gious Phenomenology of Religion, is a fifth way beyond the alternatives 10 A detailed account of Hegel’s evolution regarding his religious themes, along the 1790s, was given in Laurence Dickey, Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770–1807, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, especially: 143–179.

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to describe the transcendence/immanence binary: the logical proofs of God, the pre-sociological essays of the young Hegel, Feuerbach’s anthro­ pological inversion of the binary, and Kierkegaard’s existential fideism. The three separate wholes of Paganism were taken as the starting points of a transformation giving rise to real relations11. Real relations between the wholes convey what religion means in the biblical traditions, agreeing to different interpretations of God’s interpellation of Man and World. The overcoming of the separate wholes in the narrative of the creation of the world by a unique, transcendent God, which by this act reveals itself as creator, set an entirely new horizon in History12. In the pagan view, there is no place for the biblical Creation since the notions of transcendence and immanence are absent, entailing the self-sufficiency of each whole. Only by finding the mutual belonging of each of them to the others, one would be able to speak of transcendence and immanence. Rosenzweig’s system in The Star not only describes the crisis of paganism, as a transformation of the separation and isolation of the wholes but gives interpretative keys to understand the diversity of solutions to the riddle of the religious schematism of monotheism (as Judaism or Christianity). The third part of The Star is an essay to deal with the unending theme of the relation of transcendence to immanence in God in a way that affects Humankind and the World, according to different approaches to God’s message. Within the monotheist plurality, the religious code is self-sufficient and all-encompassing. By excluding the sacred and, at the same time, by partial elaborations of some of its contents, particularly in the case of Christianity, monotheist religion must exclude another code containing itself. The code only opens to exteriority if one recognizes that it can be articulated through many combinations. Here, one of F. Rosenzweig’s contributions was the explanation of two of the most important code configurations in Judaism and Christianity. He was persuaded of the irreducible validity of each pattern of the same code. The Star acknowledged the plurality of the code’s combinations in the distinction of Judaism and Christianity and, here, in its account of the three main historical varieties of the Church (represented by Peter, Paul, and John).

11 12

Star, 96–97. Star, 99.

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When the historical, aesthetical, and sociological details of the differences inside monotheism are taken into consideration the code becomes increasingly seen from the reverse of its closure, and a paradox emerges: there are multiple self-sufficient combinations of the same selfsufficient code, equally valuable. The paradox could be suspended, again, inside the code, by assuming the multiplicity in the incomprehensible richness of God’s love, in transcendence, and (or) by representing it according to second-order observations, from the outside of its binary organization, from History and Society, as symbolic independent forms of communication. The strength of the religious code consists in its capacity to preserve its communicative capacities despite the existence of other solutions to explain its form of observation and communication. This is called Faith. The tension between the closure of the code and the other possibi­ lities of experience and communication was envisaged by Emmanuel Lévinas in an enigmatic remark in the fifth of his Five New Talmudic Readings (Du Sacré au Saint) regarding the meaning of the Aggadah in the Talmud: La philosophie dérive pour moi de la religion. Elle est appelée par la religion en dérive et toujours probablement la religion est en dérive13. What could be understood here by a permanent drift (dérive) of Religion towards Philosophy if not the retention in the religious code of what could be otherwise described from the outside of it? In many aspects of the terminology, F. Rosenzweig’s Star is indebted to the ontological European tradition even if the forms of thought that evolved »from the Ionian islands to Jena« were made questionable by the philosopher. The notions of substance, essence, creation, creature, and life are some of these concepts. He submitted the use of such terminology to a critical renewal leading to obvious deformations of former meanings. But there are many reminiscences to remind. One of the concepts to recall is his metaphysical and mystical use of the notion of God’s Life. The concept reminds Schelling’s reading of some Jewish sources in Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit and in the fragments on the Weltalter14 where a joint appropriation of Neo-Platonism and cabalistic notions took place to describe God’s revelation as a coming Emmanuel Lévinas, Du Sacré au Saint. Cinq Nouvelles Lectures Talmudiques, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris 1977, 156. 14 See my comments on Schelling’s appropriations of Jewish sources in: E. Balsemão Pires, »Liberdade, Força e Individuação – a partir dos fragmentos sobre as ›Épocas do Mundo‹ de Schelling«, Revista Filosófica de Coimbra nº 39 (2011), 57–100. 13

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to terms of the God’s living essence with itself by disclosing a difference within itself. Thus, the conceptual framework of the Star seems much more intertwined with the metaphysical traditions of Neo-Platonism and, particularly, with Neo-Platonic traces in German Idealism than one would be inclined to concede if the reference to the continuous path »from the Ionian islands to Jena« would not include Rosenzweig’s terminological resources. Despite the tribute paid to the Ionian islands, the development of the second part of The Star shows how the three wholes of the pagan, mythical world, participate in relations that have a meaning for a subject, as a person. The possession of meaning overcomes the pagan separation by defining an inner source of value. Through the personal value of revelation, a »new beginning« takes place as a passage from the substance to relation, launching a triple openness across the three wholes. Language, Time, and personal multiplicity are the main ingredients of a »conversion to the manifest« which is properly called revelation. The concepts used to describe a world without innerness, without a subject, cannot remain the same after the »new beginning«. A critical process is taken place that leads, at the same time, to revelation and to the change of the mythical description of reality into something different that should be called, for the first time in Human History, religion. The complete development of the process entails a conceptual redesign that ends only when the concepts appropriate to the mythical reality are reconfigured to ensure the appropriate expression of the religious experience according to its new code. The religious schema serves to produce meaning used as religious meaning in diverse forms of communication. It is the frontier distinguish­ ing transcendence/immanence the real source of the productivity of the binary in its capacity to generate meaning and not one of the sides disconnected from the other. The binary can be assumed in theoretical views and first-person descriptions. In theoretical views, it became the central theme of theological theories. In first-person descriptions, it was assumed by mystical writers describing the appealing force of the Divine in conversion. Both possibilities are anchored in the same binary code of religious schematism. Finally, religious Phenomenology of Religion offered to these pos­ sibilities a common ground, securing an explanation of theological premises from a view closely connected to personal experience, as a narrative view from within. The narrative account ensures a medium able

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to reconfigure first order into second-order descriptions as if an »I« would be capable of assuming the stances of a »We« or the role of an impersonal subject of theory.

II – From Revelation to Redemption – Judaism and Christianity as two modes of the religious schema 1. Alone in Prayer The search for the meaning of prayer is at the beginning of the third book of The Star. Communication in prayer reveals free humankind in front of many alternatives and in front of God. In Creation and Revelation, God put humankind under his power, but in the process of Revelation, the Human Being is free to accept or reject. God wished this freedom. The meaning of prayer is related to the scope of the human freedom of will regarding God itself and discloses the addresser-addressee struc­ ture of Revelation, inchoately social. In the form of communication typical of the prayer, God puts the Human Being on probation and the Human Being provokes God in a game combining the search for confidence and circumvention. The game of confidence and circumvention is played with high risk for both because they are both free. F. Rosenzweig concludes from the manifold tensions developing across the prayer that the unique thing that is not in the hands of God is »the fear of God«. The power of prayer lies precisely in this oscillation between being tempted by God and submitting God to probation. Man’s will to accelerate the World’s Redemption can be understood as the act of the Human Being submitting God’s love to probation. But the real game to be played is not limited to prayer. The conquest of confidence is only ensured in the love of the fellow human beings which justifies the reference to the biblical precept of the love of the neighbor. The Star adds: Love acts as if not only God wouldn’t exist, but even as if the World wouldn’t exist. According to Love, the fellow human being replaces the world and thus it bewilders to the eye what is seen (Die Liebe handelt so, als ob es im Grunde nicht bloß keinen Gott, sondern sogar keine Welt gäbe. Der Nächste vertritt der Liebe alle Welt und verstellt so

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dem Auge die Aussicht15. The transformation accomplished through the prayer modifies the world order in a human world (Das Gebet stiftet die menschliche Weltordnung16). As a way toward redemption, a solitary prayer is not enough. In solitary communication, a special illumination must take place and should assist as a guide to the way towards the others as fellow human beings. The Star develops the tension between closeness, proximity, and distance or remoteness as the ground of the soul’s uncertainties in prayer regarding what should be the object of love’s election. Here, the soul could be tempted to desire what is not yet sufficiently close to her, she could choose the still distant, and unapproachable, instead of the true neighbor. Thus, F. Rosenzweig clarifies the implicit questions of any act of prayer in its search for illumination: »who is our fellow man?«, »who among humankind is our neighbor?« At what time? These interrogations introduce the complex political-religious figure of the tyrant of the Kingdom of Heaven17 (Tyrann des Himmel­ reich). In his love and illumination, the addresser of the prayer could become a tyrant. He desires the acceleration of time, seeking the object of his love and care in what is not yet nearby. The tyrant tests God with his enthusiasm and forces the world’s order to enter a route this world cannot yet sustain. In these passages, The Star comments on some messianic currents, the mystical passion and emphatic beliefs asserting the self-referential structure of the connection of God to its Redemption. In the thesis proclaiming that God is the object of its own Redemption (grade insofern er nicht bloß Erlöser, sondern auch Erlöster, die Erlösung also ihm Selbsterlösung ist…) is the most extreme form of the religious schema linking immanence to transcendence18. In the language of the prayer, the form of the communication with the Absent is seized by the religious schema, meaning that the assessment Star, 298. Ibidem. 17 Star, 268–330. Commenting on the perversions of the prayer and elucidating the expression »in tyrannos« at the beginning of the third part of the Star, the contribution of Bernard Casper remains instructive: B. Casper, »La prière comme être voué à l’ au-delà de l’ essence. Quelques considérations sur Rosenzweig dans la perspective de l’oeuvre de Lévinas« in: Jean Greisch & Jacques Rolland (eds.) Emmanuel Lévinas. L’ Éthique comme philosophie première. Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1993, 259–271. 18 Star, 303. 15

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of the Human Being’s degree of illumination in prayer, regarding what is close and the inaccessible, intersects with God’s redemption as selfredemption. Prayer’s inclusion in God’s self-redemption entails a riddle and a code. The riddle is the precise formula to closeness and remoteness in the Human Being’s actions’ circle and the code is the exact connection of every singular prayer with the time of the world in God’s self-redemption. The prayer brings the believer into a time made of qualms, in between self-centeredness and exaltation, and God’s redemption takes its way in the time of the world through the trails open by the Human Being’s qualms.

2. The Hour and the Communal prayer The favorable time in prayer is only accessible to the true believer, even if it coincides with the fortunate opportunity in Goethe’s egoistic prayer. Only the true believer can approach the right moment, not too soon and not too late, to ask his requests. F. Rosenzweig's approach to the hour led him to an analysis of the qualitative religious time. In the propitious hour, eternity and time coincide, demanding the repetition of the instant, as nunc stans in time. The transformation of the natural time into religious time, in the propitious hour, is a decisive theme of the third part of The Star since it introduces the phenomenological analysis of religious fests. The possibi­ lity of such transformation is an assumption required for the statement of the self-referential character of religious time and its inclusion in the transcendence/immanence code. The circular re-entry of the religious time is a characteristic of religious ceremonials, already mentioned in other descriptions of Philosophy of Religion. The passages on the meaning of the hour show how the repetition of religious time is different from the succession of seasons in cosmic time, not only because the propitious hour entails the belief of the capture of nunc stans in the repetition of the instant, but because, in the fests, the association of the personal meaning of repetition with communal ceremonials is real. The Star’s introduction of the community in the explanations of religious time is somehow abrupt since the opening background of the intertwinement of the nunc stans with succession was the prayer of the individual. This could give the impression of additive relations or at

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least the false perception that community comes after the individual prayer. The textual passage where F. Rosenzweig identifies the individual experience of time with the natural succession of seasons, and the real religious time with a possibility only available in a community, is very challenging. This initial distinction leads to a clarifying conclusion some lines ahead where The Star states that the week and the week’s repetition ensures a coupling between the natural, the cultural and the religious meaning of time’s succession ensuring that the orientation of the human time is further seized in the religious fest, in such a way that the repeating instants reveal eternity in time: In der alltäglich-allwöchentlich-alljährli­ chen Wiederholung der Kreise des kultischen Gebets macht der Glaube den Augenblick zur »Stunde«, die Zeit aufnahmebereit für die Ewigkeit; und diese, indem sie Aufnahme in der Zeit findet, wird selber – wie Zeit19. Thus, the notion of »hour« (Stunde) represents the way eternity converts itself in time through communal prayer (kultische Gebet). The prayer ceases to be an individual action and becomes the experience of communal participation responsible for the conversion of the cosmic and human successions in full religious time, as an invitation (Einladung) to God. To keep its logical construction, the text needs the changeableness between stating that the communal foundation of religious time is the case or asserting that the communal prayer is a game God plays with human communities in Eternity to be invited as a participant in human time. Such changeableness is precisely the vital consequence of the religious schema. Only in a community, the prayer ceases to be Goethe’s isolated, egoistic, prayer. By approaching the form of a »We« in the cultus, F. Rosenzweig also discloses what is at stake, as communication, in the structure of monotheist religious time in opposition to the pagan participation in nature. The descriptions of the communal prayer in a series of reflections on the nature of language and the relation between word and gesture in the liturgy are motivated by the convergence of liturgic time and com­ munication. This explains why F. Rosenzweig’s account of liturgy does not agree with a depiction of the religious community as a non-rational fusion of liminal individuals participating, in trances, in a numinous 19

Star, 324.

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»comitatus«, according to Victor Turner’s use of this Latin term, repeated by Roy Rappaport in his anthropological description of »communitas«20. By inventing prayer as a communicative praxis, monotheism eman­ cipated the social meaning of ceremonials from their magical uses.

3. Two social modes enacting the religious code – Judaism and Christianity The Star relates the existence of an »eternal people« to the need for common blood as an assurance of the continuity in time of the invitation to God to become a participant in the human, social time. The Jewish belonging to the same blood has not the same meaning as the sense of belonging to social groups of other peoples on earth. Jews have not developed the sense of belonging to a territory, to land, as the other nations, mainly because the Jews’s founding father was born in a foreign land. What is said about the land applies also to the national language, laws and customs, and time. Hebrew cannot be described as the ordinary tool of linguistic communication of the Jews. The sacred language remains the language of the ceremonials, but it is not of everyday usage. The Torah is also a sacred law, different from the Law of the states where the Jews have their habitual residence. Jewish law, language and land have a relation to time different from the temporal, immanent, attributes of law, language, and the land of the other nations. This justifies the qualification of the Jews as the »eternal people«. The situation of the Jews among the nations demands a complex view of the challenges of being a Jew, namely those emerging from what The Star calls duplicity. Each relation entailed in the religious, social, and political historical situation of the Jews is ruled by a double orientation or a double relation21 (doppelte Beziehung) which means the duplication of the world of experience according to a permanent Zwiespalt. The description of the Zwiespalt is one of the places in The Star where the author confronts Hegel’s views, in the fragments The Positivity of Christian Religion, on 20 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process. Structure and anti-Structure, De Gruyter, Chicago 1995, 96; Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, 216–235. 21 Star, 341.

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the differences between the Greek religion of beauty and unity on one hand, and the divided ethical world of Judaism and Christianity, on the other hand. Hegel’s views on the Jewish essence as Knechtschaft unter einem Gesetz are implicitly rejected as representative of an immobile view of the Jewish existence. Intimate knowledge of the Jewish Year contradicts this immobility of the Zwiespalt. Thus, the Jewish duplicity means moving across the divisions and not the fixation of the separation, as a living movement across the frontier of transcendence and immanence in cele­ brations, beginning with the sabbath, as the commemoration of Creation, and continuing in the other festivities categorized as celebrations of Revelation and Redemption. At the beginning of the treatment of the distinction between Judaism and Christianity is an account of War. The distinction between the Sacred and the Political Wars, which is peculiar to the Jews in contrast to the »seven peoples of Canaan«, belonging to the past, and the Christian to whom all the Wars are political and equally serious, is here decisive. Jews, as the eternal people living in the periodicity of the sacred weeks and years, do not need special institutions to rule the expansion of eternity to time, because they are already the embodiment of eternity. In the Christianized nations, the state assumed this role: Denn der Staat ist die immer wechselnde Form, unter der die Zeit sich Schritt für Schritt der Ewigkeit zubewegt. Im Gottesvolk ist das Ewige schon da, mitten in der Zeit. In den Völkern der Welt ist reine Zeitlichkeit. Aber der Staat ist der notwendig immer zu erneuernde Versuch, den Völkern in der Zeit Ewigkeit zu geben22. In the state, the nation finds the equivalent of eternity in time, a synthesis between conservation and renewal, law, and violence. The theme of the political violence of the state returns in Lévinas’s remarks on the meaning of the state in Totality and Infinity. Even a reference to Heraclitus is common to The Star and Totality and Infinity. However, the theses are different. Perhaps due to his familiarity with Hegel’s theory of the state and universal history, Rosenzweig is much more detailed in his account of the double face of the political order, entailing law and violence. The Star identifies in the political order of the state a permanent effort to adapt the old and the new law. The state is both the guardian of the law and the initiator of the interruption of the historical continuity of the old rules when the time comes. It is the responsibility of the state to 22

Star, 369.

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understand life’s demand for adaptation of the old to the new. Violence arises each time the state pronounces its verdicts on the opportunity of such adaptation in the ethical time of a people’s life. The interruption necessarily occurs as an intrusion in daily routines and habits. This entails the admission of discontinuity in a flow which motivates the use of an equivalent of the instant to make sense of the conflation of conservation and renewal. Such notion is epoque: erst der Staat bringt in den unaufhörlichen Abfluss dieses Lebens in der Zeit Stillstände, Haltepunkte, Ep-ochen23. The author continues his reflection with a quote from Hegel: Ohne Staat also keine Weltgeschichte24. Only after the introduction of this premise of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, The Star concludes: (…) darum muss die wahre Ewigkeit des ewigen Volks dem Staat und der Weltgeschichte allzeit fremd und ärgerlich blei­ ben25. Not only the eternity that the State emulates is an ersatz, a forgery, but between the true eternity and the political forgery an irritation takes place. Nothing can replace the true eternity in time, that is, the continuity of the eternal people and its »hours«. The notion of Epoque applies not only to the description of the political and historical time, but also in the characterization of the Christian calendar. It is the description of Christ at the center of History, marking a before and after, that grants the notion of an epoch is special political-religious weight. The Star compares the religious schema of Judaism and Christianity by considering the form of their communities regarding time – Judaism realizes the community of the eternal life and Christianity the community of the eternal way (Gemeinschaft des ewigen Lebens, Gemeinschaft des ewigen Wegs26). Due to the dogma of incarnation, the Christian approach is intrin­ sically twofold: one face turned to the Father and the other to the Human Being. The Christian way has its dangers, namely the risk of paganism in the human representation of the son of God which, nonetheless, is used as an advantage in the missionary conversion of the pagans27. An analogous interpretation of the Christian proselytism was already advanced in a Letter to Hans Ehrenberg dated 13.6.18, entailing additional interesting remarks on Christian tolerance. 23 24 25 26 27

Star, 371. Ibidem. Ibidem. Star, 378. Star, 379.

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Das Christentum als missionierende Religion ist von religionswegen into­ lerant, das Judentum, das infolge seiner nationalen Mystik, oder wie du das dogmatische Herzstück des Judentums nennen willst, die Mission verwirft, ist ebendaher von religiosnwegen tolerant und verspricht »den Frommen aller Völker« die ewige Seligkeit28.

The Star details the effects of the Christian duplicity to include the duality of the empire and the church as two temporal concurrent sovereign powers. The church is a tool for the attainment of the religious message that mimics the state, both alien to the Jewish essence. The philosopher goes even further identifying not two but three dangers in the Christian way: the assumption of the Holy Spirit as the superior guide, and not God; the recognition of the Son as the Truth, and not God; the belief that God will be within each of its creatures and not above them29. The dangers of the Jewish way of life are quite the reverse of the Christian perils. Here it was God that was at risk, and there is the World and Human Being that risk vanishing in the face of God.

III – Transcendence as Sociability – the social setting of the religious schema To my knowledge, Emmanuel Lévinas referred more comprehensively to Franz Rosenzweig on three main occasions30. The reference to The Star in the »Preface« to Totality and Infinity (1961), trop souvent présent dans ce livre pour être cité31, is the first occasion, well-known and many times invoked, but remaining enigmatic Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schrif­ ten, 1. Band 1900–1918, Springer, Dordrecht 1979, 577. 29 See also: A. Neher, »Une approche théologique et sociologique de la relation judéochrétienne: le dialogue Franz Rosenzweig-Eugen Rosenstock« in: Idem, L‘ Existence juive. Solitude et affrontements, op. cit., 212–239, especially 222. 30 One of the first essays addressing Emmanuel Lévinas’s proximity to Rosenzweig is due to Jean-Louis Schlegel in an article published in a collective volume devoted to Lévinas, published in Les Cahiers de la Nuit Surveillée. See: Jean-Louis Schlegel, »Levinas et Rosenzweig« in: Jacques Rolland (ed.), Emmanuel Levinas, Les Cahiers de la Nuit Surveillée, Verdier, Lagrasse 1984, 50–70. More recently, a reassessment of the dialogue between the two philosophers on the concept of Revelation was due to Stéphane Habib, Levinas et Rosenzweig: Philosophies de la Révélation, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2005, passim. 31 Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et Infini, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1961 (1984), XVI. 28

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and still to be clarified in appropriate monographic studies. The second reference appeared in a conference devoted to the author of The Star in 1964, published one year later, with the title »Franz Rosenzweig: une pensée juive moderne«32. The third circumstance of extensive remarks on F. Rosenzweig is the »Preface« to Stéphane Mosès’s book Système et Révélation (1982)33. There are also a few published notes about F. Rosenzweig’s familiar themes in a series of essays of the 1960s and 1970s34, but nothing predominantly devoted to the author of The Star35. In the preface to Mosès’s book, the philosopher invokes Rosen­ zweig’s critique of totality as a sign of the end of Idealism with its ambition to offer an all-inclusive philosophical rationality. The confrontation with Idealism, as the last representative of Totality in western philosophical Thought, is what motivated Lévinas’s interest in the author of The Star besides their common reference to Jewish sources. However, the assessment of appropriate alternatives to Totality entails enquiries on the meaning of dialogue, proximity, and sociability that may lead to different conclusions. The sentence »en moi la totalité se brise«36, which epitomizes the breakdown of the Whole in the first part of The Star, promises a new form of relation advanced in the second part of the book which E. Lévinas understands as a relation without synthesis, or Revelation as the expression of language, visage, sociability, love. The beginning section of Totality and Infinity (»Le Même et l’Autre«) is an essay to give the word Metaphysics a new meaning connec­ ted to the openness to transcendence, to the Infinity37. The condition in the immanence of the world of the openness to transcendence is given in the Face of the Other confronting the I. The work entailed a radical Idem, Hors Sujet, Fata Morgana, Saint-Clément-de-Rivière 1987, 73–96. Idem, »Préface« in: Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation. La Philosophie de F. Rosenzweig, Seuil, Paris 1982, 7–16. 34 Idem, »Martin Buber et la Théorie de la Connaissance« (1963); Idem, »Martin Buber et le Judaïsme contemporain« (1968), and Idem, »M. Buber, Gabriel Marcel et la Philosophie« (1978). 35 In footnote 4 of his 1959 essay, Neher mentioned that Lévinas was producing a work on Rosenzweig’s political thought (»Emmanuel Levinas prépare un ouvrage sur la pensée politique de Franz Rosenzweig«). A. Neher, »Une approche théologique et sociologique de la relation judéo-chrétienne: le dialogue Franz Rosenzweig-Eugen Rosenstock« in: loc. cit., 213. 36 E. Lévinas, »Préface« in: Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation. La Philosophie de F. Rosenzweig, op. cit., 13. 37 Idem, Totalité et Infini, op. cit., 3–78. 32 33

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discussion of the meaning of the subject, as an I, in the face-to-face assumed as ethical relation. It is the initiative of the Other, coming from the outside of a dwelling, that represents the true trauma for a subject confronted with nature and living in the time of economy (oikos). The visit of the Other is a non-anticipated event, creating a new form of relation that the philosophical theories of knowledge, even when inspired by Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, didn’t grasp38. Such a general description gives the context of a redescription of F. Rosenzweig’s concept of Revelation, as Revelation of the Face of the Other. It was in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974) that E. Lévinas realized the importance of a magnification of the views formerly articulated in 1961, going beyond the possibilities opened by E. Husserl’s phenomenology. Along his path, Otherwise than Being is not only a title, but also the viewpoint from which new concepts should be envisaged to describe the affection of immanence by the passage of transcendence, as the passage of the Other in the face-to-face. Considering this new demand, F. Rosenzweig’s terminology in The Star seems too much reliant on the ontological categories of Idealism (God, World, and Human Being) to recognize a God beyond being, as the God approaching in the Face of the Other. A new beginning out of ontology also means a new commencement for the religious schema of transcendence and immanence since the transcendence of God should not be identified with the perfection of a superior Being. It is ethical transcendence in the sociability of face-to-face. Sociability is not a new condition added to face-to-face, but directly a separation that ties (séparation liante39) the I and the neighbor in the ethical obligations. Are there other possibilities for a meaningful discourse on God that avoids the definition of transcendence as a mode of Being? E. Lévinas conceived his search for these possibilities as a rediscovery of the biblical meaning of God beyond Greek categories. Thus, he reiterated F. Rosenzweig’s essay to get rid of the philosophical rationality »from the Ionian Islands to Jena«, going one step further. 38 Regarding E. Levinas’s move away from E. Husserl’s phenomenology, see: E. Lévinas, »La Pensée de l’Être et la Question de l’ Autre« in Idem, De Dieu qui vient à l’ Idée, Jean Vrin, Paris 1986, 173–188; Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas. The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1974, part II, 26–50; Rudolf Bernet, »Levinas’s Critique of Husserl« in Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, 82–99. 39 E. Lévinas, »Préface« in: Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation. La Philosophie de F. Rosenzweig, op. cit., 16.

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The new setting for transcendence is sociability, which is not a relation between beings. Can we understand sociability as a non-ontological, non-Greek, elocution of the name of God? The statement of the beyond being, of the name of God, does not allow itself to be walled up in the conditions of its enunciation. It benefits from an ambiguity or an enigma, which is not the effect of an inattention, a relaxation of thought, but of an extreme proximity of the neighbor, where the Infinite comes to pass. The Infinite does not enter into a theme like a being to be given in it40.

The understanding of God’s meaning is not a grasping of a being in its predicates, such as the predicates entailed in the proofs of the existence of God. God is not a being engaging with the Human Being and the World according to relations reducible to the elements of existential judgements or »the said of the saying« in Lévinas’s words. A few lines onward, after conceiving the revelation of God as a process »made by him that receives it« in the »extreme proximity of the neighbor«, the author added the following question: Why would proximity, the pure signification of saying, the anarchic one-for-the-other of beyond being, revert to being or fall into being, into a conjunction of entities, into essence showing itself in the said?41 Proximity is the source of the meaning of God’s revelation, its personal ground. In the fellow human being as face, one finds more than a sum of experimental data of an observer regarding an alter ego. Likewise, the face-to-face entails a transcendence that is different and more demanding than the reciprocity of dialogue with its assumption of equality between the I and the Thou42. Hence, it is not reducible to entities of the world, to a community or mit-Sein. Its unruled asymmetry »signifies as illeity«43, an injunction to the I to be responsible as a subject, which has not a symmetrical counterpart in the world. E. Lévinas’s description of the asymmetry of the face-to-face E. Lévinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1981, 156. 41 Ibid., 157. 42 Idem, »À propos de Buber: quelques notes« in Idem, Hors Sujet, op. cit., 65: »Ici donc, contrairement au Je-Tu de Buber, pas d’égalité initiale (...) Inégalité éthique: subordination à autrui, diaconie originelle«. E. Lévinas’s asymmetry of the social interaction was recently reassessed in Steffen K. Herrmann’s book: S. K. Herrmann, Symbolische Verletzbarkeit. Die doppelte Asymmetrie des Sozialen nach Hegel und Levinas, Transcript, Bielefeld 2013. 43 E. Lévinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, op. cit., 150. 40

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preserves the requirements of the religious relation with a transcendent God. The revelation of the name of God remains on the face-to-face original asymmetry. God’s revelation is not another experience different from the original sociability of the face-to-face. It is given in the social relation itself. If God’s revelation coincides with the face-to-face, biblical monotheism and particularly the Judaism of the »burning bush« is a permanent invitation to regard social relations from the perspective of ethical obligations, avoiding the emotional fusions in »communitas« or the rational proofs of God. E. Lévinas’s descriptive strategy regarding the face-to-face comprises a modification of the religious schema and its binary code, going beyond the ontological semantics of The Star to emphasize the social and ethical ground of the schema itself. Lévinas’s L' Au-delà du Verset is a collection of Talmudic readings and short essays on theological themes, significant in what concerns the theoretical place of Revelation in the author’s thought. The book did not comprise an explicit interpretation of F. Rosenzweig’s work. However, the combination of philosophical theses on face-to-face, community, society, and ethics with exegetical comments on the meaning of the biblical transcendence of God raises questions like those of The Star, remaining faithful to the social turn of Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being. From the Talmudic readings, and for my purpose here, I will select »Du Langage religieux et de la Crainte de Dieu«. The theme of this reading was extracted from the Talmud (treatise Berakhoth 33 b). The Talmudic passage extensively quoted by E. Lévinas concerns three unfitting forms of prayer, which I cannot address in detail, in the present context. From the rabbinic discussions on the three unfitting forms of prayer, E. Lévinas’s commentary recalls a central question. What entails the evidence that the fear of God is not in possession of God? The question relates explicitly the immanence to transcendence but inverts the pole of the theological advantage. The fear of God, on which relies the suitable prayer, is a treasure to be offered to God by the Human Being, even if this fear is also to be seen as the »unique fortune of the Heavens«44. This fear is not itself an emotion resultant from the menacing predicates of entities in the

44 Idem, »Du langage religieux et de la crainte de Dieu« in Idem, L’ Au-delà du verset. Lectures et discours talmudiques, Minuit, Paris 1982, 120 (»cette crainte est l’unique richesse du Ciel«).

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world, but an »exaltation of heteronomy« (exaltation de l’ hétéronomie45) demanded by God, which Lévinas distinguishes from Paul Ricoeur’s »dependence without heteronomy« (dépendance sans hétéronomie) as another echo of the difference between the Jewish and the Christian approaches to transcendence. The context of the question about the meaning of the fear of God is a special type of communication, prayer as religious communication, as a form of communication that adopts the binary immanence/transcendence. It is communication itself that generates the meaning of such obedience to God, in a heteronomous ear and doing, that is taken by God as the genuine fear it needs in the treasure of Heavens. »Obedience before understanding« recalls an interiority of the exterior, and the converse, that only sociability can portray in its asymmetry, engendering and enlightening the code of communication with the transcendent, namely in prayer. The code of religious communication is devised in the double paradoxical formula: the fear of God as God’s possession in the treasure of Heavens is Man’s free heteronomy. E. Lévinas’s approach to the trace of God in the trace of the fellow human beings turns the theological reference of the free heteronomy into an ethical command regarding the concrete other as the neighbor46, as the original form of sociability he also distinguishes from the anonymity of society. In Otherwise than Being, the explanation of the social source of the privilege of the existential judgments is reserved for the analysis of justice and the introduction of the »third party« in face-to-face situations. From justice, described as the demand for equality and reciprocity in the original asymmetric face-to-face, emerge the existential judgments, and philosophy, as a discourse grounded on the conversion of the saying to the said47. However, the possibility of existential judgements, supervened by the introduction of the »third party« and justice, does mean neither a preliminary advancement to an onto-theological discourse about God nor a reduction of ethical proximity to legal, political rules. The concept of justice explains the complexity of the interpersonal relation and its enlargement from face-to-face to increasing anonymous interactions and social codifications. The idea was articulated in Lévinas's Idem, Ibid., 120. See also: Idem, »Dieu et la Philosophie« in Idem, De Dieu qui vient à L‘ Idée, op. cit., 93–157, especially: 120–121. 47 Idem, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, op. cit., chapter II, 3. C. »The Said and the Saying«, 37–38; 4. »Saying and Subjectivity«, 45–60. 45

46

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definition of the »third party« in Otherwise than Being in a way trans­ versal to the sociological concept of »double contingency«, from Alfred Schutz48 to Talcott Parsons49 and Niklas Luhmann50. The definition is the following: The third party is other than the neighbor, but also another neighbor, and also a neighbor of the other, and not simply his fellow51. The presence and internal reference to ethical claims in some fundamental legal norms of modern society concerning religious tole­ rance reveal how the concept of the »third party« must be described from the perspective of the ethical face-to-face and the prism of social codifications, as a hybrid, and not only within the meaning of the personal ethical encounter. According to my thesis, the reconfiguration of the ethical claims regarding interpersonal respect into legal forms of modern legal systems, which the structure of modern society has made inevitable, explains the emergence of norms and expectations about interreligious tolerance or interreligious dialogue, for instance in the frame of the »cultural rights«. Thus, the diversity of solutions to the same religious code is, in monotheism, a possibility, as The Star attested. It became a social reality in the evolution of the symbolic codes of modern society. It would be an illusion not to recognize the openness of the religious code as an expression of the structural conditions of modern society and the liberal state52. The positive interpretation of modern society and the state fulfills the realism of the social code of religion as a symbolic form open to multiple instantiations of transcendence in immanence.

Alfred Schutz, »The Stratifications of the Life-World, 5. a., b. and c.«, in: A. Schutz & Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1973, 59–92. 49 Talcott Parsons & Edward A. Shils, »Some Fundamental Categories of the Theory of Action: A General Statement« in: Idem, Toward a General Theory of Action, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 1953, reprinted 2001, 3–29. 50 Niklas Luhmann, »Doppelte Kontingenz« in: Idem, Soziale Systeme, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1984, reprinted 1987, 148–190. 51 E. Lévinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, op. cit., 157. See also on the »third party«: Idem, Totalité et infini, op. cit., 187–190. 52 Notwithstanding the explicit and calculated distance between ethical and political categories in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, later, in a recorded dialogue with other philosophers, E. Levinas stated that: L´état libéral n’est pas une notion purement empirique – il est une catégorie de l’ éthique où, placés sous la généralité des lois, les hommes conservent le sens de leur responsabilité, c’est-à-dire leur unicité d’élus à répondre. E. Lévinas, Autrement que Savoir, Éditions Osiris, Paris 1988, 62. 48

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The recognition of the social character of God’s revelation by Rosenzweig but outstandingly in Lévinas’s works motivates some conc­ luding remarks.

IV – Concluding Remarks 1. The acknowledgement of the social embedment of the religious diffe­ rence between transcendence and immanence corroborates the nature of a communication code of this binary. 2. The social nature of the code is particularly manifest in Lévinas’s notions of the face-to-face and the »third party«, but it is not absent in Rosenzweig’s I-Thou and in his description of the communal prayer. 3. However, their attempts are limited in what concerns the full recognition of the modern source of the religious code in the evolution of modern society, the liberal state, and modern tolerance, as bedrocks in granting the openness of the code to a diversity of actualizations, by blocking self-destruction caused through religious conflicts. Their limits essentially pertain to a reduction of the social to the personal even when Lévinas describes the meaning of the »third party«. Social evolution, which is neither personal nor objective, influen­ ces the formation of self-descriptions of the religious code with their semantic content, and surely not as an external factor among others but as the real process that takes also place in the evolution of religion. The acknowledgement of the social nature of religion will lead to a positive appreciation of modern society as the pluralistic source of symbolic codes and diverse religious combinations of the religious code in the historical monotheism. The modern pluralism of communication, partially justified by the modern political evolution, is not indifferent to the real diversity of patterns of the religious code realized among different religions, peacefully coexistent, such as Judaism and Christianity. The awareness of the social nature of the religious code is a second-order observation of religion in modernity, which does not evolve to destroy the meaning and value of first-order observations and communication within the code but to protect it from self-destruction occurring from exclusivism.

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Myriam Bienenstock

Revelation and Dialogue: Emmanuel Levinas on Franz Rosenzweig Coimbra Lecture

In memory of Heinz-Jürgen Görtz (1948–2020) This article is dedicated to Heinz-Jürgen Görtz (1948–2020): a firstrate Rosenzweig scholar, recently deceased, who amongst his many achievements1 also translated into German a highly interesting article of Emmanuel Levinas: »Dialogue: Self-Consciousness and Proximity of the Neighbor«.2 The article is less known than many other writings of Levinas, but may well help us to better understand why Levinas said that the main source of inspiration of his own conception of dialogue had been Franz Rosenzweig: this is one of the reasons for which I shall adopt it as the point of departure of the present contribution. (I)

I shall first recall some features of Levinas’s debt towards Rose­ nzweig which were often commented upon, but still deserve

1 H.-J. Görtz studied Roman Catholic theology and Germanic studies at the University of Bochum, and then he became Professor of Catholic Theology at the Leibniz University of Hannover, where he stayed from 1984 onwards, teaching Systematic Theology until his Emeritierung in 2011. He was particularly active in the field of the Rosenzweig Forschung – and it was he who opened my way towards understanding the links between Rosenzweig’s ›experiential philosophy‹ and Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes : cf. on this question H.-J. Görtz, Tod und Erfahrung. Rosenzweigs »erfahrende Philosophie« und Hegels »Wissenschaft der Erfahrung des Bewußtseins«, Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 1984. 2 »Dialogue. Conscience du soi et proximité du prochain« [Sigle : Levinas, Dialogue]. The French original version was published in: Archivio di Filosofia (1980), 345‒357, then in De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, Vrin, Paris 1982, 211‒230. The article was translated into German by Heinz-Jürgen Görtz and Martine Lorenz-Bourjot, with the collaboration of Alois Müller-Herold, and first published in German in: F. Böckle, F.-X. Kaufmann, K. Rahner, B. Welte (Hg.), Christlicher Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft, 1. Teilband, Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1981, 61‒85. English translation by Bettina Bergo in Of God Who comes to Mind, Stanford, U.P., Stanford 1998, 137–151 [Sigle: Levinas, Of God].

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further clarification – perhaps precisely because they were so often commented upon; (II) and then I shall argue that Levinas actually went not merely much further than Rosenzweig on some basic points, but also in another direction: a) on the notion of ›separation‹, which he squarely rela­ ted to that of ›holiness‹ (‫ ;)קדושה‬and also b) on the notion of ›love‹: contrarily to Rosenzweig, Levinas himself related ›dia­ logue‹ to ›love‹ only »with prudence«, as he puts it in the article already evoked above.3 (III) In the third and last part of this contribution, I shall then con­ tend that Levinas preferred to relate both ›love‹ and ›transcen­ dence‹ squarely and directly to »sociality« – and also to that which he called »human proximity« (proximité humaine): he contended that the biblical sentence »Love thy neighbor as thyself« embodies a way of acceding to the other which differs from knowing: approa­ ching the near one«: une autre façon d'accéder à l'autre qu'en connais­ sant: approcher le prochain.4

It is difficult – perhaps impossible – to translate that wonderful sentence: one commonly says that translating means betraying, and this is certainly the case here, for how is one to translate the double use in French of proche, once as a verb – approcher – and once as a substantive – proche? Whichever translation one chooses, the question raised by Levinas is none other than that of how one ought to ›approach‹ the Other: the question is more actual than ever – and how could it not be, in days of Covid – and ›me-too‹ movements? I shall also point out here that it leads us back not just to Rosenzweig, but also to other Jewish thinkers and, in the first place, to Hermann Cohen.

Levinas, Dialogue, 225; Of God, 147. – »I don't use the word love very much«, he also said once in an interview, in 1982; »it's a worn out and ambiguous word; and then there is a severity: this love [that which can be found in the Jewish theology] is commanded«: moi je l’emploie peu, le mot amour, c’est un mot usé et ambigu; et puis il y a une sévérité : cet amour-là [celui que l’on trouve dans la théologie juive] est commandé…: cf. E. Levinas, Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre, Grasset, Paris 1991, 126. 4 Levinas, Dialogue. 221; Of God, 144 [translation slightly modified]. 3

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I It is, perhaps, in thinking of the remarkable distinction Franz Rosenzweig makes in the human, between the individual belonging to the world and always comparable to another individual, and ipseity (die Selbstheit), in thinking of the solitude of the Selbstheit in which the I stands (and, to our mind, for which the secret of its psyche is the »how«) – perhaps this is how we shall be able to measure, despite the relations among individuals, the ontological separation between human beings, and appreciate the transcendence that gapes between them, We shall be able to measure, consequently, the extra-ordinary transitivity of dialogue or the proximity and the supra-ontological – or religious – significance of sociality or human proximity. The solitude of Selbstheit, according to Rosenzweig, must not be understood as Heidegger does, who makes it a modus deficiens of Mitsein.5

According to this passage, one of the most remarkable features of Rose­ nzweig’s philosophy could be found in the way, different from his con­ temporaries’, in which the German-Jewish philosopher had understood the »solitude« of the individual. The contemporary philosopher explic­ itly mentioned in the passage quoted above is Heidegger, and indeed it must have been Heidegger’s conception of the Mitsein, the »being withthe-others«, which he targeted – Levinas also specified his criticism later on, for example in a lecture he gave in 1987 under the title »Mourir pour«: it was to Heidegger’s Being and Time, § 26 that he then referred, as to the paragraph in which Heidegger would have understood ›solitude‹ as a modus deficiens of the »being-for-the-Other«.6 When Rosenzweig had written in the Star that »The Self is the lonely man in the hardest sense of the word« (das Selbst ist der einsame Mensch

Levinas, Of God, ibid. – C’est, peut-être, en pensant à la distinction remarquable que fait dans l’humain Franz Rosenzweig, entre l’individu appartenant au monde, toujours comparable à un autre individu, et l’ipséité (die Selbstheit), c’est en pensant à la solitude de la Selbstheit où se tient le Je (et dont, à notre sens, le secret du psychisme est le ›comment‹), que nous pourrons mesurer, malgré les relations entre individus, la séparation ontologique entre humains, et apprécier la transcendance qui bée entre eux, mesurer dès lors la transitivité extra-ordinaire du dialogue ou de la proximité et la signification supra-ontologique – ou religieuse – de la socialité ou de la proximité humaine. La solitude de la Selbstheit selon Rosenzweig ne doit pas être comprise comme l’entend Heidegger, qui en fait un modus deficiens du Mitsein: Dialogue, ibid. 6 The text is available today in Entre nous, Grasset, Paris 1991, 219–230, here 225. 5

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im härtesten Sinn des Worts)7, when he thereupon elaborated his own conception of the Self ’s ›solitude‹, it had not been from Heidegger that he had wanted to distance himself: although this goes almost without saying, it is probably better to precise that Heidegger’s writings became famous much too late for Rosenzweig to have a real opportunity to properly take a stand towards them, before his early death.8 When Rosenzweig himself had insisted, in the Star, that the Self was not to be simply described as »personality« or »character«, he had also added that these words should not be taken »in the sense of Goethe's orphic Stanza, where the word designates precisely the personality«9: the author from whom he had wanted to distinguish himself had been Goethe, who is, and by far, the most frequently cited author in the Star.10 Goethe had been a major literary source for Rosenzweig – and also for Levinas: one good example to that effect could be the motto for the last part of Autrement qu’être, where Levinas gives a quote taken from the second part of the Faust.11 But Goethe, for Rosenzweig, had not just been a literary source. He had also been a philosophical source, and even a theological one, as is shown by the quip according to which Goethe would have been a pagan, but also »perhaps the only Christian in his times such as Christ wanted one to be«12: the meaning of such an astonishing sentence does need to be pondered upon and carefully clarified, just like many other sentences Rosenzweig wrote on Goethe. In Levinas’ thought, Goethe did not fulfil the same role as in Rosenzweig’s – and it is not only the source of the notion of solitude, it also is its very meaning which is different in Levinas. 7 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung [Sigle : Rosenzweig, Stern], Frankfurt/M. 1988, here, 15–21, 67–90, 77; Star, 80. 8 See Peter Eli Gordon’s excellent study on Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 2005. 9 Rosenzweig, Stern, 78; Star, 80. 10 Cf. here Norbert Waszek,’s »Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von«, in: Dictionnaire Rosen­ zweig, ed. by S. Malka, Paris 2016, 151–156. 11 The motto Levinas chose for the last part of Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (Nijhoff, La Haye 1974) partly echoes Goethe's famous word in his Faust (Second part, First Act, Vers 6271–6273): »Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Teil; Wie auch die Welt ihm das Gefühl verteure, Ergriffen, fühlt er tief das Ungeheure.« 12 Stern, 308; Star, 295. On this conviction, see my article »Rosenzweig und die Vergöt­ terung der Kunst«, in Franz Rosenzweig neues Denken, hg. von W. Schmied-Kowarzik, Alber, Freiburg 2006, vol. I, 418–430, here 427 f. and also my Cohen face à Rosenzweig. Débat sur la pensée allemande, Vrin, Paris 2009, Chapter I; in more detail in the German ed.: Cohen und Rosenzweig. Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem deutschen Idealismus, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg i.Br. 2018, Kap. I, here 78 ff.

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To account for that meaning, commentators regularly begin by looking at the Preface of Totality and Infinity, in which Levinas would denounce the philosophical concept of ›totality‹ – and also, together with it or rather subsequently, totalitarianism: the word may not appear in Totality and Infinity itself, but Levinas used it in other contexts13; and since the author of Totality and Infinity had also written in the Preface that Rosenzweig’s Stern der Erlösung had been »a work too often present in this book to be cited«14, the conclusion is easily reached that the main source of his all-encompassing denunciation of totalitarianism had been Rosenzweig. An argument of that kind imperatively needs to be spelled out, not just because that which Rosenzweig had envisaged had been »the Possibility of Knowing the All« – in German: das All, not the ›totality‹ (German: Totalität) – but also because the very notion of ›totalitarianism‹ had not belonged to Rosenzweig’s vocabulary – and indeed could not yet belong to it.15 Levinas’ denunciation of totalitarian­ ism, after World War Two, was rather indebted to those authors who made the term popular in his own time: to Hannah Arendt, and also – mainly – to Karl Löwith (1897–1973), that early disciple of Heidegger who after the Second World War composed Meaning in History, a work which became one of the most widely read and most influential books on the philosophy of history during the 20th century.16 In that book, Löwith had launched a total war against that discipline – the discipline of the philosophy of history as a whole, as a discipline – but also against the Hebrew, Jewish prophetism, which had been according to him one of the sources of the philosophy of history: it cannot be doubted that Löwith’s fundamental purpose in Meaning in History was to dispel the nefarious character of the philosophy of history – and also of its sources, 13 Cf. for example, in the lecture entitled »Liberté de parole« (1957), the affirmation that »Political totalitarianism rests on an ontological totalitarianism« (repr. today in Difficile Liberté, 287–290, here 289; English translation 205- 207, here 206). Cf. also Entre nous, 260. 14 Levinas, TI, ix; Totality, 10, 28. 15 The term seems to have been used for the first time in print in 1924, and then sometimes – but not always – as a term of abuse, in anti-Fascist publications. However, this was several years after Rosenzweig had written and published the Star. On the first uses of the term and the denunciation in those early times, see, for example, the recent entry of Rosemary H.T. O’Kane on ›Totalitarianism‹ in Gregory Claeys (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Modern Political Thought. Vol. 2, 806–811. 16 The book was first published in English (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1949) and then in German under another title: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. Die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie [1953], which might be translated back into English as »World History and History of Salvation«.

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and these included the Jewish ones. This latter point is more rarely made than the first, general one17. Yet, it deserves to be highlighted, if only for scholarly reasons: the use Löwith makes in his famous Meaning in History of modern Jewish authors, and more particularly of Franz Rosenzweig, is hidden under poorly specified references to Hermann Cohen18 – and also driven by his opposition to Heidegger.19 This is the main reason for which a comparison with Levinas’s reading, on matters related to the philosophy of history and Jewish thought, is particularly enlightening. The way in which Löwith approached Rosenzweig in Meaning in History, and the question of the relation of Jews, and of their religion, to history, was conditioned by his purpose: getting rid of the Jewish, Hebrew prophetism. Levinas set himself the opposing goal: he never intended to get rid of the Hebrew prophetism and, with it, of eschatology. He aimed at rehabilitating both.20 Whether or not Levinas had been aware of the role played by Hans Ehrenberg (1883–1958), one of Franz Rosenzweig’s closest friends and relatives, in the rehabilitation of eschatology he then wanted to achieve is not certain – Rosenzweig himself had certainly not hidden his debt to Hans Ehrenberg. He acknowledges that he coined the term ›meta-ethics‹, which he uses as a title for Part One, Book Three of the Star – »Man and his Self; Meta-ethics« – based on a thesis developed by Ehrenberg,

17 On this point, one may consult the Introduction to the volume entitled Der Geschichts­ begriff : eine theologische Erfindung?, ed. Myriam Bienenstock (Echter Verlag, Würzburg 2007), 7 ff.; also in English »Hermann Cohen on the Concept of History: a Greek Idea, or an Invention of Prophetism?« in Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Volume 20, Number 1, 2012, 55–70. 18 Cf. here Pierfrancesco Fiorato, »Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen’s Anti-eschatological Messianism«, in: Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism, ed. by R. Munk, Springer, Dordrecht 2005, 133–160, here 135 ff. 19 Cf. M. Heidegger and Franz Rosenzweig, or Temporality and Eternity, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 3, 53–77. Republished in German in K. Löwith, Gesam­ melte Abhandlungen. Zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960, 68–98). On this confrontation, cf. also my »Mythe et révélation dans l'Etoile de la Rédemption. Contemporanéité de Franz Rosenzweig« in Archives de Philosophie, 55, 1, janvier-mars 1992, 17–34. 20 See on this Myriam Bienenstock, »Le statut de l'histoire dans L'Etoile de la Rédemption de Franz Rosenzweig«, in: C. Bouton & B. Bégout (éd.), Penser l'histoire. De Karl Marx aux siècles des catastrophes, éd. de l'éclat, Paris 2011, 151–185; also »Il concetto di storia: un'idea greca o un'invenzione del profetismo?« in Tra Torah e sophia. Orizzonti e frontiere della filosofia ebraica. A cura di Orietta Ombrosi con la collaborazione di Renato Bigliardi, Marietti, Genova-Milano 2011, 67–80.

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according to which the world is not a-logical but ›meta-logical‹: he says that the term ›meta-ethical‹ was likewise not meant to express the absence of ethos but only its unusual status, hence that passive position instead of the imperative position that is usually assigned to it. The law was given to man, and not man to the law21.

It is that unusual position, that passive status he himself would have wanted to describe.22 But Rosenzweig owed much more to Hans Ehren­ berg. He also owed to him, most probably, the endeavor to introduce an eschatological dimension into the philosophy of history – more particularly that of Hegel: it is largely the merit of Heinz-Jürgen Görtz to have brought this point to light.23 One of the difficulties awaiting the reader who addresses the Star – but also Totality and Infinity – is that in their systematic philosophical works, neither Rosenzweig nor Levinas himself had been keen to disclose their sources, particularly the Jewish ones. They rather aimed at separat­ ing between the Jewish and the non-Jewish world, more particularly the philosophical one. Rosenzweig‘s declaration according to which the Star is »not at all a Jewish book«, but a »system of philosophy«, has remained quite famous24. It must, of course, be taken cum grano salis, not literally – but it is evidence of the fact that Rosenzweig had been well aware of the long tradition followed by Jewish authors, who regularly separated between the Jewish and the non-Jewish world, more particularly the philosophical one. The highly suggestive title chosen by Levinas for his 1959 lecture in France: “›Between Two Worlds‹ (The Way of Franz Rose­ Rosenzweig, Stern, 15. Star, 20. Rosenzweig, Stern, 15–21, 67–90. 23 Cf. Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, »Franz Rosenzweig und Hans Ehrenberg«. In H. Kremers and J.H. Schoeps (Eds.), Das Jüdisch-Christliche Religionsgespräch, Bonn: Burg-Verlag, 1988, 90–113; also Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, “›Gottesreich‹ und ›Zwischenreich‹. Geschichtstheolo­ gische Implikationen des Religionsgesprächs zwischen Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) und Hans Ehrenberg (1883–1958)«, in: Christen und Juden. Ein notwendiger Dialog, ed. by the Niedersächsischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung. Hannover 1988, 79–95. See also Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, »Der Philosoph Hans Ehrenberg und sein Abschied von der Philosophie«, in T. Jähnichen/A. Losch (Hrsg.), Hans Ehrenberg als Grenzgänger zwischen Theologie und Philosophie, Hans Ehrenberg Studien 1, Spenner, Kamen 2017, 1–42; and Myriam Bienenstock, »Zur ›Eschatologisierung‹ der Geschichtsphilosophie bei Hans Ehrenberg«, Hans Ehrenberg Lecture 2019 (in print). 24 Cf. for ex. Franz Rosenzweig, »Das Neue Denken«, available today in: Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, in: F. Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, R. and A. Mayer (Eds.) [Sigle: Rosenzweig, GS], here vol. III, 140. 21

22

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nzweig: »Entre deux mondes: la voie de Franz Rosenzweig«), shows that he, too, was aware of the separation: that lecture was given before a Jewish public. This was not the case with Totality and Infinity, which Levinas intended to be a philosophical book, not at all a Jewish one: Levinas himself did separate, indeed explicitly, and very clearly, between his phil­ osophical publications and his Jewish writings, and what follows from his practice is that it often becomes difficult to account for the meaning of the words he uses – are they to be considered as philosophical concepts, or should we rather look for their meaning in a Jewish tradition anchored in Hebrew words, and in the Talmudic vocabulary? One of the most striking examples of such a difficulty will be here Levinas’s use of the word ›sep­ aration‹: in Totality and Infinity, Levinas remains very discreet on the equivalence of ›separation‹ with ›sanctity‹25: he does not explicitly say that what he has in mind when he resorts to the word ›separation‹ is none other than the Hebrew word ›kadesh‹, ›kadosh‹: a word commonly translated in German as ›heilig‹, in English as ›sacred‹ or ›saint‹, and in French as ›sacré‹ or ›saint‹, ›sainteté‹, but whose Aramaic root means ›to separate‹, ›to segregate‹.26 – Would he have had the same echo, and ultimately the same worldwide success, had he explicitly said that this was what he meant?

II One of Levinas’ greatest achievements consists in having succeeded in giving a positive meaning to the age-old, negative judgment which had linked Judaism, ever since Roman times, to the notion of ›separation‹: he succeeded in linking Judaism not just to the notion of ›sacred‹ or ›holi­ ness‹ – in Hebrew, ‫ – קדוש‬but also to the idea of an ›Other‹, or to ›alter­ ity‹ as such; and there even were some readers of Levinas who went as far as arguing that the recognition of that link had been proper to Jewish 25 See however Levinas, TI, 75: sa sainteté c'est-à-dire sa séparation; Totality and Infi­ nity, 77. 26 Cf. for ex. L. Koehler und W. Baumgartner unter Mitarbeit von Z. Ben-Hayyim, B. Hartmann and P. H. Reymond (Eds.), dritte Auflage neu bearbeitet von W. Baumgartner und J. J. Stamm, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament, Lieferung III, Leiden 1983, 1003–1008, here 1003: »ausgesondert«; also 997–998, here 997: »heilig, aus­ gesondert«….

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thinkers.27 But the notion of ›holiness‹, which may well have always been related to some kind of ›separation‹, also can and was defined otherwise, what Levinas knew very well; and it is not necessarily related to Judaism. As for Judaism and Jewish thought, there were many who defined it oth­ erwise at different times, and found other, more specific features in it. This was the case with Rosenzweig, who went in another direction. Levinas’ focus upon the notion of the sacred – in German, heilig – had stemmed, in any case partly, from analyses that were developed in Germany in the field of the history of religion: Rudolf Otto’s book Das Heilige, which was published for the first time in 1917, immediately enjoyed much success, and many translations in foreign languages fol­ lowed, including one in French under the title Le sacré (1929).28 Levinas, who manifestly learned to know the work through the French translation, resorted to that title in order to provide the German term heilig with a double translation, ›sacred‹ and ›saint‹, and to express his opposition to Otto’s theses: he contended that Otto’s description of the ›sacred‹ did not express in any way that which he himself considered as the Jewish under­ standing of ‫קדוש‬, ›saint‹. That which seems to have been particularly offensive to him in Otto’s book was the continuity the German historian of religions had established between the religion of the so-called ›prim­ itives‹ and the later monotheism, also the Jewish one: rising against this thesis, Levinas repeats that the ›Moderns‹ are wrong to reduce all reli­ gions, including the Jewish religion, to a single source. There would be a complete break between idolaters and Jewish monotheism: the primitive, idolatric conception of the ›sacred‹ (sacré) would have been in conflict with the Jewish understanding of ›sanctity‹ (saint), and of ›holi­ ness‹ (sainteté). Du sacré au saint, the eloquent title of a later collection of his Talmudic readings »From the sacred to the holy«29, already shows how important the distinction was for him. Levinas’s energetic opposi­ tion to Otto’s theses that placed Judaism in the vicinity of primitive reli­ gions, and indeed identified Judaism with them, also explains, at least in part, why he preferred to dismiss any reference to the terms heilig or Cf. for example Jacques Rivelaygue, Leçons de métaphysique allemande, t. I, Vrin, Paris 1990, here 290. 28 Cf. R. Otto, Das Heilige. Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, Trewendt & Granier, Breslau 1917. French translation by A. Jundt: Le sacré. L’élément non-rationnel dans l’idée du divin et sa relation avec le rationnel, Payot, Paris 1929. 29 Cf. E. Levinas, Du sacré au saint. Cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques, éd. de Minuit, Paris 1977. 27

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Heiligkeit in his philosophical works, and more particularly in Totality and Infinity: a misunderstanding on the Jewish tradition of ›holi­ ness‹ would have been almost unavoidable. The misunderstanding – and with it, the misinterpretation – could also have been furthered by the meaning Levinas himself ascribed to that Jewish tradition: in it, ›holy‹ would mean ›pure‹, but ›pure‹ as ›separa­ ted‹.30 Levinas was very much aware of the negative connotations which had been attached to that conception throughout history, ever since the times of the Roman Empire – and up until Hegel: The first act by which Abraham becomes the progenitor of a nation is a separation that breaks the bonds of coexistence and of love, the whole of the relations in which he had hitherto lived with man and nature; these beautiful relationships of his youth (Jos. 24, 3) he pushed away from himself. »The root of Judaism is the objective, i.e., the service, the servitude of a stranger. This is what Jesus attacked. [...] Servitude against their law, the will of the Lord [...] in relation to other peoples – insensitivity, lack of beautiful relationships, love, separation [...]«.31

Levinas had also undoubtedly noted the importance attached by the young Hegel, in the definition of the ›Spirit‹ of Judaism, to ›separation‹. The eloquent formulas to which Hegel had resorted in those early texts had been unequivocally hostile to Jews and to Judaism, and although it must be added that the position of the philosopher did change over time32, those of Hegel’s writings which were the focus of attention in post-war France were Hegel’s early writings. Levinas could not ignore their anti-Judaism.33 He knew very well, and wrote it, that Hegel had been Du sacré au saint, loc. cit., 89. »Die Wurzel des Judentums ist das Objektive, d. h. der Dienst, die Knechtschaft eines Fremden. Dies griff Jesus an. […] Knechtschaft gegen ihr Gesetz, den Willen des Herrn […] in Beziehung auf andere Menschen – Gefühllosigkeit, Mangel schöner Beziehungen, Liebe, Trennung«: Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Frühe Schriften. Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Bd. 1, E. Moldenhauer, K. M. Michel (Eds.), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1971, 277, 298 f. – Hegel’s Early Writings have been re-edited and published in the new critical edition of Hegel’s Werke in German, and then also in English, but in this article, reference must be made in the first place to the editions Levinas knew, and used, even if we do add references to the new critical editions, when necessary. 32 Cf. recently M. Bienenstock, »Hegel über das jüdische Volk: ›eine bewunderungswür­ dige Festigkeit […] ein Fanatismus der Hartnäckigkeit‹”, in: J. Noller, A. Kravitz (Eds.), Der Begriff des Judentums in der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2018, 117–134. 33 Cf. here the short article entitled « Hegel et les juifs« in Levinas, DL, 328–333; DF, 235–238. 30

31

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far from inventing any of the old anti-Jewish slogans, but it was that long tradition which explained why the Introduction of Totality and Infinity is directed against the Western philosophical tradition as a whole. Rosenzweig, who had already considered Hegel as its culminating point, had been especially well acquainted with the young Hegel’s texts on the »Spirit of Judaism« and its history: those were the manuscripts he had attentively studied when he had begun preparing his thesis. He did a scholar’s work: amazingly precise, and pathbreaking – he had, at that time, before World War One, no intention to underscore the importance of his subject matter: this might explain, in any case, partly, why he seems not to have taken offense at the strong anti-Jewish bias of the young Hegel’s writings on the »Spirit of Judaism«– is it possible that he did not even notice it? – He, in any case, chose to highlight other aspects of the Jewish tradition, and other notions than that of ›separation‹, which seemed to him equally important: amongst them, significantly enough, the notion of ›love‹, and the Song of Songs.34 The study of the notion of ›love‹, and of religious love, had indeed already constituted an important part of the young Hegel’s studies. It should be noted here that the Hebrew word kadosh resp. ›holy‹, i.e. ›set apart‹ or ›separated‹, is not only used in a religious sense and for God or even, for that matter, for human beings, but also much more generally and more broadly, e.g., to denote territories, spaces, or the like.35 Levinas followed this usage throughout, for instance when he undertakes in Totality and Infinity to describe the »separation of the same from the other« in inner life and speech36 and even more generally in human life, namely as one that would express itself in a whole »economy.«37 What he also found particularly important to emphasize in the essay on »Dialogue« is that the term ›sacred‹ also refers to the Jewish Bible – and, according to him, it is indeed first and foremost in the Bible that 34 Cf. my articles on the subject : »Die Sprache des Hohelieds: »mehr als Gleichnis«?: Zu Rosenzweigs Stern der Erlösung«, in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte [ZRGG]. 69:3 (2017), 264–278. »Friendship and Religion. Some Missing Elements in Hegel’s Conception of ›Lordship and Bondage‹”, in: The Owl's Flight. Hegel's Legacy to Contemporary Philosophy, Stefania Achella, Francesca Iannelli, Gabriella Baptist, Serena Feloj, Fiorinda Li Vigni and Claudia Melica (Eds.), De Gruyter, Berlin 2021, 521–533. 35 Cf. for ex. Hebräisches und Aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament, 1005 f. 36 Cf. the part entitled »Séparation et Discours« in: TI, 23–54, English translation 53–81. 37 The part entitled »Interiority and Economy« begins with a section entitled »Separation as Life« (TI, 81s.; English, 109) and leads up to the declaration that »Separation Is an Economy« (TI, 149; English, 175).

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one may find the appropriate answer to a religious and moral call: it is not enough to rely upon a good will, it is imperative to read and teach what the Bible says. Levinas often repeated this argument, also directing it – cautiously, but without leaving any ambiguity – against Martin Buber, and Buber’s conception of ›dialogue‹: it is true that according to Buber, too, the relation to God is produced »in the extension of the I-Thou relationship and that of the social existence with man« (dans le prolongement du rapport Je-Tu, de la socialité avec l’homme).38 Also, »the descriptions of the ›encounter‹ in Buber never avoid a certain axiological tonality«.39 But a critical tone is unmistakable in the following sentences, in which Levinas writes that In Buber, the I-Thou relationship is also often described as an harmonious co-presence, as an eye to eye. Yet are the face-to-face, the encounter, and the »eye-to-eye« really reduced to a play of reflections in a mirror and to simple optical relations?40

When Levinas wrote that he wanted the ›dialogue‹ to take place »on the level of revelation« i.e., always asymmetrically, he also added that this claim was that of Rosenzweig, and in contrast to the »reciprocity« which Buber had emphasized, »no doubt in error« (sans doute à tort): »There would be an inequality, a dissymmetry, in the relation«.41 The criticism of Buber is very cautious, but it should not be overlooked, all the less so because it is a criticism of certain contemporary movements in the Jewish world in which Levinas himself lived – and because it is still of great relevance today.42

III One of the most interesting features of the essay on Dialogue is indeed it’s original reading of the fundamental commandment »Love your neighbor as yourself«: Levinas does not focus any more upon the age-old question of how the notion of ›neighbor‹ is to be defined, but upon the relation Levinas, Dialogue, 227; Of God, 148 f. Dialogue, 229; Of God, 150. 40 Ibid. 41 Dialogue, 230; Of God, 150. 42 On these points, see also F. Poirié, Emmanuel Levinas – Qui êtes-vous? éd. La Manufacture, Lyon 1987, 125 and our monography Cohen und Rosenzweig, loc. cit., 256 s. 38 39

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between the self and that ›neighbor‹; and he defines that relation, already in the title of the essay, as a kind of ›proximity‹, or ›nearness‹. In the article itself, he even talks about a movement towards nearness or prox­ imity: the question would be that of determining how to »approach« the Other – Him, or Her: approcher le prochain, »approaching the [one who is] near«.43 Approcher le prochain – approaching the Other: this would be une autre façon d'accéder à l'autre qu'en connaissant: another way of acceding to the Other than that of knowing«.44 The first intention of Levinas in this article manifestly is to distance himself from that which was in his time commonly called ›dialogue‹: he says that the »path of predilection of Western humanism« is the »famous dialogue, […] called to stop violence by bringing the interlocutors to reason, establishing peace in unanimity, and suppressing proximity in coincidence«.45 This is precisely what should be avoided: »suppressing proximity in coincidence…« When he castigates any and every idealistic, rationalistic coincidence, it is, once again, first and foremost, Hegel whom Levinas wants to attack. But he also dismisses Husserl, and other contemporary phenomenological trends. Here, again, for reasons which we tried to spell out earlier in this article, it is the philosophical tradition as a whole that he wants to quit. Here again, however, one wonders: how is it possible, and what could it mean, to ›approach‹ an Other who would be ›separated‹, in the strong sense of the word ›separated‹ singled out in the second part of this article? Approcher: ›approaching‹, getting near, but not coinciding or for that matter loving the Other; just getting close to an Other, a ›neigh­ bor‹ who is, in the first place, another human being, but also undoubtedly understood as God. The formulation – getting near – is highly original. What could be its source? And its meaning? Levinas must have had in mind one psalm, Psalm 73, whose last sentences (25–28) read as follows: Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. But it is good for me to draw near unto God

Levinas was undoubtedly familiar with those verses. He must also have been aware of Hermann Cohen’s marked preference for them – if only

43 44 45

Levinas, Dialogue. 221; Of God, 144 [translation modified]. Levinas, Dialogue. 221; Of God, 144 [translation modified]. De Dieu, 217; Of God, 141.

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because Rosenzweig explicitly evoked that point, in his Introduction to Cohen’s Jewish writings.46 Levinas must also have known many of the texts in which Cohen had explicated the reasons of his enthusiasm, amongst them the lecture on »The Significance of Judaism for the Progress of Religion« which was delivered in 1910, and which had been – already in Cohen’s lifetime – one of the most widespread texts of Hermann Cohen, internationally: in it, Cohen had opposed the form of »Jewish enthusiasm« expressed in Psalm 73 to the »mysticism of Pantheism«, and to the »love of Christ«: he had argued that in both orientations, the pantheistic one and the Christian one, »man partakes of the very quality of God, whereas the singleness of the Jewish God wards off all comparison with heaven and earth, all connection with man«.47 Levinas undoubtedly agreed – but one wonders, whether he agreed to Rosenzweig’s very different interpretation: what Cohen would have wanted to say, according to Rosenzweig, is that there is »no need for any other form of ethical action« once one is able to »delight in being near him [God]«48… This is not what Levinas said, also in the article on Dialogue, when for example, he insists that »divine epiphany is always awaited starting from the encounter with the other man, who is approached as a you beginning from ethics«; and then he reminds his readers of the many biblical texts which put emphasis upon ethical injunctions: not to wrong one another, not to accept interest, nor profit from a fallen brother, though he be a stranger or a newcomer: »it is as though the ›fear of God‹ were defined by these ethical injunctions«…49 What one discovers is that Levinas must have been here – and in many other places – much closer to Cohen than to Rosenzweig – and perhaps also closer to what he himself seems to have been ready to acknowledge.

46 Cf. Rosenzweig, GS III, 216 f.; Writings on neo-Kantianism and Jewish Philosophy, loc.cit., 234. 47 Cf. here Cohen, Werke 15, 458; also in Hermann Cohen, Writings on neo-Kantianism and Jewish Philosophy, Samuel Moyn and Robert S. Schine (Eds.), Brandeis University Press, Waltham (Mass.) 2021, here 154. 48 Cf. Rosenzweig, GS III, 216 f.; Writings on neo-Kantianism and Jewish Philosophy, loc.cit., 234. 49 Levinas, Dialogue, 227; Of God, 149.

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Levinas, Rosenzweig, and Antitheodicy: Kenotic Resonances in Levinas and Rosenzweig

This paper is dedicated to Benjamin Gaillard and his family: Jessica, Phillis, and Cole. Abstract This paper examines Franz Rosenzweig’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ respec­ tive understandings of the question of who (rather than what) God is and His relation to the world; how their respective views preserve God’s transcendence while at the same time ennobling man, raising him to the level of a partner with God; and, finally, the implications of the preceding for the problem of evil. The kenotic resonances in each, we will find, result in an antitheodicy for which accountability rather than reason or explanation is man’s — or, perhaps better, religion’s, or theology’s — highest purpose. The Holocaust is more than a genocide; it is more accurate to describe it as a deicide. On multiple levels, the God of Biblical theism is assaulted — and no Holocaust history or memoir better captures this than Primo Levi’s »›There is no why here‹« in Survival in Auschwitz (14). What possible purpose could the Holocaust have served, what meaning could it contain? What good could it have wrought? »There is no why here« seems the death-cry of the merest possibility of the God of Biblical theism, as Levinas muses in his Afterword to Zvi Kolitz’s Yosl Rakover Talks to God: »Does [the Holocaust] not prove a world without God, an earth on which man is the only measure of good and evil?« (81). Much the same sentiment is expressed by Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) and Maurice Blanchot’s The Writing of the Disaster (1980). Hence Block’s conversation with the witch about wanting to meet the Devil — for if Evil exists, surely the Good exists as well! And, in a related vein, Blanchot’s enigmatic remark concerning »The calm, the burn of

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the holocaust, the annihilation of noon — the calm of the disaster« (6), denoting the death of the outcry of Why? and the tyranny of the »there is« — the »senseless horror« of an ontological existence wherein man is doomed by »the absurd ›that’s [just] the way it is‹ claimed by the Power of the powerful,« as Levinas says in »Temptation of Temptation.«1 Rosenzweig did not live to see the Holocaust, nor did his contem­ porary Franz Kafka; yet both seem to prophesy its coming. Kafka’s The Castle (1926), Rosenzweig notes, describes the crisis of Modernity in profoundly Biblical terms: the reduction of the who to the what in anthropology; the degeneration of the relational to the utilitarian in language; the debasement of freedom to caprice in ethics; and the loss of the personal God of the Bible to an impersonal and irrelevant God-of-the-gaps. Hence Rosenzweig’s »epidemiology« of this crisis, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God (1921). »If living means dying, [man] prefers not to live,« he observes. »He chooses death in life. He escapes from the inevitability of death into the paralysis of artificial death« (102). That is to say, he prefers the solipsism of reification — the »temptation of temptation,« as Levinas calls it — to a life lived for God and the other human being. Levinas, who did live through the Holocaust, proposes a remarkably similar diagnosis: Humanity eschews the infinite value of the concrete, flesh-and-blood human being — and, more to the point, its infinite accountability for the other human being — by prioritizing an abstract Human Being in whose name limitless evils can be perpetrated against individual humans. »One wishes for a principle of intelligibility which no longer envelops the human,« he writes in Totality and Infinity; »one wants the subject to evoke a principle that would not be enveloped by concern for human fate« (31–32). Both thinkers, what is more, see in the idea of a non-ontotheological understanding of God — God as Otherwise, as Levinas puts it — the answer to this crisis. For it was the reduction of the Biblical God from Infinity to totality, from the Otherwise than being to Being Itself, that precipitated the crisis of Modernity and its inevitable fruit, the Holocaust. As John Sanders explains in The God Who Risks, the Neoplatonic model of God, which has as its core vital assumptions about the »perfection« of God (immutability, timelessness, impassibility, and exhaustive control), was blended with the Hebraic understanding of God »into one grand ›biblical-classical synthesis.‹« This in turn »dehistoricized and deescha­ 1

In Nine Talmudic Readings, 30–50 (39).

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tologized« the Hebraic understanding, effectually reducing God to »the pillar around which all else moves« and thereby overshadowing the Hebraic view of God as intimately involved and responsive to individual flesh-and-blood existents (173, 175). God’s »ontology,« in short, fatally undermines His relationality. Needless to say, both Levinas and Rosen­ zweig reject the so-called biblical-classical synthesis in favor of a return to the God of the Bible, a God who is Otherwise than being precisely insofar as He limits His powers for the sake of the other. They therefore reject assumptions about God’s »perfect« nature in favor of a view that stresses His vulnerability before the creation. Each preserves God’s transcendence by drawing on the kabbalistic view of Divine tzimtzum whereby God limits Himself — a move radically at widdershins with ontotheological conceptions of God — for the sake of the creation, mankind in particular. As Rosenzweig avers in Star, »Nothing would be more natural for the ›God of our Fathers‹ than that he should ›sell‹ himself for Israel and share its suffering fate.« The contrast between Rosenzweig’s view of God and that of the Biblical-classical synthesis and its so-called Dignum Deo cannot be more obvious; for what Rosenzweig is describing is a God who willingly embraces vulnerability on behalf of His people; who risks a loss of face, if you will, by taking on the role of one requiring redemption as well as the provider thereof. »But by doing so, God himself puts himself in need of redemption. In this suffering, therefore, the relationship between God and the remnant points beyond itself« (410). For his part, Levinas goes so far as to draw a correlation between this idea of a God who undertakes self-limitation to the Christian idea of kenosis, which describes Jesus’ incarnation and death as a humiliating »self-emptying« on behalf of mankind (cf. Philippians 2:5–8): »Terms evoking divine majesty and loftiness are often followed or preceded by those describing a God bending down to look at human misery or inhabiting that misery,« Levinas explains.2 The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (b. 1926) is known, among other things, for his affirmation of Christianity’s urgent need to return to more Jewish modes of thinking.3 Accordingly, he rejects classical theism’s talk of immutability and impassibility and affirms a God »Judaism and Kenosis.« In In the Time of the Nations, 101–118 (101). Cf. Youngs’ The Way of the Kenotic Christ: The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, pp. 78–79: »Indeed, Jewish thinkers are hugely important to Moltmann’s thought overall [Scholem, Buber, Heschel, Ben-Chorin], and in his longest work on Christology he

2 3

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who undertakes a kenosis in order to stand in solidarity with suffering mankind. Explains Samuel Young in The Way of the Kenotic Christ, [Moltmann] treats theologia crucis in opposition to theologia gloriae and, in so doing he perceives a God who, in the freedom of his own love, sovereignly chooses to enter into the suffering of the cross on behalf of humanity — this means that God suffers in solidarity with the oppressed and is not defined in abstract categories of power, control or passionlessness, but is rather known in terms of sacrificial, transformational, and other-seeking love. (21, emphasis by the author)

It needs hardly be stressed that whatever the differences between the Tanakh and the Christian scriptures regarding such matters as the Incarnation and the Atonement, they concur about the kenotic character of God, His willing embrace of a being-for-the-other and the attendant divine self-limitation and -humiliation. What is particularly fascinating is that the Holocaust’s challenge to Biblical theism stems from its implications for theodicy. And yet theodicy is of a piece with the Biblical-classical synthesis, which in turn made possible the Holocaust, inasmuch as it underlies a view that reduces all — God included — to mere cogs in a totality. The simple fact is that theology of the Biblical-classical synthesis so readily accommodated mechanistic philosophy that the two seemed of a piece. Lacking any sense of an Otherwise than being, however, this theology lacked the wherewithal to provide an answer, or apologia, to the question inevitably raised by mechanistic philosophers and scientists of a less theistic persuasion: »The cosmos may well be a machine, but need there be a maker? Might not the machine be self-organizing and/or eternal?«4 But while this line of thought holds relevance for an understanding of the Holocaust (as Viktor Frankl, e.g., intimates in his Introduction to The Doctor and the Soul), it is not directly pertinent to the purpose of this essay; the idea to take away in the present context is that the Biblical-classical synthesis is, in emphatically states, ›In this Christology…I wanted the Christian-Jewish dialogue to be continually present‹” (78). 4 Re: the transition from a Christian mechanistic philosophy to contemporary reducti­ onistic/antitheistic philosophy, cf. Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (1994), Chapters Four and Five. And as regards the nature and possibilities of a kenotic cosmology, cf. Nancy Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (1996). The resonances with Levinas are profound; after all, Totality and Infinity can be understood as an explication of the relationship between (metaphysical) cosmology and ethics and be said to posit, however obliquely, a kenotic cosmology.

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its very monergism, reductionistic. It reduces God to His attributes, His ontology, thereby rendering Him into a theological construct. In other words, a totality. For a God who is but the pinnacle of Being, its »perfect« expression, everything must have a purpose. This God cannot afford to take risks or allow anything to remain beyond his purview. His will is monergistic, encompassing everything from the sublime to the bathetic: Every last flood, fire, famine and fart represents the outworking of His perfect plan for the world and mankind. A »perfect« God, then, means a timeless, impassible, immutable, and therefore omnicontrolling God. Speaking specifically of Thomism and its several categories of causality but encom­ passing the Biblical-classical synthesis in general, John Polkinghorne explains that »Nothing is outside God’s control, an assertion that poses obvious difficulties for theodicy. The veiled and mysterious nature of primary causality can only be matched by the veiled and mysterious claim that in the end all will be seen to have been well.«5 The problematic nature of theodicy — the attempt to define evil and suffering in terms compatible with the God of the Bible, who is both »omnipotent« and »omnibenevolent« — is fully exposed by the Holocaust. Not only does the Holocaust shatter the explanatory power of theodicy; it seems to sound the death-knell for the God of Biblical theism. — Or, more accurately, the God of the Biblical-classical synthesis, which many equate with the God of Biblical theism. This last point cannot be overemphasized: Christians have become so accustomed to the »lens« afforded by the Classical component of the Biblical-classical synthesis that we read the Bible with the eyes of Hellenists, thinking in terms ontological as opposed to relational or ethical. Nor do the effects of this ontotheology end there, however; via its books and media and the talk (and, sadly, the acts) of its adherents, Christianity’s view of God gradually permeated the culture at large. As an instructor of Rhetoric at the University of Texas at Dallas, I would often ask my students, who represented many diverse countries and people-groups, to tell me the first word that comes to mind when they hear the word »God« in its Western context. »Almighty,« or some close variation thereof, was the usual answer. — An answer predominantly ontological, to say again, as opposed to relational or ethical.

5 »Kenotic Creation and Divine Action.« In Polkinghorne, ed., The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, 90–106 (97).

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By returning to a non-ontotheological understanding of God’s transcendence, however, Rosenzweig and Levinas alike afford us an opportunity to return to Biblical theism and, what is more, a true and proper understanding of evil and its relationship to God’s transcendence. Transcendence as understood by classical theism is hopelessly entangled with the concept of God’s perfection: which is to say, His timelessness, immutability, impassibility, simplicity, and, perforce, omni­ control. Reflect on the implications of a God who cannot in any wise change or respond to His creatures; a God for whom thought and act are one; a God for whom omnipotence necessarily translates as omnicontrol — and you will see the truth of John Calvin’s words: »Let them recall that the devil and the whole cohort of the wicked are completely restrained by God’s hand as by a bridle, so that they are unable either to hatch any plot against us or, having hatched it, to make preparations or, if they have fully planned it, to stir a finger towards carrying it out, except so far as he has permitted, indeed commanded them.« (emphasis by the author)6

As John Polkinghorne explains, »God is party to every event not simply by allowing it to happen, but also by bringing it about through the exercise of the divine will. Nothing is outside God’s control, an assertion that poses obvious difficulties for theodicy.«7 A God removed from time, incapable of change in any form or fashion, unaffected by His creation, and whose »attributes« are so bound up with one another as to be effectually inseparable cannot help but omnicontrol. This view, borne of the West’s obsession with ontology, reduces God from a Who to a What. It is supremely utilitarian, focused on the how and the what rather than the who: what is God and how does He operate within the world? Theodicy, the attempt to explain evil and to reconcile its existence with the »perfect« nature of God, is of a piece with these labors. Each attempts to define, to apprehend, to situate within a totality. In the end, theodicy means that evil must have a purpose, must serve a higher good. If that is the case, is evil evil? Or is Goodness monergistic, which is to say, the ultimate operative force in the cosmos?

In Erwin Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross, 52, 56–57. »Kenotic Creation and Divine Action.« In Polkinghorne, ed., The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, 90–106 (97). 6

7

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Gregory Boyd makes much the same point in his God at War: The core problem seems to lie in the classical-philosophical equation of power with control, and thus omnipotence with omnicontrol, an equation that forces the problem of evil to be seen as a problem of God’s sovereignty. If it is accepted that God is all-loving and all-powerful, and if maximum power is defined as maximum control, then by definition there seems to be no place for evil. If goodness controls all things, all things must be good. (44)

Nor is Boyd alone; David Ray Griffin, in God, Power, and Evil, offers a similar critique of Christian theology and its Hellenistic influences. For our purposes, however, Richard A. Cohen’s »What good is the Holo­ caust?« beautifully sums up the deeply problematic essence of the project of theodicy: »After Auschwitz theodicy itself becomes immorality ... Thus [for Levinas] there are two forms of evil: the intrinsic evil of suffering for the sufferer and the evil of one rationalizing the other’s suffering.«8 As one might suspect from Levinas’ remarks, Judaism suffers no need for theodicy. This is because it does not concern itself with the what and the how of God but rather the who of God: Who is God, and what does this who reveal about His relationship to the cosmos and man’s role therein? Here we need look no further than Rosenzweig’s talk in Star of God’s refusal to »redeem man ›without [man]‹« — that is, to coerce man by bestowing salvation without his consent and indeed participation: Evidently God wants for his own only those who are free. But the mere invisibility of God’s sway hardly suffices for distinguishing between the free and the enslaved spirits ... In order to segregate the spirits, God must not alone not help, he must actually harm ... Not only must he hide his sway from man: he must deceive him about it. He must make it difficult, yea impossible, for man to see it, so that the latter have the possibility of believing him and trusting him in truth, that is to say in freedom. (266).

In contrast to the God of classical theism, Rosenzweig describes a God who withdraws in order to give the world the space — literal as well as metaphorical, epistemological as well as ontological — to be and to grow and to come in its own time. But we must not stop there; we must not see this withdrawal as an absenting per se. For Rosenzweig, this giving of space to man further entails a »descent«: »God himself ›descends,’ himself gives himself, surrenders himself to man« (Star, 166). And in fact Rosenzweig makes this assertion in contrast to the God posited by the 8

In Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation After Levinas, 266–282 (275).

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theology of Islam — which, it cannot be stressed too strongly, is quite close to Christian theology. Both are products of the Biblical-classical synthesis, which reads the Tanakh and the Christian scriptures through the lens of Hellenistic philosophy. Ergo, Islam, like Christianity, creates an ontotheo­ logy. However different in some respects, Islamic and Christian theology revolve around the idea of perfection, which, as we have explained, entails immutability, timelessness, impassibility, simplicity, and omnicontrol and has profound implications for matters like the question of evil. Levinas’ thoughts in this vein resonate with Rosenzweig’s own. His contrast between totality and infinity, in fact, teases out implications of Rosenzweig’s ideas about God’s temptation of man: Infinity is produced by withstanding the invasion of a totality, in a contraction that leaves a place for the separated being. Thus relationships that open up a way outside of being take form. An infinity that does not close in upon itself in a circle but withdraws from the ontological extension so as to leave a space for a separated being exists divinely. Over and beyond the totality it inaugurates a society. The relations that are established between the separated being and Infinity redeem what diminution there was in the contraction creative of Infinity. Man redeems creation. (Totality and Infinity, 104)

This talk of a creative contraction recalls the kabbalistic idea of tzimt­ zum, that is, of God’s ongoing contraction in order to vouchsafe the separateness, and therefore freedom, of beings truly other than Himself. Eschewing totality for infinity, God refuses to »envelop« the creation and thereby assimilate it unto Himself in any sense of the term. He risks the solipsism of a truly »atheist« being, i.e., a being possessed of a conatus essendi, which makes possible even as it complicates the practice of ethics. Rosenzweig writes in this same vein when in Star he speaks of the love of neighbor and its need for »disillusionment,« without which love »would harden into a schematic, an organized act« rather than remaining fresh and »wholly lost in the (present) moment« (215). Only truly free beings can frustrate and defeat love, and only love that is willing to be defeated is truly love. For Rosenzweig and Levinas alike, as we have already intimated, there is a close relationship between ethics and cosmology — for the nature of God’s relationship to the cosmos is of a piece with His ethical commands. If God, per Rosenzweig and Levinas alike, (a.) calls Himself into question, (b.) limits Himself in order that the creation might be separate and ontologically/epistemologically independent of Him, and (c.) gives Himself to man such that man knows but is not coerced by

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goodness, what, then, does that mean for the human being who actively receives these gifts of the Creator? Related to all of the aforementioned points (a, b, and in particular c), Rosenzweig’s Star addresses a crucial dilemma for classical theists surrounding God’s role as Creator: Does God create out of compulsion or caprice? If the former, if God needs the world, »the world would lose all meaning of its own, all internal unequivocalness,« becoming essentially »a testimony to the stranger-than-fiction inner life of the author.« If the latter, if creation is merely an act of will, »God’s essence is removed to a height that is foreign to the world and suspended above it,« recalling »the cool apathy of the Epicurean gods who led a life of Olympian serenity ... untouched and unmoved by [the world]« (114–15). Rosenzweig maintains that God creates out of love; but love, he clarifies, has nothing of want or need about it, nor is it an abstract, timeless attribute or »omnibenevolence.« Love, he argues, seeks to preserve the uniqueness of the beloved rather than appropriating it and thereby reducing its »living countenance to rigor mortis.« That is, »God loves everything, only not yet. His love roams the world with an ever-fresh drive« (164). Creation is no demonstration of omnicontrol on God’s part, any more than it suggests a timeless, abstract »omnibenevolence.« Rather, it unfolds in time and space and involves individual, flesh and blood creatures. Rosenzweig’s ideas in this regard dovetail beautifully with Levinas’ talk of creation as a »creative contraction« on God’s part. This understanding of creation, which might best be described as »kenotic« insofar as it entails an emptying of power and self-regard on God’s part, points the way to a truly Biblical understanding of His transcendence: God is transcendent or Otherwise precisely insofar as His thoughts and ways are at widdershins with the behaviors and modes of the created order. He creates beings truly atheist, i.e., truly separate from Himself, not bound to Him ontologically or epistemologically. In endowing them with a conatus essendi, however, He makes possible the solipsism from which evil springs — namely, the tendency of humans to reduce individual existents to Existence, which in turn paves the way for murder: »To affirm the priority of Being over existents ... is to subordinate the relation with someone, who is an existent, (the ethical relation) to a relation with the Being of existents, which, impersonal, permits the apprehension, the domination of existents (a relationship of knowing), subordinates justice to freedom,« he avers in Totality and Infinity (45). God’s transcendence, by contrast, obtains in His refusal to behave likewise, i.e., to apprehend His creatures and thereby reduce them to Its to His almighty autonomous I. Qua

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Otherwise, qua Infinity, God instead chooses to work non-coercively, working with man in a creatio continua and thereby rendering Himself supremely vulnerable before the creation, not only by suffering with it in solidarity but by allowing His will to be defeated.9 If, then, God’s transcendence, properly understood, entails His willingness to surrender power and embrace vulnerability, eschewing totality for infinity, dunamis for kenosis — what does this imply for the question of theodicy? For Rosenzweig and Levinas alike, theodicy is a non-sequitur. There is no »problem of evil« in an abstract or theological sense; if anything, there is a »problem of the problem of evil.« It is not the work of believers in the God of Israel10 to develop philosophical or theological justifications for the existence of evil, or justifications of God’s purposes in creating or allowing evil. Believers in the God of Israel cannot become »apologists« offering justifications for God or Providence; doing so abandons the mode of infinity in order to embrace that of totality. (That is, it abandons ethics for a depersonalizing abstraction — the root of evil, per Levinas’ »The Temptation of Temptation.«) Evil is indeed an egregious problem, albeit an existential and, above all, ethical one. To quote Zosima from Levinas’ beloved Brothers Karamazov: Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone ... However mad that may seem, it is true. For if I myself were righteous, perhaps there would be no criminal standing before me now. If you are able to take upon yourself the crime of the criminal who stands before you and whom you are judging in your heart, do so at once, and suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach ... If you are surrounded by spiteful and callous people who do not want to listen to you, fall down before them and ask One might go so far as to say that God makes possible His own »death« per the Rabbis’ linkage of the First and Sixth Utterances: The negation of one necessarily entails the negation of the other. Notes Rashi in The Chumash, »Mechilta notes that the first commandment of the second tablet corresponds to the first of the other one, faith in God« (411). In a not unrelated vein, Abraham Joshua Heschel asserts in Man in Search of God: »And yet there is something in the world that the Bible does regard as a symbol of God. It is not a temple or a tree, it is not a statue or a star. The symbol of God is man, every man. God created man in His image, in His likeness.« And if, as Levinas says, God speaks to the self through the face of the other, commanding the self to do everything that the other might live, then to kill the other is to silence the voice of God. On multiple levels in Judaism, then, homicide and deicide are irrevocably linked. The God of Israel is indeed a God who risks, beginning with Himself. Therein may be glimpsed His transcendence: He opts for the way of infinity, which at its own expense makes space for the other (the ground of ethics), while eschewing the way of totality, which theorizes and controls (the wellspring of evil). 10 Note that this term includes, per Rosenzweig’s Star and Levinas’ Is It Righteous To Be?, Christians as well as Jews. 9

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their forgiveness, for the guilt is yours, too, that they do not want to listen to you.« (320–21)

It must not be forgotten or overlooked that Zosima’s life and teachings represents the answer to Ivan’s challenge to Biblical theism, namely, the problem of evil. Ivan, who rejects, in an almost Levinasian fashion, the explanatory power of theodicy and the »harmony« it claims to bring, asserts that »absurdities are all too necessary on earth« (243). Yet he also rejects, contra Levinas, the necessity of free will, claiming that it comes at too high a price. »›Better that you enslave us, but feed us,’« as his Grand Inquisitor informs Jesus (253). In a very real sense, what Ivan is rejecting isn’t so much the idea of God as it is the possibility of kenotic love. As Larry and Carol Lacy put it, Brothers might just as well be entitled Is Love Real? or Is Love Possible? or even Is Love Too Hard?11 It must be borne in mind, too, that Zosima is a holy fool, a tradition in Russian Orthodoxy tied irremovably to the idea of kenosis. Indeed, as Joseph Franks notes, Nietzsche’s understanding of Christianity and its commandments stem from his view of Prince Myshkin, the eponymous »idiot« in the novel of the same name, as a portrait of Christ.12 For Jesus is, in a proper Christian understanding, the ultimate fool or idiot precisely insofar as he undertakes a kenosis for mankind, and with no guarantee of the outcome. But kenosis applies no less to the one Christians would call God the Father (God as revealed in the Tanakh, one might say). As a Creator, as we have stressed, He creates kenotically. The Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1895–1975) view of Dostoevsky as a kenotic creator is deeply relevant on this point, as Ruth Coates explains in Christianity in Bakhtin: God as the Exiled Author: In Dostoevsky’s Creative Work of 1929 it is apparent that Bakhtin is already rethinking his understanding of authorial activity, reinterpreting its kenotic (self-effacing) dimension in such a way as to minimise [sic] authorial finalisation [sic]. A more radical form of aesthetic love, a more radical kenoticism now becomes the ideal: the other/hero is set free to be a subject on equal terms with his or her creator. Thus Bakhtin comes to understand love as the enemy of closure not only for the lover but also for the beloved. (138)

In point of fact, Dostoevsky — per his understanding of his God’s kenosis — goes to great lengths to endow Ivan with what amounts to a conatus 11 In a reading group conducted at the Lacy’s home in Memphis, Tennessee in the spring of 2012. 12 See Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, 578, fn.3.

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essendi. He eschews controlling Ivan, say, by forcing him to play a part or to serve his own ends but allows him to stand forth and present his arguments in a genuine and forceful manner. Zosima’s kenoticism or holy folly, then, is given a fuller, truer life because of the »methodology« of Brothers’ author. In point of fact, Dostoevsky never quite sloughed the fear that he had not truly answered Ivan’s arguments — in no small part, it should be stressed, because as a writer he emulated his own Creator. Hence the subtitle of Coates’ book: God and the Exiled Author. A God who undertakes kenosis embraces vulnerability, ambiguity, pain, and the possibility of defeat. The Weeping Prophet weeps not only for himself and Jerusalem; he is also a proxy, a stand-in, for God. His tears are God’s tears. As well, just as Jeremiah is in some sense a failure in his ministry to his people, so, too, is God. Is love qua kenosis possible for a human being? Is it something to be desired, or feared? These questions parallel Levinas’ remark in Totality and Infinity that »Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality« (21). Dostoevsky’s answer to the aforementioned questions may be found in the epigraph to Brothers: »Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit« (John 12:24).13 This is not merely a prophecy on Jesus’ part concerning his own fate; it is, as we will soon see, a command for those who call themselves by his name. So: If we reject theodicy, where does that leave us vis-à-vis the matter of evil? If I witness evil in the world, my purpose is not to apprehend it or to explain it away in such a fashion that God’s alleged omnis are preserved; rather, I must call myself into question: If one individual wrongs another, is it not because I failed to let my light so shine that she or he would have been convicted and thereby turned from the path of wrongdoing? Can I absolve myself of responsibility, whether before the perpetrator(s) or the victim(s)? Or am I already convicted, as it were, by my own existence — which of necessity entails that some other(s) do without? Can I justify my place in the sun and simply walk away? No; I must do everything that the other might live, and not merely live but live well. That entails calling not only myself into question but crying out to, for, and even against God when necessary, risking my own faith by standing in solidarity with the other. 13

The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

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Levinas, for his part, writes that »I welcome the parallel drawn, today, between [Judaism and Christianity] in the doctrine of kenosis: the universality of the common element in all human beings, and the univer­ sality of what is for human beings. This is how I understand Christianity: to live and die for everyone.«14 In other words, kenosis is no mere attribute of God or theological datum; kenosis is an ethical command. Rosenzweig, likewise, stresses much the same point when he writes in Star that Love of neighbor ... is distinguished from all ethical acts by the presupposi­ tion of being loved by God, a presupposition which becomes visible behind this origin only through the form of the commandment. Ethical laws are not content simply to be rooted in freedom — this is true of love of neighbor as well — but will recognize no presupposition at all other than freedom. That is the famous requirement of »autonomy« ... God’s »ordaining what he will« must, since the content of the present ordinance is to love, be preceded by God’s »already having done« what he ordains ... Ere man can turn himself over to God’s will, God must first have turned to man. (214–15)

God’s love, as Rosenzweig stresses throughout Star, is a love that calls God to question Himself, as it were; to empty Himself, to risk vulnerability and even defeat. It is a love that empowers its object, man, and thereby makes human goodness possible. Kenotic love isn’t a gift to be passively enjoyed; it carries within it a command and makes possible a human kenosis. It is all the more compelling as a command precisely insofar as it emerges out of God’s own kenosis. For Rosenzweig and Levinas alike, then, divine transcendence need not be insulated or protected through abstract arguments about God’s »perfection«; rather, His transcendence must be understood in terms of being’s Otherwise. This, in turn, provides the foundation of my freedom — and, more crucial, my infinite accountability for the other. Each thinker’s understanding of God entails, even if Rosenzweig never uses the term directly, a Divine kenosis. Rosenzweig does describe God in kenotic terms, as when he writes in Star that »Nothing would be more natural for the ›God of our Fathers‹ than that he should ›sell‹ himself for Israel and share its suffering fate. But by doing so, God himself puts himself in need of redemption« (410). God’s kenotic creation, far from representing a cheap grace that robs me of my responsibility, is in actuality the very ground of my accountabi­ lity. Without a kenotic creation, God is merely the timeless, impassible, 14

Is It Righteous To Be?: Interviews With Emmanuel Levinas, 257.

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immutable and omnicontrolling Author. He alone is responsible for evil, in which case evil is annulled, swallowed up in a monergistic, and therefore totalizing, Goodness. Devotees of this God, the God of the Biblical-classical synthesis, are very like the friends of Job, as Lorenzo Albacete maintains in God at the Ritz: For Job’s so-called friends, Job’s suffering was an occasion to construct their theology rather than an opportunity to express their love. They would not walk with him, co-suffer with him, pray with him for grace. Instead, they fit Job’s suffering into a theological system that explained everything away. True friends would have acknowledged the horror he was going through, stood by him in his pain and refrained from offering an answer to or a reason for his suffering. Since suffering is experienced as a destruction that renders life meaningless, simplistic explanations trivialize the suffering. (103–04)

Rosenzweig and Levinas, like Job and the Prophets, resist totality and its relentless impulse to construct systems, to render the individual flesh-and-blood being into a mere cog. Each would concur, accordingly, with Albacete’s exhortation that »Even if the one who suffers can no longer articulate or express the experience of suffering, we must put that unutterable question into words for those who suffer. We must establish that solidarity, risk our own faith and identity, make a human connection with the sufferer, and cry out to God together« (101).

References Lorenzo Albacete, God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity, Crossroad Publishing Company, New York 2002. Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, trans. Ann Smock, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1995. Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict. InterVaristy Press, Downers Grove, IL 1997. Ruth Coates, Christianity in Bakhtin: God and the Exiled Author, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998. Richard A. Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation After Levinas, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Farar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1990. Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, trans. Richard and Clara Winston. Vintage Books, 1986.

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Joseph Franks, Dostoevsky: The Writer in His Time, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010. David Ray Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy, Westminster John Knox, Philadelphia 2004. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism, Aurora Press, Sante Fe 1998. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, trans. Stuart Woolf. Touchstone, New York 1993. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne Univer­ sity Press, Pittsburgh 1969. —. »The Temptation of Temptation«, in: Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1994. —. »Loving the Torah More Than God« Afterword, in: Yosl Rakover Talks to God, Zvi Kollitz (Ed.), trans Carol Brown Janeway, Pantheon Books, New York 1999 (79–87). —. Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, Jill Robbins (Ed.), Stanford University Press, Stanford 2001. —. »Judaism and Kenosis«, in: In the Time of the Nations, trans. Michael B. Smith, Continuum, London 2007. Irwin Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross, Moody Press, Chicago 1995. Nancy Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics, Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1996. Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois 1994. John Polkinghorne (Ed.), The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis. Eerdman’s, Grand Rapids, MI 2001. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. William W. Hallo, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1985. —. Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God, trans. Nahum Glazer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1999. John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove 1998. Nosson Scherman (Ed.), The Chumash: The Stone Edition, Mesorah Publications, Brooklyn 2001. Samuel J. Youngs, The Way of the Kenotic Christ: The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, Cascade Books, Eugene, OR 2019.

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Immanence, Transcendence, and Excendence in Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption and Levinas’ Totality and Infinity

Abstract Franz Rosenzweig’s 1921 The Star of Redemption issues a devastating critique of philosophical idealism and its obsession with totality: »from Ionia to Jena,« philosophy has been beholden to idealism, and its quest to unify totality under the rubric of the concept. For Rosenzweig, this thinking reached its apex with Hegel’s absolute, and it culminated in the suffering he witnessed in the trenches of the Great War. Hence, The Star begins by shattering the notion of totality, returning philosophy to the lived experience of the individual, and the abondance of relationships and connections that he or she forms. Against the reductivism of idealism which seeks unity against plurality, and which prioritizes the concept over the diversity of subjective experience, Rosenzweig describes his system as an »absolute empiricism,« that is, a philosophy of immanent experience which does not exclude the possibility of transcendence. Emmanuel Levinas later described this approach as »an empiricism that contains nothing positivist.« The Star is thus poised between a philosophy of immanence, and the possibility of transcendence that overcomes the separated self, immanent world, and hidden God. In the preface to his 1961 masterwork Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes that Rosenzweig’s critique of totality is »too often present in this book to be cited.« Echoing Rosenzweig, Levinas opposes the philosophi­ cal drive for unity »from Parmenides to Spinoza and Hegel,« which seeks to »absorb the being of the metaphysician« in the abstraction of totality. As separated being, the individual finds interiority and freedom, but transcendence emerges from the encounter with an Other who cannot be absorbed or subsumed by totality as an idealized »I.« In the face-to-face meeting with the Other, the immanence of being is transcended in

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what Levinas calls »excendence,« beyond being. This gesture crystalizes Levinas’ adaptation of Rosenzweig’s absolute empiricism. This article explores the relation between immanence and trans­ cendence in Rosenzweig’s The Star, and its adaptation in the titular opposition of Levinas’ Totality and Infinity. I will expand on Levinas’ allusion to Rosenzweig and explain how his critique of philosophical idealism and his notion of transcendence are continued and radicalized in Levinas’ work. I suggest that Levinas’ »excendence,« the ethical act that takes the subject beyond the immanence of being, is an adaptation of what Rosenzweig calls the »absolute empiricism« of The Star.

I. Introduction It is fitting that the centenary of Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, published in 1921, coincides with the sixtieth anniversary of Emmanuel Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, which appeared in 1961. Forty years is a highly evocative interval in the Jewish tradition, which demarcates the passage of an epoch or a generation: the Jews wandered the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land; Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah; in the Talmud, forty is the age of reason when a person reaches his or her full maturity.1 By the same token, we might suggest that certain ideas in Rosenzweig’s text only reached their maturity when Totality and Infinity was born a full generation later. In a 1984 interview with Salomon Malka, Levinas framed Rosenzweig’s text precisely in these generational terms: The Star outlines »a modern Judaism which has gone through assimilation,« but it is a reflection which is nonetheless »before puberty,« because it did not live through »Hitlerism and the Holocaust.«2 Due to his tragic death from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1929, »Rosenzweig missed the ultimate ordeal«: he did not live to see the rise of fascism in Europe, nor the foundation of the state of Israel. In that sense, Levinas posits, Rosenzweig’s reflection on modern Judaism could not advance beyond adolescence, its development arrested before the earthshattering events that befell Jews in the mid-twentieth century. Composed in the aftermath, Totality and Infinity bears these generational scars. Num. 32:13; Ex. 16:35; Gn. 25:10; Pirkeh Avot 5:21. Emmanuel Levinas, »Interview with Salomon Malka« in: Jill Robbins (Ed.), Is it Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2001, 94–95. 1

2

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The historical and philosophical chasm that separates these thinkers complicates any straightforward claim that Levinas adopts or inherits Rosenzweig’s ideas. Rosenzweig lived in an era dominated by Neo-Kan­ tianism and historicism, and he wrote as a critic of Hegel and admirer of Hermann Cohen’s late religious work; Levinas, by contrast, was trained by Husserl and Heidegger as a phenomenologist, and he was highly influenced by Bergson’s vitalism. Their respective texts emerge from fundamentally different philosophical methodologies, they are written in different tongues from opposing sides of the Rhine, their writing styles are vastly different, and most significantly, they are separated by the terrible events of the war. Overindulging the analogy between Rosenzweig and Levinas can, as Peter Gordon writes, »[nourish] the idea that there is a more or less intact tradition of ›Jewish‹ philosophy in Europe, which endured despite differences of European nationality and across variations of time, culture, and language.«3 Guarding against the temptation to retroactively project unity across unbridgeable historical divides, and refusing the reification of a unified bloc of »Jewish« philo­ sophy, Levinas was nonetheless profoundly informed by Rosenzweig’s thinking of religion and philosophy. In the preface to Totality and Infinity, Levinas famously describes Rosenzweig as »too often present in this book to be cited.«4 This influence remains subterranean and his name never reappears in the text, but the reference is significant. The relationship between Levinas and Rosenzweig isn’t one of equivalence, inheritance, translation, or correlation. Rather, as Robert Gibbs explains, »Levinas creates a drash—makes an adaptation—of Rosenzweig.«5 That is, Levinas’ adaption is neither a repetition nor an update of Rosenzweig’s thought, rather he interprets many of The Star’s ideas through the apparatus of his own thought. In what follows, I attempt to tease out the significance of Levinas’ allusion to Rosenzweig in Totality and Infinity, and his adaptations of crucial notions from The Star. Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy, University of California Press, Berkeley 2003, 11. A major difficulty reading these two philosophers in tandem is the pernicious tendency for Rosenzweig to be read exclusively through the lens of Levinas’ ethical philosophy, as if Levinas had only updated what Rosen­ zweig had started in The Star. This de-historicizes the different philosophical concerns motivating the two philosophers, and it presents a reductive view of Rosenzweig’s system. 4 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, transl. Alphonso Lingus, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1979, 28. 5 Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1992, 32. 3

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Above all, Rosenzweig’s critique of totality is decisive for Levinas. Both oppose the notion of totality that emerges from Hegelian idealism which culminates in war, and they side with the individual who refuses assimilation or subsumption in the collective. From the separation of the self who has shattered totality, Rosenzweig describes the metaethical self who comes into relation with God and the world, turning outward to engage others in community, without the reductive thinking of idealism. He calls this possibility of transcendence that emerges from immanent experience »absolute empiricism.« For Levinas, it is the encounter with an Other – seeing and being seen by an Other, listening and speaking to an Other – which, in the course of immanent experience, exposes the separated self to transcendence. I argue that Levinas’ notion of the »excendence« of being adapts Rosenzweig’s »absolute empiricism« as a philosophy of immanence that remains open to transcendence.

II. Rosenzweig, Allheit, and »Absolute Empiricism« What Rosenzweig saw in the trenches of the First World War, first as a volunteer to the Red Cross in Belgium and later in an anti-aircraft unit on the Balkan Front, disclosed the totalitarian consequences of Hegelian idealism. In the name of progress or victory, individuals were treated as dispensable, at the unyielding will of the state and the forward march of history. This grim valuation of the individual echoed what Rosenzweig had observed in his doctoral dissertation, Hegel and the State. As Nahum Glatzer explains, »Hegel’s original conception of the military state [is] rooted in a dim, obscure, rigid, superhuman fate which set itself against the individual.«6 Hegel’s political philosophy valorized individual sacrifice in the name of the collective, its logic was crucial to the founding of the Bismarckian Reich, and its consequences were borne out in the Great War. Myriam Bienenstock explains that Rosenzweig »assimilates what Hegel names ›power‹ (Macht) and, more specifically, the ›power‹ of the State with ›violence‹: he makes of the Hegelian state a State-power (Machtstaat) – and he rejects the ›totalitarianism‹ of Hegelian reason.«7 The war thus had a decisive and transformative impact on Rosenzweig’s thinking. Nahum Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, Hackett, Indianapolis 1998, 93. Myriam Bienenstock. »Le pharisien est absent: Ethique et vie spirituelle selon Levinas« in: Archives de Philosophie, Vol. 62, No. 4 Octobre-Décembre 1999, 724.

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The story of the composition of The Star of Redemption is legendary. Rosenzweig wrote its first sketches during the war on postcards which he sent home from the Macedonian front, war hospitals, and the German army’s retreat. When he returned to Kassel, he drafted the manuscript during »a six-month-long exstasis« between August 1918 and February 1919. The Star was published in January 1921 by J. Kauffmann Jüdischer Buchverlag.8 Shortly afterwards, Rosenzweig was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease that led to his death in 1929. Levinas describes The Star as »the work of his life,« which »heralds a new way of thinking.«9 Rosenzweig’s life followed a perfectly tragic arc: he »paid off, at the age of thirty-two a lifetime’s debt that Goethe had not managed to pay off before the age of eighty-two, when he finally finished Faust.«10 The Star thereby marks a transitory moment that emerges out of the husk of philosophical idealism, and which advances towards what he terms the »new thinking« of philosophy and religion. Rosenzweig’s book charts a path that begins »[v]om Tode,« but concludes »ins Leben,« pulling philosophy out of its death spiral and setting it on a path towards life. However, the life of the book coincided with its author’s demise – this is its terrible irony.11 The Great War had disclosed with stunning clarity the sacrifice of the individual in the name of history or national glory. Rosenzweig identified a deep connection between the quest for domination that spurred the war and the totalizing ambitions of systematic philosophy. The opening passages of The Star describe the most visceral experiences of war, and the paltry recompense offered by the philosopher’s dream of the absolute: That man may crawl like a worm into the folds of the naked earth before the whizzing projectiles of blind, pitiless death, or that there he may feel as violently inevitable that which he never feels otherwise […] upon all this misery, philosophy smiles its empty smile and, with its outstretched index finger, shows the creature, whose limbs are trembling in fear for its life in this world, a world beyond, of which it wants to know nothing at all.12

8 Franz Rosenzweig to Eduard Strauß, October 26, 1919, in: Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk: Briefe und Tagebücher II: 1918–1929, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1979, 649. 9 Emmanuel Levinas, »Between Two Worlds« in: Difficult Freedom, trans. Séan Hand, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1990, 183. 10 Ibid, 184. 11 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI 2005, 9 and 447. 12 Ibid, 9.

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Casting aside the individual’s suffering and death as an abstraction, the obsession with totality endemic to philosophical idealism would also drive millions to die in the trenches for their Nation. »Philosophy refutes these earthly fears,« he writes, »that the fear of death knows nothing of such a separation in body and soul, that it yells I, I, I and wants to hear nothing about a deflection of the fear onto a mere ›body‹—matters little to philosophy.«13 Indeed, philosophy minimizes the importance of the individual in the face of transhistorical ideals. »Faced with the anxiety of death which is also an anxiety of the suffering body,« Gérard Bensussan explains, »philosophy counters with its empty and blissful smile.«14 Building on this idealist scaffolding, war amounts to an inexhaustible teleological justification to sacrifice the individual for the collective. Nahum Glatzer writes, »›only‹ the individual dies, nothing can ever die in the ›whole,’ says the philosopher.«15 The philosophy of totality subsumes the fate of the individual to the whims of the collective end, and the individual is engulfed by the whole. That all being is thinkable being in an all-inclusive »All« is an error that begins with Parmenides, but it reaches its apex in Hegel’s quest for Absolute Knowledge. The philosophical tradition has attempted, Paolo Ciglia describes, »to reduce the inexhaustible richness of the different dimensions of reality to a single and exclusive metaphysical principle.«16 The Star therefore begins with the shattering of totality, namely the Parmenidean identity of being and the thinking of being, which undergirds the moribund and totalitarian designs of philosophical idealism, and which ultimately leads to war. Benssusan writes, »the breaking of the universal totalization of all particularities [occurs] through the experience of the trenches, through the mass death and its denial authorized by philosophy, or by Hegel.«17 If philosophical idealism transformed lived experience into an abstraction, the war proved that philosophy must pull away from the absolute and return to reality. Stéphane Mosès explains that Rosenzweig »breaks with the central project of Occidental philosophy which is to think Being,« and instead proposes »restarting philosophy from the only possible evidence Ibidem. Gérard Bensussan, »Première guerre mondiale« in: Dictionnaire Franz Rosenzweig, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris 2016, 275. 15 Nahum Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, xxiii. 16 Paolo Ciglia, »Pensée (nouvelle)« in: Dictionnaire Franz Rosenzweig, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris 2016, 264–265. 17 Gérard Bensussan, »Première guerre mondiale« 277. 13

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that cannot be reduced: the personal existence of the person who philosophizes.«18 Levinas highlights that for Rosenzweig »everything is not assimilable,« rather »the bursting of the totality affirmed against Hegel […] puts into question the most spontaneous, most natural movement of philosophy: encompassing, embracing the thinkable.«19 Finitude is the starting point for the individual philosopher because the fear of death shatters the dream of the absolute. Mosès writes, »death destroys the philosophical illusion that everything can be thought.«20 Philosophical idealism has embraced the reduction of the Multiple to the One, so that the totality of being can be grasped by the thinkable Concept. »The All,« Rosenzweig explains, »can neither be known honestly nor experienced clearly,« even as idealism fosters the pernicious illusion that totality can be mastered by the concept.21 Reorienting philosophy to the perspective of the suffering individual, »the All of thinking and being [is] unexpectedly shattered before our eyes.«22 From the shattered All, the metalogical world, the metaethical self, and the metaphysical God recede into isolation, separated as irrational objects. Mosès explains, »because the world retreats into immanence, the Absolute retreats into transcendence.«23 The first movement of The Star thus entails shattering the »All« of totality, leaving self, world, and God in isolation. The quest for unity has motivated philosophy since Parmenides, and shattering totality does not extinguish the allure of the universal any more than it brings an end to philosophy. Rosenzweig refutes the idealism which wills unity at all costs but, Levinas notes, »’the individual quand même,’ cannot escape purely and simply from philosophy.«24 There is no final overcoming of philosophy and its legacy of war, surely not in the subjectivist revolt against the system. For Rosenzweig, Levinas explains, »the anarchy of the individual protestations of subjective thinkers, as he calls them, such as Kierkegaard or Nietzsche, threatens us with every kind of Schwärmerei and every kind of cruelty in the world.« The futility of the individualist revolt against totality presents its own illusion of separation and isolation. For the Jewish people, as a particular, separation from the 18 Stéphane Mosès, »La Critique de la totalité dans la philosophie de Franz Rosenzweig« in: Les Études philosophiques, No. 3, 1976, 351–2. 19 Emmanuel Levinas in: Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation, Le Seuil, Paris 1982, 13. 20 Stéphane Mosès, »La Critique de la totalité« 354. 21 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 414. 22 Ibid, 26. 23 Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation, 52. 24 Emmanuel Levinas, »Between Two Worlds« 186.

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universal presents a dangerous illusion of security. »The particularity of a people is identical to its finitude. It is Hegelian logic that presides over this announcement of disappearance« Levinas explains, »The famous independence of the Jews in the face of history is equally presented as a subjective illusion.«25 Jewish particularity is not assimilable to the demands of the universal, but it also cannot exist without a relation to it. After the shattering of the All, the finite self exceeds its isolation when it turns outward towards God and the world, and encounters others in dialogue. The emerging relations between the elements of the shattered All are disclosed as a form of transcendence which exceeds the immanence of being, overwhelms the finitude of the isolated self, and reveals the facticity of God. Mosès writes: The system of The Star can be defined as a philosophy of existence which is articulated over an ontology, or which is overcome by it. But we have seen that ultimately, Being itself, that is, the All of the system, is constantly débordé, overcome, by its own au-delà, its own beyond. Beyond Being, the absolute transcendence of the hidden God designates an infinitely postponed horizon. From this point of view, human existence is, most profoundly, breached by a beyond being.26

The Star charts a path from death towards more articulated and deve­ loped expressions of life. Rosenzweig leads the self from isolation to community, from muteness to dialogue and then chorus, from past to present and present to future. His book leads systematic philosophy beyond being and back towards ordinary life. Glatzer remarks, »The distant vision of truth does not lead into the beyond, but ›into life‹ – which are, not accidentally, the concluding words of the book.«27 Rosenzweig explains in his 1925 essay »The New Thinking« that The Star is »a ›gate‹ from it out into the No-longer-book [Nicht-mehr-Buch],« its ending consists in closing the figurative book of philosophy and »stepping into the midst of the everyday of life.«28 The Star concludes with a leap beyond philosophy, and a renewed engagement with lived experience, but it is not a regression to a pre-philosophical natural attitude, or a reconstructed Humean empiricism. The book constitutes a passage or a transformation for its reader. »Everyone should philosophize once,« Rosenzweig reflects Ibid, 199. Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation, 310–311. 27 Nahum Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, xxvi. 28 Franz Rosenzweig, »The New Thinking« in: Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. Paul Franks and Michel Morgan, Hackett, Indianapolis 2000, 136–137.

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in »The New Thinking,« »but this view is not an end in itself.«29 If philosophy is something to be overcome, Levinas explains, »the end of philosophy is not the return to the age in which it has not begun,« but rather »the beginning of an age in which everything is philosophy, because philosophy is not revealed through philosophers.«30 Philosophy is thereby exposed to the concrete reality of lived experience, which The Star describes as a turn to »absolute facticity,« absolute Tatsächlichkeit.31 Against the reductionism of the idealist tradition, Ciglia explains that Rosenzweig’s aim is »to think the complex web of living relations between the divine, the worldly, and the human which constitute the concrete framework of man’s everyday experience within the world,« and thereby to »philosophically develop the extraordinary potentialities which lie in the depths of the biblical intuition of the world,« beyond the strictures imposed by philosophical idealism.32 In the closing passages of »The New Thinking,« Rosenzweig reflects on what catchword might describe The Star amidst the many of -isms that would pigeonhole the intricate project: [T]he work in which I have tried to expound the new thinking attacks certain catchwords [Schlagworten] with a special antagonism that goes far beyond the general antipathy to all isms, but should I, for that reason, let the book be pinned down to the usual opposites to those isms? Can I let it? The catchword I would soonest tolerate would be that of absolute empiricism; this, at least, would cover the characteristic behavior of the new thinking in all three areas: the preworld of the concept, the world of actuality, the superworld of truth. That behavior […] knows [itself ] to know nothing of the heavenly except what it has experienced […] and of the earthly too [it knows] nothing that it has not experienced.33

Surely Rosenzweig’s comment is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Any asser­ tion of an »-ism« adequate to the tremendous task set forth in The Star is fated to fall short. Nonetheless, his avowal of »absolute empiricism« is significant. The expression is a nod to Schelling’s claim that »empiricism as such does not in any way exclude all knowledge of the supersen­ sible,« contra the idealist division of immanent, sensible experience

29 30 31 32 33

Ibidem. Emmanuel Levinas, »Between Two Worlds« 185. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 253. Translation modified. Paolo Ciglia, " Pensée (nouvelle)« 267. Rosenzweig, »The New Thinking« 138.

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from the domain of transcendence.34 Rosenzweig’s absolute empiricism, as Michael Morgan and Paul Franks explain, suggests »a philosophy that bases knowledge on experience but does not limit the objects of experience to the relative or conditioned objects of the senses, leaving room for the possibility of experience of the absolute, unconditioned, supersensible, or divine.«35 Eric Santner emphasizes the expansion of the horizon of experience in psychoanalytic terms when he describes Rosenzweig’s absolute empiricism as the »openness to this surplus of the real within reality.«36 He notes that Levinas describes the self in a similar manner in his 1962 essay »Transcendence and Height«: »this surplus of being, this existential exaggeration that is called being me—this protrusion of ipseity into being.«37 The notion of the self which extends beyond itself echoes the relations developed in the second movement of The Star on Revelation. Rosenzweig’s »absolute empiricism« is marked by the surplus of being within immanent experience, which exceeds the bounds of the closed-off metaethical self, and calls out for the chorus of the community. Rosenzweig’s absolute empiricism begins from the subjective expe­ rience of the individual. Reiner Wiehl describes this notion of experience as pushing against the stranglehold of the scientific worldview by priori­ tizing multiplicity over unity, contingency over necessity, imagination over logic. Refusing the reductionism which he associates with idealism, absolute empiricism begins with the immanent experience of the philo­ sopher him or herself. Wiehl explains: »I myself, I the world-viewer, am the limiting ether for the content of the world which I view. Limited and turned toward the interior, toward the content, toward the world, the philosopher is the form of his philosophy.«38 Absolute empiricism thus treats an individual’s experience as generative of his or her philosophical outlook. Levinas thus describes Rosenzweig’s project as »an empiricism 34 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Sämmtlich Werke, ed. K.F.A Schelling (Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart and Augsburg 1856–61), II, 3:113–114. 35 Michael Morgan and Paul Franks, in: Philosophical and Theological Writings, 138n48. 36 Eric Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2001, 74. 37 E. Levinas, »Transcendence and Height« in: Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. R. Bernasconi, S. Critchley and A. Peperzak, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1996, 17. 38 Reiner Wiehl, »Experience in Rosenzweig’s New Thinking« in: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr, University Press of New England, Hanover and London 1988, 43.

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that contains nothing positivist.«39 By returning philosophy to the nonreductive experience of the individual philosopher, »we must come to understand the profusion of facts, but equally ideas and values, at the heart of which flows a human existence: nature, facts both aesthetic and moral, others, myself, God…« Rosenzweig’s »New Thinking« refuses to subsume the experience of the individual philosopher under the rubric of the universal, and it embraces abondance and multiplicity against the reductionism of philosophical idealism.

III. Levinas’ Critique of Totality and the »Excendence« of Being Levinas was introduced to Rosenzweig’s philosophy in 1935 by Jacob Gordin, a former student of Hermann Cohen, who worked with him at the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris.40 For Levinas, Rosenzweig’s interpretation of Hegel was decisive. Myriam Bienenstock observes, »of Hegel and on Hegel, Levinas first knew – he tells us this himself – what Rosenzweig said.«41 This was crucial to the critique of totality developed in Totality and Infinity. Levinas told Salomon Malka, »it is the critique of the idea of totality in The Star of Redemption that I purely and simply took up again. It is the rupture with Hegel.«42 In addition to the allusion in Totality and Infinity, Levinas wrote three essays on Rosenzweig’s work: »Between Two Worlds,« presented at the Colloque des Intellectuels Juifs de Langue Française in 1959 and included in his 1963 collection Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism; »Franz Rosenzweig: A Modern Jewish Thinker,« which Levinas presented at the Fondation Marie Gratler in Switzerland to commemorate the thirty-fourth anniversary of Rosenzweig’s death, and which was included in the 1982 Cahier de la nuit surveillé and his 1987 collection Outside the Subject; finally, Levinas wrote the introduction to Stéphane Mosès’ 1982 guide to The Star, System and Levinas, »Between Two Worlds« in: Difficult Freedom, 188. See: Emmanuel Levinas, »Interview with François Poirié« in: Jill Robbins (Ed.) Is it Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, 70–71; Joelle Hansel, »Levinas« in: Dictionnaire Franz Rosenzweig, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris 2016, 215. 41 Myriam Bienenstock, »Le pharisien est absent: Ethique et vie spirituelle selon Levinas« in: Archives de Philosophie, Vol. 62, No. 4 1999, 724. 42 Emmanuel Levinas, »Interview with Salomon Malka« in: Jill Robbins (Ed.) Is it Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, 94. 39

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Revelation.43 These texts articulate how Levinas adapts certain concepts from Rosenzweig in his own language. »[The Star] is not my Bible,« Levinas later clarified, »but I took over the critique of totality, precisely Hegel’s totality.«44 The opening pages of Totality and Infinity thematically mirror those of The Star. Levinas’ opposition to the philosophical drive for unity »from Parmenides to Spinoza and Hegel«45 hearkens the opening pages of The Star, where Rosenzweig »throws the gauntlet to the whole venerable brotherhood of philosophers from Ionia to Jena,« and the identity of being and thought which was first posited in Parmenides’ poem and culminates in Hegel’s system.46 For Levinas, »metaphysics would endeavor to suppress separation, to unite,« and the trajectory of philosophical idealism inexorably leads to Hegel’s systematic philosophy, which »absorb[s] the being of the metaphysician.« Against the synthesis of the self and world as absolute spirit, Levinas insists on the idea of infinity which exceeds any unity that would overcome the separation of self and other in an all-encompassing system of knowledge. He writes, »the idea of Infinity is transcendence itself, the overflowing of an adequate idea. If totality can be constituted it is because Infinity does not permit itself to be integrated. It is not the insufficiency of the I that prevents totalization, but the Infinity of the Other.«47 Predicated on the separation of self and other, the infinite Other exceeds every systemic unity, piercing the limits of totality. Levinas casts the history of metaphysics as a quest to overcome separation in unity: The de facto separation with which metaphysics begins would result from an illusion or a fault. As a stage the separated being traverses on the way of its return to its metaphysical source, a moment of a history that will be concluded by union, metaphysics would be an Odyssey, and its disquietude nostalgia. But the philosophy of unity has never been able to say whence

43 See: Marc Crépon, »La Reception de Rosenzweig en France« in : Les Etudes Philoso­ phiques, 2009/2 no. 89, 147–150. The publication of the French translation of The Star by Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel in 1981, along with Mosès’ Système et Révélation and the issue of Le Cahier de la nuit surveillé dedicated to Rosenzweig which spurred the »moment Rosenzweig« in French philosophy. 44 Emmanuel Levinas, »Intention, Event, and the Other« in: Is it Righteous to Be, 147. 45 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 102. 46 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 18. 47 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 80.

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came this accidental illusion and fall, inconceivable in the Infinite, the Absolute, and the Perfect.48

Levinas equates the metaphysical drive for unity with Odysseus’ nostos: the pyrrhic quest to discover unified knowledge is akin to the adventure to return home, a return to the domain of the known, the finite, and ipseity. By contrast, Abraham - his preferred figure of ethical subjectivity - separates himself from his homeland, he goes forth into unknown lands in response to an infinite call. Separation, then, recognizes that the self and other are unassimilable, and proceeds from the immanence of the self which confronts the alterity of the other. In that regard, separated being is a response to the Hegelian drive for unity, precisely by turning towards the alterity of the other. Levinas describes a double-sided relation to totality. The excendence of totality does not definitively overcome the systematicity of philoso­ phy—one cannot simply step beyond totality once and for all. »This ›beyond‹ the totality and objective experience,« he writes in the preface to Totality and Infinity, »is reflected within the totality and history, within experience.«49 The idea of infinity can only emerge by working through the system of totality. Just as Levinas rejects the idealism which sacrifices the individual for the sake of unity, he also rebukes the subjectivist critique of totality which he associates with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. The eschatological relation to what lies beyond being is not a rejection of totality in the name of a subjectivist transvaluation of values, nor is it a belief in values that lie beyond being. Separated being cannot simply escape totality: [A] proclamation of morality based on the pure subjectivism of the I is refu­ ted by war, the totality it reveals, and the objective necessities. We oppose to the objectivism of war a subjectivity born from the eschatological vision. The idea of infinity delivers the subjectivity from the judgment of history to declare it ready for judgment at every moment and, we shall show, called to participate in this judgment, impossible without it. The harsh law of war breaks up not against an impotent subjectivism cut off from being, but against the infinite, more objective than objectivity.50

One can neither escape the thinking of totality through ontology nor by turning inward to subjective experience. Isolated subjectivity is defense­ less against the »objectivism of war.« Rather, Levinas’ phenomenology 48 49 50

Ibid, 102. Ibid, 23. Ibid, 25–26.

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works through the imminent content of totality, where he discovers how the immanent content of experience encounters something beyond being, in »excendence.« This double-sided thinking of totality is therefore »a defense of subjectivity,« but one which is »not at the level of its purely egoist protestation against totality, nor in its anguish before death, but as founded in the idea of infinity.« Levinas refuses the warlike thinking of totality just as he rejects the subjectivist revolt against totality: it is in and through being that one discovers that which exceeds being. Levinas’ notion of transcendence emerges from the encounter with an Other who cannot be absorbed or subsumed by totality as an idealized »I.« This encounter exceeds totality in a presence that cannot be assimilated into the domain of the self. Levinas writes, »the way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me, we here name face.«51 This excendence of totality is only possible through the separation of self and other, which discloses the idea of infinity. »Thesis and antithesis,« Levinas writes, »in repelling one another, call for one another.«52 There is no final reconciliation of self and other which accedes to absolute identity or sameness: separation undercuts any systematic totality that purports to subsume alterity. Separation is crucial for the freedom of the self apart from the world, and it is only through separated being that the face-to-face encounter with the Other is possible. Levinas writes, »an absolute transcendence has to be produced as non-integrateable.« Separation cordons off an interiority for the individual to exist outside of the grips of history. »Infinity is produced by withstanding the invasion of a totality,« he explains, »in a contraction that leaves a place for the separated being.«53 The idea of infinity can only emerge from the separation of self and other. In his 1947 Existence and Existents, Levinas argues that »all of modern philosophy from Descartes to Heidegger« has attempted to remove the particularities of the individual from his or her present situation, »to avoid the reification of spirit,« and describe existence in terms that seem neutral or even »objective,« at a critical remove from the object of his or her study.54 In so doing, philosophy has also foreclosed the possibility of transcendence as a phenomenon that would be pertinent Ibid, 50. Ibid, 53. 53 Ibid, 104. 54 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingus, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1978, 97. 51

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or related to its end. Gibbs explains, »the yearning for transcendence, radical transcendence, for a relationship to an other that does not admit of assimilation,« has been held at odds with the tradition which »reigns complacently« in modern philosophy.55 Philosophy has long attempted to understand existence through a particular existant, as if the existant were separate from and able to reflect upon existence as a unified totality. Descartes inaugurates this tradition by separating the cogito from the world, subject from object, but Levinas argues that this division remains in effect through Heidegger’s »ontological difference« between Being and beings, Sein and Seiendes. They are not independent terms. »A being’ has already made a contract with Being; it cannot be isolated from it,« Levinas explains, »It is. It already exercises over Being the domination a subject exercises over its attributes.«56 If ethics is irreducible to the finite existence predicated by Being, it must be derived from an order that is radically different, which for Levinas is encountered in the infinite alterity of the Other. In the Republic, Plato characterizes the Good as epekeina tès ousias, beyond being.57 Levinas similarly insists ethics must be derived from a notion of infinity which exceeds immanence and lies beyond being: The movement which leads an existent toward the Good is not a transcen­ dence by which that existent raises itself up to a higher existence, but a departure from Being and from the categories which describes it: an ex-cendence. But excendence and the Good necessarily have a foothold in being, and that is why Being is better than non-being.58

Disclosed by the phenomenon of the face of the Other, Levinas proposes that transcendence emerges as a phenomenon which overwhelms the finitude of lived experience. Levinas explicitly attributes this to Plato’s notion of the Good, but the entire operation by which infinity ruptures the immanence of Being has its inspiration firmly in the notion of transcendence which Rosenzweig called »absolute empiricism.« In his monumental 1964 essay »Violence and Metaphysics,« Jacques Derrida highlights the »excendence« in Levinas’ ethical philosophy as indicative of a certain empiricism. For Levinas, the excendence of being is disclosed in the transcendence of the face of the Other, which is the originary encounter with alterity that precedes ontology. The Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, 23. Ibid, 17. 57 Plato, The Republic in: (Ed.) John M. Cooper, Plato Complete Works, Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge 1997, Book VI 509b9. 58 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, 16. 55

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encounter with the face is more immediate than immediacy, disclosing a phenomenon which cannot be spoken in the language of logos. Derrida argues the absolute exteriority and transcendence of the Other in Levinas’ philosophy takes recourse in the very notion of being from which it seeks separation—the Other becomes an unknown external object, only per­ ceptible through sensible intuition: By radicalizing the theme of the infinite exteriority of the other, Levinas thereby assumes the aim which has more or less secretly animated all the philosophical gestures which have been called empiricisms in the history of philosophy. He does so with an audacity, a profundity, and a resoluteness never before attained. By taking this project to its end, he totally renews empiricism, and inverses it by revealing it to itself as metaphysics.59

This reading of excendence echoes Rosenzweig’s description of absolute empiricism. Mosès observes, »Derrida reveals in Levinas a form of empiricism to which, in effect, Rosenzweig had laid claim.«60 Indeed, this seems to be the connection that Derrida is suggesting. Citing Levinas’ gloss of Rosenzweig in »Between Two Worlds« – an »empiricism which is in no way a positivism« – and the allusion in the preface to Totality and Infinity, Derrida acknowledges »Rosenzweig’s influence on Levinas seems to have been profound.«61 Despite the perceived virulence of »Violence and Difference,« his interpretation also suggests the adaptation of Rosenzweig’s absolute empiricism in Levinas’ excendence.

IV. Transcendence and Immanence in the Myth of Gyges’ Ring Rosenzweig and Levinas identify a useful heuristic for transcendence emerging from immanent experience in the myth of Gyges’ ring. In Book II of The Republic, Glaucon tells Socrates the story of Gyges of Lydia, who discovers a magic gold ring that allows him to become invisible when he turns its bezel on his finger.62 Using the ring’s power of invisibility, Jacques Derrida, »Violence and Metaphysics« Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Routledge, New York 2001, 190. 60 Stéphane Mosès, »At the Heart of a Chiasm« 256. 61 Jacques Derrida, »Violence and Metaphysics« 190 and 190n89. Dana Hollander also observes this connection in Derrida’s text. See: Exemplarity And Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2008, 219. 62 Plato, The Republic, Book II, 359c-360d. 59

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Gyges is able to seduce the queen and usurp the king. Glaucon proposes that if a just and an unjust person were given such rings, neither would hesitate to commit injustices, knowing there is no risk of recrimination or punishment. This is »a great proof that one is never just willingly but only when compelled to be. No one believes justice to be a good when it is kept private, since, wherever either person thinks he can do injustice with impunity, he does it.«63 Glaucon insists that only a fool would be const­ rained by justice in such circumstances. This thought experiment suggests that justice is necessarily a constraint on the individual’s interests, and that it is only through public retribution that individuals will act justly. Ultimately in Book X, Socrates convinces Glaucon that a person who cannot resist the temptation to act indiscriminately when wearing Gyges’ ring is in fact enslaved by his or her appetites, whereas a person who can wear the ring and act with restraint will have attained mastery over his or her desires, and would therefore be happier. Gyges’ ring illustrates the fantasy of impunity, and the temptation to act unethically. As such, it is a indication of ethical responsibility beyond the threat of retribution or punishment. The myth of Gyges’ ring represents an extreme case of the ancient hero, who is separated from others and the world. Rosenzweig describes the hero of ancient tragedy as the »pagan man,« who is »closed up in himself.«64 Robert Gibbs explains this metaethical Self »is a human who is hidden. He or she is enclosed in pure finitude.«65 The hero of ancient tragedy, the emblem of the closed-off metaethical self, »can no longer speak nor even scream to the world because as self it now lives its life in the most bitter inward seclusion.« Rosenzweig calls this irrefutable, singular core of the human being the Self, in the sense of Mephistopheles’s words, »You will always remain what you are.«66 The Self is the kernel that wills to be itself: it is ipseity, or Selbstheit. The inevitability of death discloses this primary fact of the finitude of human existence. He explains, »man is ephemeral, being ephemeral is his essence.«67 This finitude is the essence of the ancient hero, whose entire existence is consumed with accomplishing his quest. The hero of ancient tragedy is present in the world, but mute to others. Leora Batnitzky explains, »by keeping silent, 63 64 65 66 67

Ibid, Book II, 360c. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 222. Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, 54. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 76–77. Ibid, 72.

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the tragic hero becomes an image for his audience, thereby allowing each member of the audience to recognize her own finitude in that image.«68 The hero’s suffering is emblematic of the finitude which every individual must confront. Even if the ancient hero »stood there like a block,« he is present in the world. Rosenzweig compares the mute hero to Gyges, who exists in the world even as he is invisible to it. He remarks that Gyges’ ring is »so disquieting and so deadly« because it »sever[s] all connections with the world.«69 The invisible and unknowable self separates itself off from the world in such a manner that it cannot meaningfully engage the world. Rosenzweig writes, »the Self wears Gyges’ ring […] when the Self alone is considered as the blessed addressee of Revelation,« when the self is treated solely »as an object of divine love,« it is »cut off from the whole world and closed in himself.« Gibbs explains this mute and secluded self is« the pure construction of the human who is unknown and unknowable«; when this self turns outward, he or she is »opened first to God and then to the world, that self will emerge beyond its heroic silence as a speaking and loving soul.«70 The »arrogant man« who wears Gyges’ ring »emerge[s] from its muteness to become speaking self« by opening to God and the Other through language.71 For Rosenzweig, the hero of modern tragedy is audible and visible to others, he or she is »no longer a frozen marble statue like the tragic hero of antiquity,« but a dialogical human being who is »situated at the heart of the universe of speech and communicates with the world.«72 Symbolically removing Gyges’ ring, the individual turns outwards towards God and the world, and through language the individual engages others in dialogue and eventually community. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas references Gyges’ ring as the exemplary symbol of separation. Someone who acts as a spectator rather than a participant in the world is akin »to see[ing] without being seen, like Gyges.«73 Separation offers the space for an interiority which is walled off from the world. Indeed, Levinas explains, »the myth of Gyges is the very myth of the I and interiority«:

68 Leora Batnitzky, Idolatry And Representation: The Philosophy Of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2000, 87. 69 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 223. 70 Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, 54. 71 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 224. 72 Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation, Paris, Seuil 1982, 132. 73 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 61.

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Gyges’s ring symbolizes separation. Gyges plays a double game, a presence to the others and an absence, speaking to »others« and evading speech; Gyges is the very condition of man, the possibility of injustice and radical egoism, the possibility of accepting the rules of the game, but cheating.74

Gyges’ ring represents the tendency to act as a spectator to the world, invisible to others, who cannot be forced to act ethically. Nothing can prevent someone wearing Gyges’ ring from acting with impunity. This is the risk in every encounter with the Other. For Levinas, following Rosenzweig, it is speech that overcomes the separation of the self symbolized by Gyges’ ring. »The relationship with the Other is not produced outside of the world, but puts in question the world possessed,« Levinas writes, »the relationship with the Other, transcendence, consists in speaking the world to the Other.« Language breaks the separation of the closed-off subject, and before any particular words are spoken, the transcendence of the face demands a response. »To see the face is to speak of the world,« Levinas writes, »transcendence is not an optics, but the first ethical gesture.«75 In his 1974 Otherwise than Being, Levinas develops Gyges’ ring as the symbol for separation, in contrast with Abraham’s response to the angel’s call on Mount Moriah, hineni, »here I am.« The response to the Other’s ethical call stems from »a responsibility for the neighbor, inspired by the other,« which demonstrates the self is »torn up from my beginning in myself.«76 This identity torn between self and other is »pre-original, anarchic, older than every beginning,« it is »the extreme exposure to the assignation by the other,« which »breaks the secret of Gyges, the subject that sees without being seen, without exposing himself, the secret of the inward subject.«77 By contrast, Abraham is seen and responds to the ethical call: In the sign given to the other, by which I find myself torn up from the secrecy of Gyges, »taken by the hair« from the bottom of my obscurity in the saying without the said of sincerity, in my »here I am,« from the first present in the accusative, I bear witness to the Infinite. The Infinite is not in front of its witness, but as it were outside, or on the »other side« of presence, already past, out of reach, a thought behind thoughts which is Ibid, 173. Ibid, 174. 76 Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, Or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh 1998, 144. 77 Ibid, 145. 74

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too lofty to push itself up front. »Here I am, in the name of God,« without referring myself directly to his presence. »Here I am,« just that!78

Unlike Gyges’ silence and invisibility, Abraham’s response is the hallmark of ethical subjectivity. Edith Wychogrod explains, »to say me voici in this context is not to designate spatial coordinates but rather to place oneself at the disposal of another. To maintain a relation with the near one (the neighbour) is to accept a limitless responsibility, to exist as an extreme passivity before the other who lives as her or his freedom.«79 In language, the Self exposes his or her vulnerability to the Other. John Llewelyn describes such vulnerability as »an unsituated and naked self face to face with another such self,« as a profound exposure of the self to another, which constitutes »a saying over and above the saying of something said, in the saying of my saying itself.«80 What Levinas calls le Dire, the Saying, already announces an ethical demand from the Other before any specific words are uttered, which he calls le Dit, the Said. Here, Llewelyn explains, »the signifie is the significant, the signifying that exposes the sayer, me, as expressed in the Hebrew hineni and the French me voici, envoie-moi, ›See me here, send me.‹« The Saying which is prior to any specific message already contains an ethical demand. »The Saying as testimony precedes all saying,« Levinas writes in »Truth of Disclosure and Truth of Testimony.« Already in the Saying, »I expose myself to the summons of this responsibility as though placed under a blazing sun that eradicates every residue of mystery, every ulterior motive, every loosening of the thread that would allow evasion,« the Saying »break[s] open the secret of Gyges, the invisible-seeing-subject (sujet-voyant-invisible).«81 Gyges’ ring is a symbol of the refusal to be seen or speak, a self who observes rather than participates in the world. Such a person would abdicate the ethical responsibility that comes with being seen and being heard. As Levinas writes in »God and Philosophy« that breaking »the bad silence which harbors Gyges’s secrecy« demands an »extra-verting of [the] subject’s inwardness; the subject becomes visible before becoming Ibid, 149. Edith Wychogrod, »Language and alterity in the thought of Levinas« in: The Cam­ bridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, 200–201. 80 John Llewelyn, »Levinas and language« in: The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, 133–134. 81 Emmanuel Levinas, »Truth of Disclosure and Truth of Testimony« in: Basic Philosophi­ cal Writings, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, And Robert Bernasconi (Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1996), 103–104. 78

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a seer!«82 The extroversion of the individual thereby opens the possibility of transcendence. Gyges’ ring offers Rosenzweig and Levinas a powerful heuristic to describe the turning outward of the self from separation. For Rosenzweig, Gyges’ ring is the symbol of the closed-off introversion of the metaethical self, who silently confronts the finitude of human existence. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas articulates Gyges’ ring as the symbol of interiority afforded by separated being; interiority makes possible freedom, but it is also the avoidance or evasion of ethical responsibility to the Other. Levinas adapts Rosenzweig’s description by juxtaposing »the secret of Gyges’ ring« with Abraham. Whereas Gyges’ ring allows its invisible wearer to be a spectator on the world, to avoid being seen or heard, Abraham heeds the angel’s call on Mount Moriah hineni, and in the Saying he assumes his infinite ethical responsibility.

V. Conclusion In a 1988 interview with Jacques Message and Joel Roman, Levinas reflected, »Rosenzweig’s philosophical audacity consists precisely in referring the past to the creation and not the creation to the past, the present to revelation and not revelation to the present, the future to redemption and not redemption to the future.«83 Rosenzweig connects the subjective experience of the temporal exstases to the messianic horizon revealed by transcendence, which pierces the separation of the isolated self, immanent world, and withdrawn God. Transcendence breaks through the immanence of being when these elements come into contact, which Rosenzweig described as the »absolute empiricism« of The Star. From the messianic horizon of Creation, Revelation, and Redemption which overlay the temporal moments of past present and future, The Star develops the relationship between immanent temporal experience and the transcendent messianic horizon of time. Rosenzweig’s absolute empiricism begins from the immanence of human existence, but the abondance of lived experience and relations that develop between human beings, God, and the world transcends this facticity. Levinas’s critique of totality adapts Rosenzweig‘s by returning philosophy to imma­ Emmanuel Levinas, »God and Philosophy« in: Basic Philosophical Writings, 146. Emmanuel Levinas »The Other, Utopia, and Justice« in: Is it Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, 209–210.

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nence, which reveals a space of separated being where an individual is cut off from the world as ipseity. The encounter with the Other discloses an excendence of immanent experience, a transcendence beyond being. This gesture crystalizes Levinas’ adaptation of Rosenzweig’s absolute empiri­ cism.

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Ido Ben Harush

On Miracles and Experience: Franz Rosenzweig and Isaac Breuer1

Abstract This article compares Franz Rosenzweig’s theory of miracle in the Star of Redemption with that developed by Isaac Breuer, an orthodox rabbi from Frankfurt, in his 1916 essay »Der Begriff des Wunders im Judentum« and critically evaluates the degree to which Rosenzweig’s theory of miracle fulfills the purpose he ascribed to it. The article begins by analyzing Rosenzweig’s theory, emphasizing the miracle as both a lived experience and a concept that separates and links philosophy and theology. It then examines Breuer’s theory of miracle, focusing on his insistence on the supernatural quality of the miracle, which he understands as a unique preception beyond causality, and his critical assessments of alternative theories and arguments, including Rosenzweig's. In light of Breuer's critique, I argue that Rosenzweig falls short in presenting the miracle as a distinct lived experience different from other forms of philosophical understanding. I suggest that a Breuerian interpretation of Rosenzweig’s theory of miracles could rectify this shortcoming, positioning the miracle as a unique lived experience. However, this adaptation could compromise Rosenzweig's achievement with his concept of the miracle, specifically its role as a unifying structural feature providing cohesion to the Star as a whole. * In the introduction to the second part of the Star of Redemption, entitled »Über die Möglichkeit das Wunder zu Erleben« (»On the possibility of Experiencing the Miracle«), Franz Rosenzweig develops his innovative 1 I would like to thank Daniel M. Herskowitz for his thoughtful comments and beneficial suggestions on an early draft of this paper.

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theory of the miracle.2 This theory defines the miracle as a »sign« with a dual structure: promise and fulfillment. The miracle’s essential character is not that it is supernatural but that it was foretold and prophesied. The title of this introduction and its location in the book designates the specific purpose, role, and function that Rosenzweig assigns to the miracle. Appearing between the first, philosophical part of the Star, and the second, theological part, Rosenzweig introduces the miracle as the vehicle separating philosophy and theology while, at the same time, linking them together. Besides indicating this formal function of the miracle, the introduction title suggests its specific quality: as an Erlebnis, the miracle belongs to the realm of lived experience that exceeds mere abstract thought. Previous scholarship has attended to Rosenzweig’s theory of miracles from multiple perspectives. It illuminated some of the theory’s key notions, traced its sources in Jewish and Christian tradi­ tions, and contextualized this discussion within broader contemporary philosophical trends.3 This current paper has another premise. My aim is to examine the extent to which Rosenzweig’s concept of the miracle fulfills the function he assigns to it. To do so, I compare Rosenzweig’s theory of miracle with the one developed by his contemporary, Isaac 2 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (Der Mensch und Sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, II), ed. Reinhold Mazer, Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976 (hereafter: GSII); Id. The Star of Redemption, translated by Barbara E. Galli. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005 (hereafter: Star). 3 For some general discussions on Rosenzweig’s concept of miracle, see Paul MendesFlohr, »Rosenzweig’s Concept of Miracle« in Jens Mattern, Gabriel Motzkin and Shimon Sandbank (eds.), Jüdisches Denken in einer Welt ohne Gott, Berlin: Verlag 2000, 53–66; Reiner Wiehl, »Experience in Rosenzweig’s New Thinking« in Paul Mendes-Flohr (ed.), The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, Hanover/London: Brandeis University Press, 1988, 42–68; Yeoyada Amir »The Miracle as an Epistemological Category in Rosenzweig’s Philosophy« [Hebrew], Daat, 31, 1993, 47–64; For a comparison with medieval Jewish and Christian sources, Norbert Max Samuelson, »Halevi and Rosenzweig on Miracles« in David Blumenthal (ed.), Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times Vol.1, Chicago: Scholars Press, 1984, 157–173; Virginia Burrus »Augustine, Rosenzweig and the Possibility of Experiencing Miracle« in Gregory. C. Stallings Manuel Asensi, and Carl Good (eds.) Material Spirit: Religion and Literatur Intrascendent, New York: Fordham University Press, 2013, 94–110; For a phenomenological reading, Stefano Bancalari, »The Experience of Miracle and the Logic of the »And.« Reflections on Rosenzweig and the Phenomenology of Religion« in Archivio di Filosofia 86,1, 2018, 103–111; For an interpretation of Rosen­ zweig’s miracle in light of contemporary critical discourses, Bonnie Honig, »The Miracle of Metaphor: Rethinking the State of Exception with Rosenzweig and Schmitt« Diacritics, 37,2/3, 2007, 78–102; Eric L. Santner, »Miracles Happen: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Freud, and the Matter of the Neighbor« The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, 76–133.

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On Miracles and Experience: Franz Rosenzweig and Isaac Breuer

Breuer, an orthodox rabbi from Frankfurt whose 1916 essay entitled »Der Begriff des Wunders im Judentum« (The Concept of Miracle in Judaism) addresses similar themes and shares the aim of reviving the miracle as a lived experience.4 As I show, Breuer’s insistence on the supernatural quality of the miracle, which he understands as a unique perception beyond causality, illuminates some difficulties in Rosenzweig’s theory. Drawing on these two respective attempts at creating the miracle as a lived experience and assessing Breuer’s critique of some views Rosenzweig holds, I argue that while the concept of the miracle in the Star successfully serves its purpose as a uniting structural feature of the book, Rosenzweig fails to make the miracle an actual lived experience that is radically different than other forms of philosophical understanding. The relationship between Rosenzweig and Breuer has already recei­ ved some scholarly attention. Generally, scholars have pointed to the general similarities between the two thinkers’ theories as well as to the affinities of their accounts of the miracle.5 But although there is no evidence that Rosenzweig was familiar with Breuer’s account when he wrote the Star, some have suggested that Breuer’s discussion directly influenced Rosenzweig’s.6 While Rosenzweig was serving in the First World War, he read Breuer’s book Das Judenproblem and commented on it enthusiastically in several letters.7 In a letter to his mother, Rosenzweig Isaac Breuer, »Der Begriff des Wunders im Judentum« in Frühe religionsphilosophische Schriften: Werkausgabe Band 1, (eds) Mattihias Morgenstern and Meir Hildesheimer. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2017, 185–210. (hereafter Wunder). For an English translation of a version of this essay, see in Jacob Breuer (ed.) Fundamentals of Judaism, New York: Twersky Bros, 1949, 252–263. Unless noted, all translations from the original German are my own. 5 Most prominently, scholars have explored the affinities between Breuer’s and Rosen­ zweig’s views about the Jewish relationship to history. See, for example, Rivka Horwitz, »Exile and Redemption in the Thought of Isaac Breuer« Tradition: A Journal of Ortho­ dox Jewish Thought, 26,2, 1992, 77–98; Josef R. Lawitschka, »Metageschichte: Jüdische Geschichtskonzeptionen im frühen 20. Jahrhundert: Franz Rosenzweig, Isaac Breuer und das Echo« PhD diss., Freie Universitat, 1996; David N. Myers, Resisting History, His­ toricism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, 137–139; Manfred, Voigts, »Kritische Anmerkungen zu Franz Rosenzweig,“ Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 71,2, 2019, 123–154, esp.130 – 133; For a specific comparison of Rosenzweig’s and Breuer’s theories of miracle, see especially Moshe Schwarz, Language, Myth, Art, [Hebrew] Jerusalem: Schocken, 1967, 46–53. 6 This possibility is implied, for instance, by Schwarz, 49N48; and following him in Amir, 54N37. 7 Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher. (Der Mensch und Sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, I), Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig (eds.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979, 4

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not only extols the book’s »splendid temperament« and directs her to a specifically »precious« passage in it, but also observes that many of Breuer’s formulations in the book are similar to his own.8 In 1924, Breuer read the Star of Redemption, and in his letter to Rosenzweig, he compli­ ments the book’s treatment of several issues. Although Breuer criticizes the Star’s insufficient account of Hoshen Mishpat, he stresses that several places in the book »will make every Jewish heart tremble.«9 Rosenzweig’s reply indicates that he continued reading Breuer’s published texts until at least 1923. In addition to agreeing with Breuer’s assessment of the Star’s shortcomings regarding Halacha, Rosenzweig relates to Breuer that shortly before he started writing his book, he read Das Judenproblem »with which I expressed strong agreement in a number of my letters« as well as two of Breuer’s novels.10 Indeed, the mutual appreciation of Rosenzweig and Breuer invites a comparative analysis of their thoughts. Yet beyond historical and bio­ graphical arguments, the reason to juxtapose Rosenzweig’s and Breuer’s theories of the miracle is that they resonate with each other in many respects. For both authors, the miracle is a concept that ties together creation, revelation, and prophecy. Both write from within a post-Kantian framework, focusing on how miracles are experienced rather than on the characters of specific occurrences in nature. According to their shared assumptions, both authors develop a concept of the miracle that is not necessarily related to a supernatural interruption of the law of nature, but that rather signifies a ›religious‹ way of being in the world. What critics drawing out these similarities tend to gloss over, however, are the ways in which Breuer actually criticizes key elements of Rosenzweig’s theory. The essence of Breuer’s critique is that a specific conceptualization of the miracle, which I would argue fits within Rosenzweig’s theory, naturalizes and neutralizes the miracle. While naturalizing the miracle might lend it philosophical validity, the consequence of doing so is that the miracle is no longer an actual lived religious experience. In what follows, I begin by introducing Rosenzweig’s theory of the miracle. My analysis focuses primarily on the definition of the miracle as a »sign« and its relationship to the law of nature. I continue by discus­ (hereafter GS1), 602; Compare a letter to Gritli from September 4. 1918. Franz Rosenzweig, Die »Gritli«-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, (eds.) Inken Rühle und Reinhold Mayer, Tübingen: Bilam Verlag 2002, 144. 8 GSI, 602. 9 For Breuer’s letter see Lawitschka 164, translated in Horwitz 79. 10 GS1 951, translated in Horwitz 80.

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sing Breuer’s theory of the miracle. In addition to presenting Breuer’s arguments, I emphasize Breuer’s critiques of elements in other theories that are relevant to Rosenzweig’s theory. In light of these arguments, I finally turn to evaluate the dual purpose of the miracle in the Star as an organizing feature and as a lived experience. * In his introduction, Rosenzweig’s point of departure is the insight that believing in miracles has become impossible at the beginning of the twentieth century. Once »the beloved child of faith« the miracle is now a shameful element of religious belief and a burden that theology would be happy to eliminate. At first glance, modern thinking, rationality, and logic exclude (or at least seem to exclude) the miracle’s essential features. Science does not allow for any ›supernatural’ interruption of the law of nature, historical thinking demands we consider past generations’ documentations of events in their historical context, and the Kantian critique of experience restricts claims to truth. Taken together, these ways of thinking reduced the authority of tradition and dismissed the simple affirmation of past generations’ testimonies of miracles. For Rosenzweig, the decline in the status of eyewitnesses and their testimonies is the primary cause for the elimination of the miracle experience. His challenge is to recreate a notion of the miracle that would not contradict modern assumptions about the infallibility of reason and the law of nature while also building on a new notion of witnessing. To revive the actual experience of the miracle, Rosenzweig must first salvage it from its irrationality and reformulate it in a way that would fit modern reason. For him, this enterprise includes rediscovering the original meaning of the miracle on the one hand and tracing its historical degradation on the other. The first significant move in this direction is explaining that the miracle has never been related to a violation of the law of nature. According to Rosenzweig, »the lawfulness of natural occurrence, this basic dogma of contemporary humanity, was thoroughly self-evident also to earlier humanity« (Star 105/GSII 104). While ancients and modern people differ in their understandings of the origin of the lawfulness of nature—for the ancients, it derived from higher powers; for the moderns, from the essence of nature—they do not doubt its validity. In addition to rejecting the idea that the ancients misconceived natural occurrences as miracles because of their limited conception of nature, Rosenzweig adds another epistemic consideration:

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»In a wholly miraculous world, wholly without law, an enchanted world, so to speak, it is true […] that the individual miracle could hardly strike one as a miracle« (Star 104/GSII 105).11 Simply put, the precondition for recognizing an ›extraordinary‹ event as an interruption of the law of nature is the perception of a ›norm‹ or ›order‹ that is being interrupted.12 Hence, the fact that the ancients recognized miracles at all indicates that they assumed something about the norm and the continuity of the natural order. Importantly, Rosenzweig’s point is not to defend the ancients’ dignity by emphasizing their rationality or merely exposing an inherent contradiction in the rationalist deniers’ rejection of the miracle. Instead, he argues that if the ancients experienced miracles despite their presumption of the continuity of nature, their idea of the miracle must be grounded elsewhere. While a simple return to the ancient notion of the miracle is impossible, by reviving this alternative ground, Rosenzweig hopes to make the miracle an experience possible for modern people, too. I argue that Rosenzweig tries to solve the condition of the miracle in modernity by offering a theory of meaning. To understand this claim, let us briefly consider Rosenzweig’s account of the historical degradation of the miracle’s status in relation to the loss of meaning. Generally, Rosenzweig describes three »enlightenments« or confrontati­ ons between faith and reason that increasingly marginalized the miracle.13 The first enlightenment occurred in antiquity when philosophy excluded myth as a source of truth. The second enlightenment played out in the seventeenth century with the concerted attack on Aristotle by Luther and the Renaissance. The third enlightenment of the eighteenth century started as a critique of experience (Erfahrung) but has gradually evolved into historical criticism. According to Rosenzweig, whereas the first two 11 For an illuminating discussion on this claim and its possible sources in Rudolf Otto’s analysis, see Bancalari, 105–106. 12 Consider Rosenzweig’s formulation of this claim in his 1920 seminar entitled »Anlei­ tung zum jüdischen Denken«: »Die Regel wird erst möglich durch die Ausnahme. Wir haben kein besseres Wort dafür als das Wort Wunder. Das Wunder als Ausnahme, als Ausnahme um der Regel willen.« »Anleitung zum jüdischen Denken« in Zweistromland Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken. (Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften III), (eds.) Reinhold Mayer and Annemarie Mayer. Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1984. 597–618, 606. 13 For the sake of brevity, I cannot discuss this issue at length. For a broader account, see, for instance, Mendes-Flohr 54–8. For a discussion on Rosenzweig’s notion of »enlightenment« as an inner movement of history, see Francesco Barba Das Denken Rosenzweigs zwischen Theologie und Philosophie: eine Herausforderung für das Christen­ tum. Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2013, 228.

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enlightenments could challenge inessential elements of the miracle or use science to attack particular miracles, they could not dispute the possibility of the miracle as such. The third enlightenment and especially the historical critique that followed it, on the other hand, challenged the validity of the witness and therefore attacked the miracle at its center. All miracles are singular events and, as such, they cannot be proven »like a universal proposition.« They do, however, necessitate personal testimony from witnesses, preferably more than one, and at best in the form of the martyr willing to die in defense of their belief (Star 106/GSII 106).14 The decline in the status of testimony and the resulting theological reorientation to the present and future led to a loss of connection with the past. Without valid testimony, it is impossible to access the lived experience of the ancients. In turn, this inaccessibility of the past creates a sense of disorientation in the present, destabilizing meaning in both. Thus, the real legacy of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment amounts to the dismissal of the miracle and the creation of a break between faith and knowledge that triggered a crisis of meaning. It is the return to meaning that Rosenzweig wishes to revive through a reinterpretation of the miracle as a »sign« (Zeichen).15 Contrary to contemporary theological schemas, Rosenzweig stres­ ses that for past generations, the miracle’s essential character was not that it was a supernatural happening but that it was a »sign.« For us, today, a miracle seems to need the backdrop of natural laws, for it is only against this that it stands out as it were a miracle. But in so doing, we see only that, for human consciousness at that time, the miraculous character of miracle rested on a completely different context: not on its divergence as regards the course of nature predetermined by laws, but on the fact that it was predicted (auf seiner Vorausgesagtheit). Miracle is essentially »sign« (Star 104/GSII 104–105).

Defining the miracle as a sign allows Rosenzweig to return to the stability of meaning. The sign is limited by its very nature: though it carries an immediate meaning of its own, it is always already referential and signals 14 For the significance of witnessing for Rosenzweig’s theory of miracle see, for example, Burrus 101–102. 15 Significantly, Rosenzweig understands revelation specifically as a »reorientation.« According to Alexander Altmann, Rosenzweig learned this idea from Eugen Rosenstock in their 1916 correspondence. Alexander Altmann, »Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosen­ stock- Huessy an Introduction to their Letters on Judaism and Christianity« The Journal of Religion 24,4: 258–270, 268.

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to meanings beyond itself. For instance, the miracle/sign of revelation is a unique and specific experience, but it is also referential and indicative. After experiencing revelation, the individual knows that, even though she was unaware of God before, the world she has been living in has always been a created world and never a Godless cosmos. The event of revelation exposes this reality and as such becomes both the fulfillment of the promise of creation and a promise to be fulfilled in redemption. Considering that the significant element of the miracle is the connection between the sign and its external meaning, it is clear why Rosenzweig thinks the supernatural occurrence is inessential to the miracle. While the extraordinary happening can reinforce the effect of this connection, the previous prediction is what proves it undoubtedly.16 As Rosenzweig stresses, »That a man could lift the veil that commonly extends over the future, this is the miracle and not that it oversteps pre-existing determinations« (Star 104/GSII 105). What makes the miracle miraculous is that the otherwise unknown future has been accurately foretold. In this sense, the occurrence itself can be thought of as a fulfillment of a promise or prophecy. Thus, Rosenzweig writes, »Miracle and prophecy go (gehören) together« (Star 105/Ibid). To explain this argument further, we can follow Leora Batnitzky’s suggestive reading of the transformation of Moses’s rod into a serpent in Exodus 4.17 This biblical scene describes the nomination of Moses as God’s delegate. It begins with Moses doubting that the people will believe him to be God’s messenger, a concern to which God responds by providing Moses with three Ot’ot, or signs, to perform before the skeptics. The first miracle is the transformation of the rod into a serpent: And the Lord said unto him, What is that is in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand (Ex. 4:2–4).

16 According to Mendes-Flohr, Rosenzweig’s claim that the eyewitnesses must attend the sign’s two stages—its prediction and fulfillment—is meant to exclude any doubt about it. As he explains: »Without such a dual witness a miraculous event- and the presumed suspension of the laws of nature – could be ascribed to the activity of a sorcerer or perhaps even to some as yet inexplicable natural cause« 55. 17 Leora F. Batnitzky, Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

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Later in this chapter, Moses indeed performs this miracle in front of the people (30–31). As Batnitzky clarifies, for Rosenzweig, the miracle in this scene is not simply in the act of turning the rod into a snake. Rather, she writes, »the miracle is the fact that God does take the Israelites out of Egypt. That is why a way of turning the rod into a snake is a sign. It signifies beyond its event to a future event, the Exodus from Egypt. But the Exodus from Egypt itself is a sign that signifies God’s ongoing relationship with the Israelites.«18 Moses’s miracle is a sign. It precedes and announces the exodus from Egypt, and the actual exodus of the people is a fulfillment of this prophecy. This fulfillment, however, is itself a sign signifying God’s providence for his chosen people. Indeed, Batnitzky’s argument should be pushed further for God’s providence for his people is itself a sign that signifies God’s providence in humanity and the created world as a whole. We can see, then, how establishing the miracle as a sign allows Rosenzweig to construct a theory of meaning. All signs from the present and the past are connected to each other as in a long chain. Each link contains a specific intrinsic meaning that is at once inseparable from the chain as a whole. Revelation opens up the possibility of another means of reading, interpreting, and organizing signs. The call is to organize signs as moments in the prophecy-fulfillment scheme such that each sign and the chain as a whole signal God’s providence in the world. This method of interpreting signs should be practiced in everyday life. To become a witness to God’s miracle and, therefore, to make the miracle a lived experience, one must be attentive to the continuous fulfillment of the promise of creation, the promise of redemption, and God’s providence. These miracles/signs are thus primarily a category of faith. While these miracles do not change the materiality of the world we live in, they open this world anew as a reality dependent on God’s will. Explicitly and implicitly, Rosenzweig indicates that this method of reading miracles is valuable not only existentially but also contextually— that is, for understanding the relationship between the Star’s different parts and specific discussions in it. In the first part of the book, philoso­ phical cognition explores the three elements, God, World, and Man, as separate entities. This investigation produces what is simultaneously an »always existing« truth and a false representation of the »sick mind« which confuses scientific logic and valid theoretical truth with real existence. The role of the miracle is to bridge the gap between philosophy and theology and to allow the transition from categories of cognition to 18

Ibid 42.

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those of experience. The miracle should enable philosophy to go beyond theoretical knowledge and theology to ground itself in factual truth. Thus, the miracle as a dually structured sign unites the book’s argument by necessitating philosophy as a prophecy that is fulfilled by theology. In this regard, the discussion on the miracle has a specific organizational function insofar as it gives cohesion to the book as a whole. The decisive point for us is that the miracle is not defined by any external criteria but rather by the way in which signs function and are understood.19 Pointing to this issue, scholars have justly wondered whe­ ther, for Rosenzweig, any arbitrary occurrence can be considered a sign and a fulfillment of the prophecy.20 However, drawing on Rosenzweig’s claim that, in a wholly miraculous world, an individual miracle cannot be recognized at all, one could also argue the opposite. If everything is potentially a miracle, in reality, nothing is. At stake is how Rosenzweig’s theory allows for an experience of the miracle in its own right and how he understands the relationship between a prophecy and its fulfillment. If the nature of the miracle is embedded in the ability to »lift the veil that commonly extends over the future« what eventually differentiates the experience of the miracle’s two parts from a scientific experiment in which the results fit the predictions?21 While it is true that Rosenzweig’s theory aims to demonstrate God’s operation in the world, it is essential to clearly distinguish between scientific and prophetic modes of predicting the future. This distinction is crucial if the experience of the miracle is to constitute a mode of being in the world that does more than merely replicate the non-religious living experience preceding this event. One might suggest that in claiming miracles must be proven through the testimony of a credible witness, Rosenzweig provides an external criterion. After all, the most credible witness, the martyr who testifies on the miracle by spilling their blood, is ›external‹ to the individual who trusts the testimony. Importantly, however, asserting that the martyr is a »true witness« of the miracle does not mean confirming a specific event, like a supernatural occurrence, took place. The confirmation is rather, that the martyr’s experience of miracle, i.e., the event in which signs were organized in such a way that they expressed God’s providence, is a true experience and is also meaningful to individuals who were not present in the event itself. 20 In his essay, Wiehl poses this consideration explicitly (Wiehl, 65), yet some other versions of it appear in the scholarship. For instance, Burrus, note that understanding the involvement of causality in any worldly happening means »there are limitless possible leading to a particular fulfillment« (Burrus, 100). 21 Rosenzweig seems to be aware of the practical difficulty involved in discerning the religious perception from the scientific one. However, he insists that this new perspective must be gained in revelation (Star 146/GSII 149). More on this topic below. 19

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* Isaac Breuer addressed some of these issues in his 1916 essay »The Concept of Miracle in Judaism.«22 Appearing a couple of years before the Star, Breuer does not react to Rosenzweig’s claims directly but instead reflects on arguments that were popular in his intellectual milieu and were also present in Rosenzweig’s theory. Both authors share the goal of reviving the religious notion of the miracle after Kant, but their interventions depart significantly from one another. While Rosenzweig insisted that his Star is not a »Jewish book«, but »a system of philosophy« Breuer directs his essay to a Jewish audience, perhaps even an Orthodox one.23 As an Orthodox rabbi, Breuer is more committed than Rosenzweig to preserving the miracle as a supernatural occurrence without rejecting the idea of the unbreakable law of nature.24 Breuer’s views on the miracle are embedded in a broader position he developed during this period in light of his increased interest in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In the fifth chapter of his autobiography Mein Weg (My Path), Breuer recounts his decision to learn Kant’s philo­ sophy »as a Jew« (Als Jude habe ich Kant studiert).25 With this statement, 22 Breuer’s account of the miracle has received some attention in academic and non-aca­ demic circles. For instance, Rabbi Israel Eliezer Wohlgelernter, »Rabbi Isaac Breuer: a man of vision and thought« (Hebrew). Ha-Ma’ayan, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1983), 10–20. Esp. 16–19; Aharon Shear-Yashuv, »The Concept of Miracle According to Isaac Breuer« [Hebrew], in Religion, Philosophy and Judaism. From Christianity to Judaism Theological and Philo­ sophical Articles, Jerusalem: Rubin Mass Ltd., 1987, 284–292; Alan Mittleman, Between Kant and Kabbalah: An Introduction to Isaac Breuer’s Philosophy of Judaism, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012, esp. 85–88; Denis Maier, Isaac Breuer (1883–1946), Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2015, 52–66. 23 Besides the fact that the essay was originally published in the orthodox periodical Jüdischen Monatshefte, Breuer’s theory derives directly from the arguments of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Breuer bases his theory on readings of the Torah verses and intervenes in passing in a long traditional discussion on the miracles of Hannukah and Purim, which he seems to consider common knowledge. For Rosenzweig’s comment, see Franz Rosenzweig, »The New Thinking« translated by Paul W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.: Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2000, 100. 24 For this note on Breuer, see Mittleman 86. 25 Isaac Breuer, Mein Weg. Zürich: Morascha Verlag, 1988, 56. The translations from the German original are mine. For some more extensive discussion on the relationship between Breuer and Kant, see Friedrich Niewöhner, »Isaac Breuer und Kant. Ein Beitrag zum Thema »Kant und das Judentum« Neue Zeitschrififar systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 17, 1975, 142–150 and 19, 1977, 172–185; Mittelman; Maiers, 40–52; David Ellenson, Between Tradition and Culture: The Doctrine of Modern Jewish Religion and Identity, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1994, esp. 23–26. For a critical evaluation of Breuer’s

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Breuer signals that the Kantian philosophical framework must remain subordinate and complementary to his primary frame of interpretation, which is a Jewish one. One example of this incorporation appears in Breuer’s use of the Kantian distinction of numina and phenomena. For Breuer, Kant’s limits on experience and, therefore, on cognition and knowledge delineate the border between two worlds: that of nature and of creation.26 Whereas Kant provides the means for conceptualizing the phenomenal world—i.e., the world of nature—which is the only one available to human reason, Judaism allows access to the world of creation. This world is the sphere of the Kantian numina, and as such, it is not given to »experience.« As Breuer explains, »The realm of experience is the realm of everlasting connections (das Reich der immerwährenden Zusammenhänge).« These connections belong to reason, which produces experience in and through these connections. Experience is the conscious unity of the subject of experience and the object of experience. Subject is not possible without object, just as object is not possible without subject. The subject recognizes itself in the object. The object is recognized by the subject in self-knowledge (Das Objekt erkennt das Subjekt in Selbsterkenntnis). If subject and object separate, they both sink into the essence-less.27

For Breuer, this definition of experience clarifies why God cannot be an object of experience. As an absolute I (Anochi), God essentially stands »outside of any connection« (außerhalb jedes Zusammenhangs). This means it would be impossible to »prove« (beweisen) God’s existence, for proving means »deducing« (ableiten) him. But deduction itself, Breuer argues, would bring this absolute I into connection, thereby contradicting God’s essence.28 In a nutshell, the logic of this argument contains Breuer’s claims pertaining to several religious notions, including creation, prophecy, and the miracle. All of these terms are characterized by their non-relationality to anything else, and since they exceed the realm of connection, they cannot be experienced or known by reason. usage of these Kantian terms, see George Y. Kohler, »Is there a God an sich?: Isaac Breuer on Kant’s noumena« AJS Review, 36, 1, 2012, 121–139. 26 Breuer developed this distinction especially in his 1926 book Die Welt als Schöpfung und Natur. Here he distinguishes between two ›worlds‹ »nature« (Natur) and »creation« (Schöpfung). Nature refers to the phenomenological reality characterized by laws of necessity and causality, whereas creation is based on God’s freedom and treats reality as a process. For a more extensive discussion, see Mittelman 72–76. 27 Mein Weg, 58. 28 Ibid, 59.

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Breuer begins his 1916 essay and the exploration of the essence of the miracle in Judaism by rejecting two alternative viewpoints. The first defines the miracle’s essence as God’s enactment of the awesome and extraordinary, and the second sees it in its relation to the moral education of the human. Both of these theories fail to understand something essential about God as the absolute sovereign of everything there is. Not only is God not subject to the law of nature, but the very existence and endurance of this law derive from God’s constantly renewed will. God does not need to interrupt the continuity of the law of nature to reveal his power because, essentially, there is no distinction between natural events and divine acts. On the contrary, Breuer concludes: »Not in the miracle alone but also in the natural course of events—and even more in it—does Judaism recognize God’s ruling« (Wunder 186). Whereas the first thesis fails to understand that God causes all occurrences in nature and not only the miraculous, the second argument is simply too trivial. Indeed, Biblical stories indicate that God sometimes disrupts the natural law due to humans’ misconduct. For example, the miracle of transforming the Nile’s water into blood results from the Egyptian king’s refusal to release the Israelites from slavery. While this and similar stories demonstrate the association between moral education and miracles, this association, for Breuer, is not the miracle’s defining characteristic. God’s absolute sovereignty necessitates this interdependence since, after all: »the God of nature is also the God of moral law« (Wunder 187). The giving of natural gifts, or the deprivation thereof, derives from the essence of God and not from the essence of the miracle. Dismissing these two alternatives, Breuer proposes the »breakth­ rough theory« (Durchbruchstheorie) as his theory of the miracle. This theory contends that the miracle is »a ›breaking through‹ of the regularity of the course of nature brought about by God (eine von Gott bewirkte »Durchbrechung« der Regelmässigkeit des Naturablaufs darstelle)« which exposes its subjection to God’s will (Ibid). As justification for this claim, Breuer explains: »He who can interrupt the rule, is its master« (wer die Regel stören kann, ist Meister der Regel«). While one can easily recall similar formulations coming from contemporary legal theories, Breuer learns this rule from his grandfather, Samson Raphael Hirsch, whose interpretation of Exodus 3,20 he immediately quotes: By a miracle announced and performed by God (Durch ein von Gott angekündigtes und vollbrachtes Wunder), the divine character of the natural order of things (natürlichen Ordnung der Dinge) leaps into view;

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It becomes evident (es zeigt sich) that the natural order of things has more than only an Originator. It is rooted in God not only with its coming into being, but also in its existence. It exists, not because it once came into being through God, but because and so long as God wills its continued existence. To teach the divine character of the natural order is the purpose of the miracle.29

Breuer confirms this theory as the only one possible, but he does not adopt it without interpreting two of its significant elements. The first concerns the previous »announcement of the imminent breakthrough« (die Ankündigung der bevorstehenden Durchbrechung), and the second regards the concept of the »natural order of things.« Starting with a discussion of »the natural order of things« Breuer identifies the problem with our partial scientific knowledge. Like Rosen­ zweig, he quickly dismisses the idea that there is something ›new‹ about the concept of the lawfulness of nature. This assumption of lawfulness is so fundamental to human beings that we would not be able to act or think without it. As Breuer reminds us, it is only because the same phenomena appear under similar conditions that we can act purposely or develop personal, physical, or metaphysical laws, and this rule of reason is valid for all generations. The difficulty with the requirement of the miracle to interrupt the natural order, however, is that our understanding of the law of nature is always partial (if not ontologically, then at least epistemologically). It is limited both by our personal knowledge of nature and, more broadly, by the state of contemporary scientific knowledge. Significantly, it is only from the perspective of absolute knowledge that there can be an accurate determination about whether a phenomenon disrupts the law of nature. Conversely, a partial knowledge of science can make us susceptible to errors and misrecognition. As Breuer prosaically expounds: »It has often been said that past generations, were they to be suddenly confronted with modern technical achievements, would, undoubtedly, have considered them to be genuine miracles and defiantly 29 Hirsch, Pentateuch, Exodus 3,20; cited in Breuer Wunder 188, my translation. While Breuer refers to Hirsch’s interpretation, we should not think of this Jewish context as the only source of his theory. Like Rosenzweig, Breuer seems to consider relevant arguments from contemporary Protestant discussions. Consider, especially, the affinities between Breuer’s theory and the one developed by Rudolf Otto. While Otto’s 1917 book Das Helige remains his most significant account of this topic, it was published after Breuer’s essay. However, Breuer could have been aware of Otto's essays in which he presented a similar argument; consider especially, Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht, Tübingen: Mohr, 1904, esp. 39–45.

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outside the ordinary cycle of nature.«30 Considering observations of this sort, Breuer argues, we must conclude that we cannot be sure whether an observed occurrence actually disrupts the natural order or is actually a natural phenomenon that merely looks supernatural. Only a complete knowledge of nature, which we can never have, could tell us definitively if a miracle transpired. According to Breuer, some people attempted to defend the possibi­ lity of the miracle from this skeptical critique by offering a more moderate approach that he calls »the relative breakthrough theory.« This theory recognizes that our partial scientific knowledge casts doubt on the validity of miracle testimonies. Hence, instead of considering whether or not an interruption of the natural order actually took place, this theory focuses on how the witnesses experienced the so-called miraculous event. To define an occurrence as a »miracle« it is enough that its observers could not explain it through their available science and could identify no alternative causal reason (Wunder 189). Breuer pushes the relative breakthrough theory to its paradoxical end by examining the biblical scene describing the battle between Aaron and the Egyptian magicians in Exodus 7, 8–13. When Aaron’s rod is miraculously transformed into a »snake« before the Egyptian king, the king calls his magicians, and they do the same »with their secret arts« (11). The scene ends when Aaron’s »snake«/rod swallows up the magicians’ rods. While the two acts of transfiguration look similar, the readers of the Bible know that only the first one is a miracle. If the relative breakthrough theory were correct, Breuer notes, we would have to admit that »God greatly underestimated the Egyptians’ knowledge of nature, and that He chose an extremely poor example to demonstrate His mastery over nature« (Ibid 191). Through this paradoxical conclusion in which God wanted to reveal his absolute sovereignty but failed to rightly assess the witnesses’ knowledge of science, Breuer shows why anything but a strong version of the breakthrough theory is doomed to fail. There is no way to reconcile the central texts from Jewish tradition, rationality, and the miracle without contradiction. Yet, Breuer uses this Biblical story to learn something about the nature of the miracle. If Aaron’s and the magicians’ acts look the same but only Aaron’s act can be considered a miracle, this means that the miracle does not concern what happens but rather how something happens: »The miracle occurs by way of a disruption (Durchbrechung) of nature, while the natural occurrence (Vorgang)—extraordinary as it 30

Jacob Breuer 254/Wunder 258.

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may be—essentially remains within the natural context and in accordance with its concept« (Wunder 191–92). Before moving forward, it is noteworthy that Rosenzweig discusses a similar contradiction and develops a similar distinction, but he draws a different conclusion from it. Like Breuer’s distinctions of Aaron’s and the magicians’ acts, Rosenzweig contrasts the »sign« and »magic« the »prophet« and »sorcerer.« The prophet foresees »that which is willed by the divine« and proves God’s providence by announcing the »sign.« In contrast, the magician »actively intervenes against the course of the world […]. He [the magician] attacks God’s Providence and wants to snatch, bully and force from it, by that which is unforeseen and unforeseeable of it, that which is willed by its own will« (Star 105/GSII 105). Like Breuer, Rosenzweig moves away from the question on »what happens«—the occurrence itself could look either natural or supernatural. However, contrary to Breuer, Rosenzweig does not replace this question with »how« something happens but rather with »what for« it happened. This difference leads to their opposing views about the miracle, the prophet, and the magician’s act. For Breuer, the contradiction is between the acts of God and the prophet that are beyond nature and the magicians who manipulate their observers to think that a wholly natural occurrence is, in fact, supernatural. For Rosenzweig, on the other hand, the miracle/›sign‹ is in line with nature and the course of the world. Whereas the prophet’s previous announcement exposes a part of God’s plan, thus emphasizing God’s providence, the magician intervenes in the course of the world and acts against God’s plan and beyond nature. For this reason, Rosenzweig claims that when the miracle was still an actual possible experience, it did not only correspond with the law of nature but even meant to prove »the predetermined constraint of the laws of the world« (Ibid). As we shall see below, it is precisely this kind of view that Breuer finds troubling. Breuer’s refutation of the relative breakthrough theory does not yet resolve the broader issue emerging from the incompleteness of knowledge. At stake is the possibility of accurately determining whether an observed occurrence indeed disrupts the natural order without having complete knowledge of the law of nature. How can we discern if a seemingly ›miraculous‹ event indeed reveals God’s sovereignty or merely exposes the witnesses’ limited knowledge of science? To answer this ques­ tion, Breuer discusses the miracle’s second characteristic from Hirsch’s definition, namely, God’s previous announcement of its coming. Here too, Breuer begins by criticizing misunderstandings of this precondition of the miracle before developing his own interpretation. In his refutations

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of these misunderstandings, we can identify some critiques that also apply to Rosenzweig’s theory. As we saw above, in Rosenzweig’s theory, the miracle is construc­ ted of two parts: prophecy and fulfillment. Uncovering the supposed miracle’s original meaning, Rosenzweig emphasizes that the defining feature of the miracle is not the miraculous occurrence itself but rather its prediction. Against this argument, Breuer writes: One could say: the announcement of the miracle (Die Ankündigung des Wunders) makes for its legitimation as a miracle. By the announcement it is lifted out of the causal context (Aus dem Kausalzusammenhang) and appears as a direct consequence of divine command. (als unmittelbare Folge göttliehen Geheisses).31

Breuer criticizes this claim—put forth a few years later by Rosenzweig— by offering two arguments. First, there is no reason to argue that it is merely because of the announcement that a phenomenon we would not previously have had the tools to recognize as miraculous would suddenly, incontrovertibly, be read as a miracle. As Breuer reminds us, not all announcements of later events are miracles. The Greek scientist-philosopher Thales predicted the lunar eclipse of 585 BC, which he announced in advance to his surprised contemporaries. However, this prediction of a future happening is not a prophecy, and the fulfillment of this prediction is not a miracle. These observations pose a significant challenge to Rosenzweig’s theory. Breuer helps us see that the miracle’s prophecy-fulfillment structure does not sufficiently define what counts as a valid announcement. As a result of this oversight, we cannot distinguish the prophecy-fulfillment structure from the structure of experimentation in science. In the scheme of Rosenzweig’s Star, science and cognition belong to the first part of the book, and it is precisely this way of thinking that the second, theological, part tries to overcome. Breuer’s critique suggests that, while Rosenzweig attempts to describe the movement to the theological part of the Star as a total transformation of being, he does not depart from philosophical logic. Breuer’s second critique of an element in Rosenzweig’s argument concerns the identity of the ›announcer.‹ Whereas Rosenzweig claims that the prior announcement designates the original meaning of the miracle, Breuer stresses that this idea is derived from an incorrect

31

Jacob Breuer, 256/Wunder 192.

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reading of the Biblical sources.32 Breuer refers to Deuteronomy 18:21–22, which reads: You may say to yourselves, »How can we know when a message (of the prophet) has not been spoken by the Lord?« If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

Read carefully, Breuer contends, these verses teach us that a prophecy’s fulfillment confirms the proclaimer’s identity as a true prophet, though it does not prove that a happening is a miracle. Moreover, he stresses that »it is impossible for prophecy and miracles to legitimate each other!« (Wunder 193). Breuer’s most substantial indirect critique of Rosenzweig’s theory is that the logic of his argument itself neutralizes the miracle by subjecting it to human understanding. To develop this claim, Breuer attends to the broader philosophical challenge emerging from »epistemology« (Erkentnisstheorie). Following Kant—to whom Breuer refers as »the philosopher«—Breuer stresses that recognition in the phenomenological world depends on causal law. Causality itself can justly be called »the natural order of things« since it is essential to any perception, and without it, »our perception of existing matter (Seienden) would have been impossible« (Ibid 194). Similarly to Rosenzweig, Breuer recognizes that the Kantian critique of experience leads to a troubling conclusion. But while Rosenzweig points to a historical turning point after which mira­ cle experience and testimony increasingly became impossible, Breuer focuses on the broader issue of perception. If causality is essential to perception, and the miracle by its nature interrupts the law of nature, how can we recognize it? An interruption of causality suspends our ability to perceive anything at all. Hence, Breuer concludes: »A miracle is either To be precise, Rosenzweig seems to pose two different arguments. In one, as we saw, he equates prophecy and miracle. But upon discussing the differences between the magician and the prophet, he writes: »the Torah commands that the prophet be tested in order to see whether his predicted sign comes to pass« (Star 105/GSII 105). In this second statement, Rosenzweig nears Breuer’s reading. For a more comprehensive discussion on the significance of Sinai revelation to Jewish law in modern Jewish tradition, including specific analysis of Breuer's and Rosenzweig's positions, see Paul, Franks. “Sinai since Spinoza: Reflections on Revelation in Modern Jewish Thought. In George John Brooke, Hindy Najman & Loren T. Stuckenbruck (eds.), The Significance of Sinai: Traditions About Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008, 333-354. 32

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imperceptible (unwharnehmbar), or it ceases to be a miracle as soon as we are able to perceive it« (Wunder 195). In contrast to Rosenzweig, Breuer imposes a criterion for recogni­ zing the miracle. The miracle is God’s active intervention in the order of things, and that intervention lies beyond causality and, therefore, beyond any natural explanation. The miracle is not a mere name for an event we cannot explain because we lack scientific knowledge. On the contrary, if we observe unexplained phenomena, we should investigate our understanding of nature rather than label them as miracles. The unbreakable bond of causality and perception leads to Breuer’s statement about what the miracle is not: insofar as we can observe phenomena with our regular perception, no matter how unusual or common these phenomena may seem, we can be sure they are not miracles but rather are wholly natural (Ibid 195). However, if the miracle is defined by God’s active intervention in causality and in the order of things, how can it be perceived? Breuer’s challenge is to redefine the miracle such that it would be perceivable without exposing this new definition to the Kantian critique of the limits of perception. To do so, Breuer develops an argument about additional religious terms, including prophecy, creation, and revelation, which, like the miracle, lie beyond the realm of experience. These religious phenomena transcend »the human faculties of perception« in their »absolute originality« and thus, they cannot be perceived by reason. To understand this point, let us briefly compare Rosenzweig’s and Breuer’s thoughts on the relationship between creation and science. For Rosenzweig, the main issue is whether or not one can adopt the thesis of creation, which seems to be superior to the scientific paradigm in terms of its ability to explain the constant becoming of the world. Unequivocally, Rosenzweig stresses: »He who has not yet been reached by the voice of Revelation has no right to accept the idea of Creation as if it were a matter of a scientific hypothesis« (Star 146/GSII 149). Importantly, embedded in this stark rejection is the assumption that one can adopt creation as if it were a scientific hypothesis. Breuer, on the other hand, emphasizes that creation is essentially a non-scientific question because humans cannot cognize it at all. Since human cognition is delimited by time and space, they cannot perceive creation through reason. For one, humans cannot think of limitless space, infinite time, or a void without energy. The act of creation described in the opening verse of the Bible contains all three of these ideas, emphasizing God’s creation out of nothing as a feat that lies beyond time and space. Moreover, creation creates time and

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space, though it does not occur within them. Thus, creation precedes time and space, which are the essential preconditions of any perception (Wunder 197). For Breuer, miracles—like revelation, creation, prophecy, Jewish law, and Jewish existence—are phenomena that exceed human under­ standing. These phenomena are similar in their »disjointedness« (Zusammenhanglosigkeit). They are like each other in their respective unlikeness to anything else. Concluding with a remark whose logic is already familiar to us from his autobiography, Breuer stresses: »The means of human perception (Erkenntnis) are nothing but means for finding connections (Zusammenhängen). Since miracle, prophecy, and creation are, by their very essence, rooted in disjointedness (Zusammen­ hanglosigkeit), they are once and for all removed from the means of our perception« (Wunder 198). For this reason, all explanations aiming to reconcile creation and natural science are doomed to fail. Creation is not given to us as a scientific thesis that should be proven by these means but is an existential category of faith that should orient our lives. The origin of this unique religious perception of creation, miracle, and prophecy is provided in revelation.33 Reading some verses related to the Sinai revelation and showing how these notions are embedded in it, Breuer concludes: »he who rationalizes the miracle, anthropomor­ phizes Prophecy (die Prophetie vermenschlicht), measures creation by the standards of progressive development (an Massstäben des Entwick­ lungszusammenhangs misst)– he denies the Revelation and thus the very foundation of Judaism« (Wunder 200)34. Noteworthy is that, whereas Rosenzweig considers the individual’s experience of revelation, whose prime biblical example is Abraham, Breuer considers the collective revelation at Sinai. Focusing on this collective revelation allows Breuer to equate the two kinds of divine law, the first of which was given to the world in creation and the second of which was given to the Jewish people in the form of Jewish law.35 More to the issue at hand, by attaching the 33 On the significance of revelation to Breuer’s theory and for a comparison with Judah Halevi on this issue, see in Mittelman 87. 34 While being a freer translation Jacob Breuer's formulation might be helpful: »he who rationalizes the miracle, analyzes Prophecy from the viewpoint of Anthropomorphism, and evaluates creation with the aim of establishing logical combinations-he denies the act of the Revelation and thereby the very foundation of Judaism« (Jacob Breuer, 260). 35 One could have developed this difference further to explain the seemingly diverging views of Breuer and Rosenzweig on Jewish law, which are implied in Breuer’s letter to Rosenzweig mentioned above. Indeed, the orthodox leader and thinker from Frankfurt,

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miracle to the revelation at Sinai, Breuer explains the perceivability of the miracle. Among other things, revelation provides humans with an intuitive mental capacity that enables them to approach reality beyond the Kantian constraints of understanding.36 The miracle is safe from the Kantian critique simply because it lies beyond cognition. As Breuer stresses: »Every miracle is a revelation. Whatever is revealed cannot be ›recognized‹« (Wunder 201) Like Rosenzweig, Breuer claims that revelation opens the world anew and resituates the human within the created world. However, this experience does not reveal what creation is but only allows the revealed individual to see the world as »created« and therefore dependent on God. Rather, the experience of the miracle invites the human to observe the act of creation itself. The essence of this religious mode of being is that it allows for a specific way of seeing. As Breuer stresses, »Whoever experiences a miracle, becomes a prophet through this experience (Wer ein Wunder erlebt, wird durch dies Erlebnis zum Propheten«), and can experience God’s creation »out of nothing« (Wunder 201). From Breuer’s perspective, the problem with Rosenzweig’s con­ ceptualization of the miracle as a ›sign‹ whose two parts maintain a conventional quasi causal or temporal relationship is that it precludes the encounter with transcendence. Instead of a supernatural happening that suspends and transcends human understanding, it reproduces the miracle as an immanent, worldly experience that correlates to conven­ tional human reason. What Rosenzweig fails to understand, Breuer could have said, is that the move to the religious mode of being does not include a modification or reinterpretation of reason and cognition but rather their replacement. As Breuer exclaims: it is not the mere disruption of the regular epistemic tools that are the prerequisites in Judaism to recognize the miracle of prophecy. Rather, »both are based Jacob Rosenheim, who knew both authors personally developed some of these differences in his essay »Abrahamitisches oder mosaisches Judentum? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit zeitgenössischen Strömungen« in Jacob Rosenheim Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Ansprachen Bd.I, Frankfurt am Main: Kaufmann Verlag, 1930, 173–208. 36 Significantly, in his essay on Rosenzweig, Steven Katz interprets Rosenzweig’s theory of miracle along similar lines. Katz writes: »[Accordingly], by a reasoning we cannot, and need not, recapitulate here, the »miracle«, while embodied in the givenness of spacetime, of creation, stands beyond the phenomenal, even beyond the moral and aesthetic, and makes itself present in our existential awareness, our direct intuition, of revelation and redemption.« Steven T. Katz, »On Historicism and Eternity: Reflections on the 100th Birthday of Franz Rosenzweig« in Id., Historicism, the Holocaust, and Zionism, New York: New York University Press 1993, 1–26, 4.

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on the bestowal of the highest preceptive potency […]« (Wunder 201). Although this change is significant in itself as it provides a new kind of seeing the world and observing God’s activity, Breuer’s designation of its origin in the Sinai revelation also includes practical implications. To experience the miracle and to become a living witness of God’s revelation—to use Rosenzweig’s terms—means binding oneself to Jewish law. It might be this view that led Breuer to criticize the Star’s treatment of Halacha in the letter to Rosenzweig from 1924. It might also be this misunderstanding on Rosenzweig’s part that brought him to note in 1927 that he does not understand »the basis of faith (Glaubensgrundlage) of Hirsch’s commentary [on the Bible] or Breuer’s writings.«37 * To conclude, for Breuer, as for Rosenzweig, the miracle is not necessarily related to a supernatural interruption of the law of nature but instead signifies a ›religious‹ way of being in the world. For both Rosenzweig and Breuer, the miracle binds together creation, revelation, and prophecy. Nevertheless, Breuer’s way of bringing these concepts together through their mutual difference from anything else illuminates a difficulty in Rosenzweig’s theory. It makes clear that while Rosenzweig claims that the miracle designates a new mode of being in the world, he does not sufficiently challenge philosophical cognition or conventional human reason. Whereas in Breuer’s theory, the encounter with the impossiblepossibility of the miracle, so to speak, produces a distinctively religious experience that is radically different from anything else, in Rosenzweig, this encounter reproduces an experience that is similar to any other per­ ception. As this comparison of Rosenzweig and Breuer demonstrates, making the miracle a bridging concept at once, signifying the boundary between philosophy and theology and linking them together, comes at a price. While it produces a unified system that has a specific significance to the argument of the Star as a whole, it neutralizes the distinctive nature of the miracle. Breuer’s theory of the miracle, I suggest, could help Rosenzweig salvage the miracle from its degraded state in modern theology as well as in his new rationalism. Breuer’s idea of the miracle as an intuitive perception beyond reason could be valuable for making the miracle a meaningful lived experience rather than a mere philosophical 37

GS1 1134.

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term. However, this, too, would come at a price, for adopting this notion would require reconsidering the function of the miracle as a border term that connects philosophy and theology.

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Pierfrancesco Fiorato

Vorwegnahme und Aufschub als Gestalten der Neutralisierung Über Scholems Auseinandersetzung mit Rosenzweigs Theorie der Erlösung

Abstract Durch die 2018 erfolgte Veröffentlichung vom Stenogramm des am 26.12.1936 von Scholem eingebrachten Diskussionsbeitrages zur Rosen­ zweig-Feier in Jerusalem wird das bestätigt und verschärft, was bereits im Brief an Edith Rosenzweig vom 20.2.1930 zum Ausdruck gekom­ men war. Die Kategorie der Antizipation als solche wird wegen ihrer Schlüsselrolle in der Erlösungstheorie Rosenzweigs in Frage gestellt. In Bezug auf sie sollen nämlich alle christlichen Lehren entstanden sein, während über die Gerechtigkeit, als einem der nicht aus der Kategorie der Antizipation entwickelbaren Zentralbegriffe des Judentums, im SE geschwiegen würde. Die Begriffskonstellation, in deren Rahmen die Frage hier erörtert wird, verweist auf Scholems Notizen über Messianismus und Gerechtig­ keit aus den Jahren 1918/19. Die Vorwegnahme wird dort dem »Handeln im Aufschub« gegenübergestellt, dem die Aufgabe der Neutralisierung des Gottesurteils zugeschrieben wird. Als Vorwegnahme des Jüngsten Gerichts soll Letzteres den einzigen jüdischen Begriff darstellen, zu des­ sen Wesen die Antizipation gehört. In diesem Sinne wird Gerechtigkeit als die »Idee der historischen Annihilation des Gottesurteils« zur Gel­ tung gebracht. In einem anderen Text aus derselben Zeit unterscheidet Scholem zwischen zwei Strömungen des Messianismus: gegenüber der apokalyptisch-revolutionären bevorzugt er dabei die »verwandelnde«. Ihre Charakteristik lautet: »ganz innerlich, Weltgericht neutralisiert, jedenfalls kein Untergang«. Das, was Scholem 1969 als Neutralisierung des messianischen Elements (im Chassidismus) bezeichnen wird, bildete also offensichtlich für ihn damals die höchste Form des Messianismus. Abgesehen von der Frage der Apokalyptik, die später im Mittelpunkt

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seiner kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit Rosenzweig stehen wird, und unabhängig davon erscheinen also hier bereits alle Schlüsselbegriffe, in deren Namen die spätere Kritik geäußert wird. Auch in Rosenzweigs Behandlung der Feste der Erlösung im SE fin­ det eine Neutralisierung/Vergeistigung des Gottesurteils statt, allerdings nicht durch dessen Aufschub, sondern durch dessen Vorwegnahme. Vor­ wegnahme und Aufschub erscheinen so als spiegelbildliche Begriffe: In ihrem gegensätzlichen Verhältnis zur Zukunft erweisen sich beide in den jeweiligen Kontexten als Gestalten der Neutralisierung. Bereits 1914 hatte Rosenzweig in diesem Sinne von der Alljährlichkeit des Weltgerichts am Neujahrstag gesprochen. Hier sollte eine durch die Antizipation des »religiös schon gegenwärtigen« Jenseits vollzogene Neutralisierung vor der »Religionifizierung der Zukunft« schützen und dabei eine »rein dies­ seitig-moralische« Zukunft eröffnen (was daraus im SE werden wird, soll zunächst offenbleiben). Der dabei enthaltene Verweis auf Maimonides (Hilkoth Teschuba VIII,8) findet sich auch bei Scholem (der ihn jedoch in Bezug auf die Unmöglichkeit der Vorwegnahme der Gerechtigkeit zitiert) und wird in beiden Fällen durch die Auseinandersetzung mit Cohen vermittelt. Für Letzteren soll Maimonides’ Unterscheidung zwi­ schen kommender Welt und messianischer Zeit zu einer Entsinnlichung des Jenseits und einer Idealisierung des Diesseits führen. Bemerkenswert ist, dass bei allen drei Autoren diese Auseinan­ dersetzung mit Maimonides zur Notwendigkeit führt, verschiedene Formen von Zukunft zu unterscheiden: Rosenzweig spricht von der Notwendigkeit, eine bloße Religionifizierung der natürlichen Zukunft zu vermeiden; Scholem von derjenigen, messianische und empirische Zukunft zu unterscheiden; während für Cohen die messianische Zukunft nicht auf die Zukunft warten soll. In der Verschränkung von Gegenwart und Zukunft durch die Antizipation scheint hier zunächst eine Verwandtschaft zwischen Cohen und Rosenzweig zu bestehen; gerade die Hervorhebung der unterschied­ lichen Bedeutung, die die Vorwegnahme im SE annimmt, hilft aber im Gegenteil auch Scholems Kritik an Rosenzweigs Verwendung dieses Begriffs besser zu verstehen: Wenn im SE die ›andere‹ Zukunft, die sich von der nie kommenden des unendlichen Fortschritts unterscheidet, nur durch die Vorwegnahme zur »Zeit der Ewigkeit« werden kann, wird dies dann von Rosenzweig mit dem Umstand identifiziert, dass »das Ende jeden Augenblick erwartet werden muß«. Die eschatologische Wendung, die auf diese Weise der Antizipation verliehen wird, gibt den Assonanzen mit Cohen, die im SE zu finden sind, eine andere

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Bedeutung. Bei Cohen erfüllt sich die Zeit als Zukunft: Es geht darum, die ursprüngliche Öffnung wiederherzustellen und so die Geschichte zu ermöglichen. Wenn dagegen Rosenzweigs Auffassung zunächst den Gedanken der metahistorischen Instanz hervorruft, die der Apokalyptik zufolge in die Geschichte einbrechen soll, so nimmt die eschatologische Neutralisierung durch Vorwegnahme bei ihm eine holistische Gestalt an, die sie eher mit dem Ganz-Sein-Können der Eschatologie des Daseins vergleichbar erscheinen lässt (Gordon). Rosenzweigs Vorwegnahme erweist sich so als das Gegenteil desje­ nigen Lebens im Aufschub, das Scholem später als »anti-existentialisti­ sche Idee« bezeichnen wird. Auch die kritischen Vorbehalte aber, die von ihm gegenüber einem solchen Leben geäußert werden, können Scholem einer Vorwegnahme keineswegs näher bringen, da sie seiner Auffassung nach Gefahr läuft, sich in einer präsentischen Eschatologie zu schließen. Denn sie tilgt nicht die Unruhe einer Geschichte, die, von der Notwendig­ keit einer dialektischen Neutralisierung (aber nicht Unterdrückung) der zerstörerischen Potentialität des apokalyptischen Messianismus getrie­ ben, in ihrer radikalen Offenheit zur Zukunft letztendlich mehr mit der Auffassung Cohens verwandt zu sein scheint (Biale).

1. Der Diskussionsbeitrag zur Rosenzweig-Feier Durch die im Jahr 2018 erfolgte Veröffentlichung vom Stenogramm des am 26. Dezember 1936 von Scholem eingebrachten Diskussionsbeitrages zur Rosenzweig-Feier in Jerusalem1 erhält das Bild der äußerst facetten­ 1 Die Feier hat in der Bibliothek Schocken stattgefunden. Noch vor ihrer offiziellen Eröffnung hatte Salman Schocken anlässlich von Rosenzweigs 50. Geburtstag Ernst Simon, Hugo Bergmann, Julius Guttmann und Gershom Scholem an dem Abend zu einer Aussprache über sein Werk eingeladen. Nachdem davon die »Jüdische Rundschau« am 8. Januar 1937 kurz berichtet und Rivka Horwitz (»Franz Rosenzweig and Gershom Scho­ lem on Zionism and the Jewish People«, in: Jewish History, vol. 6, Nos. 1–2, 1992, 99–111; hier insbes. S. 108) darauf kursorisch Bezug genommen hatten, hat Enrico Lucca (»Geru­ salemme 1936: leggere Franz Rosenzweig in Palestina«, in: Intersezioni 36, 2016, 245–256) die erste ausführliche Rekonstruktion dieses feierlichen Anlasses geboten und dann, zusammen mit Ynon Wygoda (E. Lucca, Y. Wygoda, »A Goy Who Studies Torah. Two Unpublished Sources by Ernst Simon and Gershom Scholem on the Spiritual Legacy of Franz Rosenzweig«, in: Naharaim, 12 (1–2), 2018, 197–224), die Beiträge Simons und Scholems veröffentlicht. – Die Angabe der Seitenzahl in den folgenden Zitaten aus Scho­ lems Beitrag bezieht sich auf die von den Herausgebern verfasste englische Übersetzung

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reichen2 Auseinandersetzung zwischen diesen Hauptfiguren des jüdi­ schen Denkens eine weitere Bereicherung. Abgesehen von dem Rosen­ zweig gewidmeten »Bekenntnis über unsere Sprache« aus dem Jahr 19263, bildet der nun publizierte Beitrag, nach der im Januar 1930 gehalt­ enen Gedenkrede4 und dem im September 1931 im »Frankfurter Israeli­ tischen Gemeindeblatt« erschienenen Artikel5, die dritte umfangreiche Abhandlung, in der Scholem sich mit Rosenzweigs Werk auseinander­ setzt. Eine gewisse Kontinuität lässt sich zunächst zwischen dem nun zugänglich gemachten Text und dem zuletzt genannten Artikel feststellen. Hier hatte Scholem von der »so faszinierenden wie problematischen Lehre von der Vorwegnahme der Erlösung im jüdischen Leben« gespro­ chen, durch die Rosenzweig gegen die »Katastrophentheorie der messi­ anischen Apokalyptik« Stellung genommen und sich so in die Tradition eingeordnet hatte, die »dem Organismus des Judentums den apokalyp­ tischen Stachel zu nehmen« versucht6. War aber dort nur flüchtig von der »problematischen Lehre von der Vorwegnahme der Erlösung« die Rede, so gewinnt gerade dieses Thema im späteren Diskussionsbeitrag eine zentrale Bedeutung, durch die das bestätigt und verschärft wird, was bereits im Brief an Edith Rosenzweig vom 20. Februar 1930 zum Aus­ druck gekommen war. Darin hatte Scholem seine grundsätzlichen Vor­ behalte gegenüber der Schlüsselrolle geäußert, die die »Kategorie der Antizipation« als solche bei Rosenzweig spielt7. Das Schweigen, »mit dem der Stern den nicht aus der Kategorie der Antizipation entwickelbaren des hebräischen Originaltextes (Lucca, Wygoda, op. cit., 214–220), deren einschlägige Stel­ len hier vom Verfasser ins Deutsche übertragen wurden. 2 Pawel Maciejko, »Gershom Scholem’s Dialectic of Jewish History. The Case of Sab­ batianism«, in: Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 3, 2004, 207–220, schreibt diesbezü­ glich: »The Scholem-Rosenzweig debate is complex and very multi-faceted. It touches upon the Bible, renaissance and crisis of the Hebrew language, Zionism and Jewish life in Palestine, assimilation, the status and role of the diaspora and possibilities of German-Jewish dialogue« (217). 3 Gershom Scholem, »Bekenntnis über unsere Sprache« (1926), in: Poetica. Schriften zur Literatur, Übersetzungen, Gedichte, Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 2019, 290–293. – Zur Bedeutung dieses Textes für das Verhältnis zwischen Scholem und Rosenzweig vgl. Stéphane Mosès, »Langage et sécularisation chez Gershom Scholem«, in: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n.° 60/1, 1985, 85–96. 4 Gershom Scholem, »Franz Rosenzweig und sein Buch ›Der Stern der Erlösung‹« (1930), aus dem Hebräischen übersetzt von Michael Brocke, in: Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988, 525–549. 5 Gershom Scholem, »Zur Neuauflage des ›Stern der Erlösung‹« (1931), in: Judaica 1, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1963, 226–234.

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Zentralbegriffen des Judentums [wie z.B. dem Begriff der Gerechtigkeit] begegnet«, wurde in diesem Zusammenhang sogar als der Punkt bezeich­ net, »an dem eine jüdische Diskussion des Buches einzusetzen hätte«8. Der neulich veröffentlichte Diskussionsbeitrag lässt sich wenigstens zum Teil als die Verwirklichung eines solchen Projekts betrachten9. In 6 Ibid., 232. – Bemerkenswert ist, dass das hier evozierte Bild vom »apokalyptischen Stachel« schon im Bekenntnis aus dem Jahr 1926 aufgetaucht war: »Man weiß hier nicht, was man tut. Man glaubt, die Sprache verweltlicht zu haben, ihr den apokalyptischen Stachel ausgezogen zu haben. Aber das ist ja nicht wahr« (Scholem, »Bekenntnis über unsere Sprache«, cit., 290). Über die zweideutige Weise in der Scholem hier das Wort »apokalyptisch« verwendet vgl. Jacques Derrida, Die Augen der Sprache. Abgrund und Vulkan, aus dem Französischen von Esther von der Osten, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Passagen, Wien 2021, 39 (vgl. auch 44, 82). Über den »apokalyptischen Stachel« im Bekenntnis vgl. weiter William Cutter, »Ghostly Hebrew, Ghastly Speech: Scholem to Rosenzweig, 1926«, in: Prooftexts, 10, 1990, 413–433, insbes. 429f. und Enrico Lucca, »›Sull’orlo dell’abisso‹: Scholem e Rosenzweig sulla lingua ebraica«, in: Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 68, 2013, 305–320, insbes. 314f. 7 Scholem hatte hier insbes. die Überzeugung zum Ausdruck gebracht, dass die Zeit hätte kommen müssen, »in der eine Auseinandersetzung zwischen Judentum und Christentum in einem katastrophaleren Sinne nötig werden [würde] als sie [...] hier [im Stern der Erlö­ sung] unter der Kategorie der Antizipation versucht worden ist« (Gershom Scholem, Briefe. Band I (1914–1947), hrsg. von I. Shedletzky, Beck, München 1994, 243f.). Aufgrund des nun zugänglichen Textes aus dem Jahr 1936 (aber auch der Tagebuchnotizen, auf die ich mich im Folgenden beziehen werde) scheint mir die Auslegung unhaltbar, die Zohar Maor von dieser Stelle bietet, wenn er in seinem in anderer Hinsicht sehr aufschlussreichen Aufsatz schreibt: »In his Hebrew eulogy of Rosenzweig and in a letter to his widow, Edith, regarding the eulogy, Scholem stressed the importance of anticipation as the key concept of Jewish theology« (Zohar Maor, »Scholem and Rosenzweig: Redemption and (Anti-)Zionism«, in: Modern Judaism, 37, 2017, 1–23, hier insbes. 11). Die Kategorie der Antizipation bildet nämlich für Scholem, wie wir bald genauer sehen werden, keinen Schlüsselbegriff der jüdischen Theologie, sondern stellt vielmehr (wenigstens in der Form, in der Rosenzweig von ihr Gebrauch macht) einen christlichen Begriff dar. Dies wurde übrigens auch von Paul Mendes-Flohr in einem Aufsatz bemerkt, auf den sich Maor hier bezieht: vgl. unten Anm. 12. 8 Scholem Briefe. Band I, cit., 244. 9 Im Brief an Martin Buber vom 22. Mai 1930 hatte sich Scholem erneut auf den erwähn­ ten Brief an Edith bezogen und dabei die Absicht geäußert, noch einmal über Rosenzweig zu schreiben, aber »aus einer ganz anderen Perspektive« gegenüber derjenigen der von ihm im Januar gehaltenen Gedenkrede, »nämlich von dem dritten Teil seines Buches aus, dessen Hieroglyphen, einmal gedeutet, sich wohl als aufregend genug herausstellen wer­ den«. »Freilich bedarf es dazu – fügte er dann hinzu – eines historischen Gesichtspunktes, sagen wir offen, des Zionismus, der schemenhaft zu werden in dieser letzten Zeit droht« (Martin Buber, Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, Bd. 2, Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1973, 380). Ob man aufgrund dieser Aussagen mit Maor behaupten darf, dass für Scholem »Zionism needs Rosenzweig’s messianism in order to overcome its false secular selfimage« und dass »The Star can be instrumental in neutralizing the violent implications

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einer Stellungnahme, die weiterhin von der Irritation gegen ein tief um Ordnung besorgtes Denken geprägt erscheint, wendet sich Scholem hier noch ausführlicher gegen Rosenzweigs Versuch, »den Leser durch die Kategorie der Antizipation über das theologische Wesen der Erlösung zu belehren«10. In diesem Zusammenhang taucht auch das Thema »Gerech­ tigkeit« wieder auf. Scholem bemerkt, es sei nicht verwunderlich, dass es in Rosenzweigs Buch keinen Platz dafür gebe: »Die Ordnung der Gerechtigkeit wurde nämlich hier außer Kraft gesetzt, weil es sich um einen Begriff handelt, dem das Element der Antizipation fehlt«11. Anders als im erwähnten Brief betont Scholem 1936 aber ausdrücklich, Rosenzweig habe »diese grundlegende Kategorie vom Christentum über­ nommen«: »Alle christlichen Lehren und die gesamte christliche Welt sind aus Vorstellungen entstanden, die den Begriff der Vorwegnahme beinhalten«, denn sie sind ständig mit dem Grundproblem konfrontiert: »Wie kann man sich in die Erlösung hineinversetzen und gleichzeitig der Herrschaft der Unreinheit begegnen, obwohl die Erlösung bereits stattge­ funden hat?«12 Durch den Begriff der Vorwegnahme soll Rosenzweig in diesem Sinne versucht haben, »den Abgrund zwischen der zukünftigen of Zionism« (Maor, op. cit., 12) bleibt m. E. fraglich. Nach dem, was E. Lucca und Y. Wygoda berichten, scheint dies eher die Position von Ernst Simon gewesen zu sein (vgl. Lucca, Wygoda, op. cit., 204). Scholem hat dagegen 1936 behauptet, Rosenzweig wäre nicht bloß »antizionistisch« gewesen, sondern er hätte sich »jenseits des Zionismus« gestellt: deshalb müsste sein Anliegen »mit größerer Kraft bekämpft werden« (Ibid., 219). – Auf das Thema der Neutralisierung der messianischen Apokalyptik werde ich später zurückkommen. 10 Lucca, Wygoda, op. cit., 216. 11 Ibid., 217. 12 Ibid., 218. – Im Aufsatz Zum Verständnis der messianischen Idee im Judentum wird Scholem in diesem Sinne von der »illegitime[n] Vorwegnahme von etwas« reden, »das im besten Falle als die Innenseite eines sich entscheidend im Äußeren vollziehenden Vor­ gangs in Erscheinung treten konnte« (Gershom Scholem, »Zum Verständnis der messia­ nischen Idee im Judentum«, in: Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1970, 121–167, hier insbes. 122). Mit Bezug auf Rosenzweig schreibt Paul Mendes-Flohr diesbezüglich: »A similar conception of a prolepsis, or spiritual antic­ ipation, of Redemption, which one enjoys while still physically resident in the historical era, is often used to describe the Christian’s experience of salvation through Jesus Christ. New Testament scholars and Christian theologians refer to this experience as realized eschatology. Within the context of Rosenzweig’s polemic with Christianity, it may be argued that, by characterizing the Jewish experience of Torah and God as realized escha­ tology, in effect, he is appropriating what Christians had hitherto regarded to be their privileged relationship« (Paul Mendes-Flohr, »›The Stronger and the Better Jews‹: Jewish Theological Responses to Political Messianism in the Weimar Republic«, in: Jonathan Frankel (ed.), Jews and Messianism in the Modern Era, Oxford University Press, New York 1991, 159–185, hier insbes. 181, Anm. 69).

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Erlösung und dem unerlösten Individuum zu überbrücken, das auf die neunundvierzigste Stufe der Unreinheit gesunken ist und unfreiwillig ein säkulares Leben führen muss«13. Für die Vorbehalte des sich zum religiösen Anarchismus bekennenden Scholem erweist sich in diesem Zusammenhang vor allem das als zentral, was er Rosenzweigs Auffassung des »Geheimnisses der religiösen Vorschrift« nennt. Ihr gemäß kann der Jude, »indem er innerhalb der vier Ellen des jüdischen Gesetzes lebt, [...] gleichsam außerhalb der weltlichen Geschichte bleiben, indem er [...] kraft der religiösen Vorschriften, die er befolgt, und dadurch, dass er die Erlösung in seinem Leben durch seine Taten vorwegnimmt, im göttlichen Reich lebt«14. Dem Thema der Säkularisierung sind dann auch Scholems Schluss­ bemerkungen gewidmet. Hier gewinnt sein Beitrag besonders dramati­ sche Akzente: »Solange es uns nicht gelingt, aus den Tiefen des Säkularen in unserem Leben den Weg zur religiösen Frage zu finden, [...] wird es schwer sein, aus diesen Schätzen15 zu schöpfen. In dieser Ödnis der Abwesenheit ist es nicht Rosenzweig, der uns den Weg weisen kann«16. »Auf die Frage«, – so Scholem in einer vermutlich erst nach der Diskussion seines Vortrags dem Typoskript hinzugefügten Notiz – »wer den Weg unserer Generation weisen könnte, würde ich sagen: Es ist nicht Rosenzweig, sondern Kafka«17. Mit Bezug auf Kafka hatte Scholem bereits am 1. August 1931 bezeichnenderweise an Benjamin geschrieben: »Hier ist einmal die Welt zur Sprache gebracht, in der Erlösung nicht vorweggenommen werden kann – geh hin und mache das den Gojim klar!«18 Dieser Brief ist nicht Lucca, Wygoda, op. cit., 217. Ibidem. 15 Gemeint sind hier vor allem die »vielen wunderbaren Geheimnisse, die Rosenzweig in seiner Interpretation der jüdischen Liturgie entdeckt hat« (Ibid., 219). 16 Ibid., 220. – Gegen eine allzu optimistische Lesart von Rosenzweigs Ausführungen behauptet jedoch Wolfson, in seinem neulich erschienenen Aufsatz »Rosenzweig on Human Redemption«, dass wir uns für Rosenzweig »die Gegenwart Gottes in der Welt nur dadurch vorstellen können, dass wir die Abwesenheit Gottes in der Welt erleben« (Elliot R. Wolfson, »Rosenzweig on Human Redemption: Neither Nothing nor Everything, but Only Something«, in Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy 29, 2021, 121–150, hier insbes. 144; deutsche Übersetzung des Verfassers). 17 Lucca, Wygoda, op. cit., 220. 18 Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin – die Geschichte einer Freundschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1975, 213. – Stéphane Mosès meint in dieser Briefstelle einen aus­ drücklichen Verweis auf Rosenzweig erblicken zu dürfen und setzt sie in diesem Sinne mit einer Strophe des Gedichtes in Verbindung, das Scholem einige Jahre später dem Brief an 13

14

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nur als Zeugnis der grundsätzlichen Kontinuität aufschlussreich, die sich dadurch hinsichtlich der zuletzt angedeuteten Themen in Scholems Den­ ken feststellen lässt, sondern auch weil Scholem in demselben Kontext das Thema der »Möglichkeit des Gottesurteils« anspricht und den Freund diesbezüglich auf die Gedanken verweist, die er mehrere Jahre früher in seinen »Thesen über die Ordnung der Gerechtigkeit« ausge­ sprochen hatte19.

2. Die Notizen über Messianismus und Gerechtigkeit aus den Jahren 1918/19 Auffallend ist in der Tat, dass mit der einzigen und gewiss beachtens­ werten Ausnahme der Diskussion über Apokalyptik (auf die ich später zurückkommen werde), die ganze Begriffskonstellation, in deren Rah­ men Scholems spätere Kritik an Rosenzweig ihre Formulierung finden wird, bereits in den Notizen über Messianismus und Gerechtigkeit aus den Jahren 1918/19 präsent ist. Hier behauptet Scholem, dass die Antizipation, deren Möglichkeit zum innersten Wesen aller Grundbe­ griffe des Christentums gehört20, für die »alten jüdischen Ideen« nicht wesentlich sei21. Die einzige Ausnahme soll für ihn in dieser Hinsicht das Gottesurteil sein, das er als »Antizipation (Vorwegnahme) des Jüngsten Gerichtes, bezogen auf ein besonderes« verstanden wissen will. Gerade deshalb aber erfährt eben das Gottesurteil im Prophetismus für Scholem die eigene Neutralisierung, und »diejenigen Ordnungen, in denen sich diese [...] vollzieht, sind selbst der Antizipation auf keine Weise fähig«. Gemeint sind hier von Scholem in erster Linie die Ordnungen der Gerechtigkeit: In diesem Sinne wird Gerechtigkeit von ihm als »die Benjamin vom 9. Juli 1934 beilegen sollte: »Keinem kann Erlösung frommen, / dieser Stern steht viel zu hoch / wärst du auch dort angekommen, / stündst du selbst im Weg dir noch« (vgl. Stéphane Mosès, »Das Thema des Gesetzes. Zu Gershom Scholems Kafka-Bild«, in: Karl Erich Grözinger, Stéphane Mosès, Hans Dieter Zimmermann (Hrsg.), Franz Kafka und das Judentum, Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenäum, Frankfurt am Main 1987, 13–34; Walter Benjamin / Gershom Scholem, Briefwechsel 1933–1940, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1980, 155). 19 Scholem, Walter Benjamin, cit., 213. 20 Gershom Scholem, Tagebücher nebst Aufsätzen und Entwürfen bis 1923. 2. Halbband 1917–1923, hrsg. von K. Gründer, H. Kopp-Obersterbrink und F. Niewöhner unter Mit­ wirkung von K.E. Grözinger, Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, 527 f. 21 Ibid., 359.

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Idee der historischen Annihilation des Gottesurteils« bezeichnet, und »gerecht ist diejenige Tat, die das Gottesurteil über sie neutralisiert«22. Der Schlüsselbegriff, dessen sich Scholem in diesem Zusammenhang bedient, und der in seinem antithetischen Verhältnis zur Zukunft als Spiegelbild der Vorwegnahme betrachtet werden darf, ist die Kategorie des Aufschubs: »Der zur Handlung gewordene Aufschub ist Gerechtigkeit als Tat«23, schreibt er; und wenn anderweitig »die Gerechtigkeit das Schicksal eliminiert«, so gibt sie zugleich »in der Idee des Aufschubs« »den Methodos dieser Elimination an«24. Um die »substantielle« Ordnung der Gerechtigkeit als eine jeder Möglichkeit einer Antizipation entzogene zur Geltung zu bringen, und um dadurch den Rahmen näher zu bestimmen, in dem eine solche Neutralisierung durch Aufschub stattfinden soll, bezieht sich Scholem auf Maimonides’ Auffassung der »kommenden Welt« [’olam ha-ba] als einer »beständig da seienden«25. Wesentlich ist dabei für Scholem, dass »Gerechtigkeit [...] kein Grenzbegriff, kein Limes, keine mechanischunendliche, annäherungsfähige regulative Idee [ist]«26. Hier geht es nicht um ein Erreichen, denn »die Erreichung ist eine ebenso falsche Auffassung der Aufgabe wie die, dass die Aufgabe selbst mechanisch-zeit­ lich unendlich sei«. Es handelt sich dagegen »um die Auffindung des messianischen Gesichtspunktes«, d.h. um »die Erkenntnis, dass die kommende Welt das messianisch verstandene Heute ist«27. In einem anderen Text aus derselben Zeit meint Scholem in die­ sem Sinne zwischen »zwei Strömungen des Messianismus« unterschei­ den zu können: gegenüber der apokalyptisch-revolutionären, die die »kommende Welt« mit der »Zukunft, die kommt« [’atid la-vo] identifi­ ziert, bevorzugt er dabei die »verwandelnde«28, die zwischen beiden

Ibid., 527. Ibid., 528. 24 Ibid., 529. 25 Hilkoth Teschuba VIII,8; Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 529. 26 Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 529, vgl. auch 361. 27 Ibid., 357. – Über die »prinzipiell neue Stellung zur Zeit«, die hier beabsichtigt wird, vgl. Daniel Weidner, Gershom Scholem. Politisches, esoterisches und historiographisches Schreiben, Fink, München 2003, 216ff. 28 Diese Bezeichnung hängt mit Scholems Identifikation des messianischen Reichs mit der (reinen) »Zeit [bzw. Welt] der Verwandlung« zusammen (Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 362, 529f.). Hierzu vgl. Elke Dubbels, Figuren des Messianischen in Schriften deutsch-jüdi­ scher Intellektueller 1900–1933, De Gruyter, Berlin 2011, 133f., 286. 22 23

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unterscheidet29. Ihre Charakteristik lautet: »ganz innerlich, Weltgericht neutralisiert, jedenfalls kein Untergang«; und als ihre Resultante ergibt sich demgemäß: »das Ende der Tage – heute. Jene Welt ist diese Welt. Messianische Zukunft ist keine empirische Zukunft«30.

3. Maimonides, Cohen und Rosenzweig Aus einer anderen Notiz wird ersichtlich, dass Scholem auf Maimoni­ des’ Unterscheidung zwischen kommender Welt und künftiger Zeit, trotz seiner Vorbehalte gegenüber einigen anderen Aspekten der dort vorgeschlagenen Auslegung, durch die Lektüre von Cohens Abhandlung »Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis« aufmerksam gemacht wurde31. Für Cohen soll Maimonides’ Auffassung der »kommenden Welt« als einer »beständig da seienden« zu einer »Entsinnlichung des Jenseit« geführt haben, der eine »Idealisierung des Diesseit in der messianischen Zeit« entspricht32. Durch eine solche Unterscheidung habe Maimonides in 29 Über die Bedeutung von Scholems Aneignung von Maimonides’ Unterscheidung vgl. Dubbels, op. cit., 139f. – Scholem soll sich übrigens in jener Zeit auch mit dem Problem der Identifizierung bzw. Unterscheidung zwischen messianischer Zeit und kommender Welt in den talmudischen Quellen eingehend beschäftigt haben: vgl. Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 372. 30 Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 380 (Hervorhebung des Verfassers); vgl. Dubbels, op. cit., 285f. 31 Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 357f. – Scholem schreibt hier, ohne weitere Erläuterungen, dass Cohens Deutung der maimunischen Ethik »unbefriedigend« bleiben muss, weil ihr »keine Entfaltung der messianischen Kategorien voraufgegangen ist«. Gewiss mag dabei Scholems Überzeugung, dass durch die Identifikation der kommenden Welt mit dem Jenseits die Tiefe ihrer Idee aufgehoben würde, in seiner kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit Cohens Interpretation eine erhebliche Rolle gespielt haben. Andererseits darf aber die Tatsache nicht außer Acht gelassen werden, dass gerade die messianische Idee der »ewigen Gegenwart«, die in diesem Zusammenhang für Scholem eine zentrale Rolle spielt (Ibid., 357; vgl. auch 529), von ihm in der Notiz »Bemerkungen über die Zeit im Judentum« unter Rekurs auf Cohen erarbeitet worden war (Ibid., 235f.; hierzu vgl. Weidner, op. cit., 219). – Ein anderer Schwerpunkt von besonderer Relevanz in Scholems Auseinandersetzung mit Cohen betrifft die Schöpfung aus dem Nichts: über Nähe und Distanz beider Denker hinsichtlich dieses Themas vgl. nun vor allem Günter Bader, »›Creatio ex nihilo‹ bei Cohen«, in: Heinrich Assel, Hartwig Wiedebach (Hrsg.), Cohen im Kontext. Beiträge anlässlich seines hundertsten Todestages, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2021, 293–315. 32 Hermann Cohen, »Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis« (1908), in: Kleinere Schriften IV (1907–1912), bearbeitet und eingeleitet von H. Wiedebach (= Werke, Bd. 15), Olms, Hildesheim u.a. 2009, 258–260. – Über die Bedeutung von Maimonides’ Unterscheidung vgl. in diesem Sinne die klare Darstellung von Friedrich Niewöhner, »Jenseits und

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diesem Sinne – so Cohen in seinem Nachlasswerk – »den Messianismus [...] vom Utopismus befreit, nichtsdestoweniger aber die Grundzüge des ethischen Sozialismus in ihm verzeichnet und festgelegt«33. Indem so das Gottesreich der messianischen Zukunft für mein Pflichtbewusstsein »zu einer Gegenwart und persönlichen Wirklichkeit« wird, lässt sich jedoch auch das Verhältnis zwischen messianischer und empirischer Zukunft neu bestimmen. Von der ersteren schreibt Cohen demgemäß im selben Zusammenhang, dass sie »nicht auf die Zukunft [wartet]«, sondern »mein ganzes Leben und jeden Moment meines Daseins [erfüllt]«34. Die messianische Zukunft soll in diesem Sinne für Cohen als eine Zukunft verstanden werden, die – ohne je Gegenwart zu werden – sich als Zukunft in jeder Gegenwart zu verwirklichen hat. Jene qualitative Differenz gegenüber aller Gegenwart, die nach der Logik der reinen Erkenntnis die in der Vorwegnahme zum Ausdruck kommende »ursprüngliche Tat der Zukunft« kennzeichnete und Letztere von der üblichen Auffassung der Zukunft als einer der zeitlichen Sukzession zufolge jeweils an die Reihe kommenden Dimension unterschied35, findet nun im Nachlass­ werk ihre Bestätigung und gesteigerte Anerkennung. Die Zukunft wird nämlich hier als eine »neue Art von Übersinnlichkeit« bezeichnet, die der Messianismus an die Stelle der »sinnlichen Gegenwart« gesetzt hat36. Das messianische Zeitalter wird dementsprechend als eine Verwandlung der Zeit in reine Zukunft verstanden, und es ist gemäß einer solchen Auffassung der »idealen Zukunft«, dass Cohen auch seinen Begriff der Idealisierung verstanden wissen will: »Die Zeit wird Zukunft und nur Zukunft. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart versinken in dieser Zeit der Zukunft. Dieser Rückgang in die Zeit ist die reinste Idealisierung«37. Aus mehreren Briefzeugnissen wissen wir, dass Rosenzweig im Sommersemester 1914 Cohens Übungen über Maimonides an der Berli­ ner Lehranstalt besucht hat, die auf ihn offensichtlich eine nachhaltige

Zukunft. Über eine Differenz im 12. Jahrhundert«, in: Eveline Goodman-Thau (Hrsg.), Vom Jenseits. Jüdisches Denken in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1997, 61–69. 33 Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, 2. Aufl., Kauffmann, Frankfurt am Main 1929, 361. 34 Ibid., 360. 35 Vgl. Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Nachdruck der 2. Aufl., Berlin 1914, Einleitung von Helmut Holzhey (= Werke, Bd. 6), Olms, Hildesheim u.a. 1977, 154f. 36 Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, cit., 338. 37 Ibid., 291.

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Wirkung ausübten38. Auf den Eindruck jenes Seminars ist wahrscheinlich auch der Tagebucheintrag vom 27. Juni zurückzuführen, in dem Rosen­ zweig das für ihn zentrale Thema des »Wir sind schon am Ziel« mit einer besonderen Auffassung der Zukunft in Verbindung setzt: »Was bedeutet die Alljährlichkeit des Weltgerichts [am Neujahrstag] bei uns? Dass wir ›schon am Ziel‹ sind. Deswegen kann der Zukunftsgedanke bei uns so rein diesseitig-moralisch gefasst werden (Maimonides! Cohen!) weil das Jenseits religiös als schon gegenwärtig gewusst wird«39. Eröffnet also die strenge Unterscheidung zwischen geschichtlicher und religiöser Ebene für Rosenzweig hier das, was wir mit Benjamin eine »entzauberte« Zukunft nennen könnten40, so führt im Gegenteil gerade das Fehlen einer solchen Unterscheidung für ihn zu den verhängnisvollen Konsequenzen, die seines Erachtens den Islam kennzeichnen würden. In demselben Eintrag wird nämlich dem letzteren in diesem Sinne vorgeworfen, »nur die natürliche Zukunft [religionifiziert]« zu haben41. Bei Cohen, Rosenzweig und Scholem führt also die Auseinan­ dersetzung mit Maimonides zur Anerkennung der Notwendigkeit, ver­ schiedene Formen von Zukunft zu unterscheiden, um so durch die Inauguration einer komplexeren Zeitauffassung nicht zuletzt auch das zerstörerische Potential des Religiösen zu bändigen bzw. neutralisie­ ren42. In Scholems Terminologie übersetzt, könnte man das, was in Rosenzweigs Worten eigene Züge gewinnt, eine ›Neutralisierung durch Vorwegnahme‹ bezeichnen. Dasselbe Thema wird später im Kapitel über »Die Feste der Erlösung« vom Stern der Erlösung wiederaufgenommen, wo Rosenzweig mit Bezug auf den Neujahrstag von der »jährlichen Wiederkehr [...] des ›jüngsten‹ Gerichts« spricht, in der »die Ewigkeit von aller jenseitigen Ferne befreit [ist]«: »Es gilt kein Warten, kein sich verkriechen hinter die Geschichte. Der Einzelne unmittelbar wird Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher, hrsg. von Rachel Rosenzweig und Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann unter Mitwirkung von Bernhard Casper, 2 Bde, Nijhoff, Den Haag 1979, 588, 805. 39 Ibid., 165. 40 Vgl. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, unter Mitwirkung von Theodor W. Adorno und Gershom Scholem hrsg. von Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppen­ häuser, 7 Bde, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 1972–1989, I.2, 704: »Über den Begriff der Geschichte«, These B. 41 Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher, cit., 165. 42 Über Cohens Kritik der politischen Utopie vgl. in diesem Sinne Almut Sh. Brucksteins Kommentar in Hermann Cohen, Ethics of Maimonides, translated with commentary by Almut Sh. Bruckstein, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2004, 170–177. 38

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gerichtet«43. Wir befinden uns im ersten Buch des dritten Teils, das bei Scholem die gravierendsten Vorbehalte geweckt hat. Nur wenige Seiten später wird Rosenzweig von dem »Volk am Ziel« reden, das »sich die Ewigkeit vorweggenommen [hat]« und »in seiner eigenen Erlösung [lebt]«44. Auffallend ist hier zunächst die spiegelbildliche Entsprechung zwi­ schen Scholems Aufschub und Rosenzweigs Vorwegnahme des Gottes­ urteils; eine Entsprechung, die ihren Fokus darin besitzt, dass auch Rosenzweigs Vorwegnahme sich in eine Neutralisierungsstrategie integ­ riert, über deren Bewertung durch Scholem ich jetzt versuchen möchte, Näheres zu sagen45. Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, 4. Aufl., Nijhoff, Den Haag 1976, 360. Ibid., 364. 45 Ein weiteres Thema, worüber ein Vergleich zwischen Scholem und Rosenzweig ange­ stellt werden könnte, betrifft die Frage nach dem Status des menschlichen Gerichtsurteils. Während das im Prophetismus neutralisierte Gottesurteil für Scholem »seine eigene Vollstreckung ist« (Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 527), bleibt das »menschliche Gerichtsur­ teil« für ihn »seiner Vollstreckung transzendent« und »Gerechtigkeit füllt den Abgrund zwischen ihnen aus« (Ibid., 529). Als Zeugnis des »große[n] Triumph[s] der Gerechtigkeit im talmudischen Recht wie im rabbinischen Judentum überhaupt« führt Scholem in diesem Zusammenhang die Tatsache an, dass das talmudische Recht die Todesstrafe zwar nicht in Frage stellt, aber »die Idee des Aufschubes in der außerordentlichen Zeugniserschwerung in allen Kriminalurteilen [realisiert]«, wodurch »das Urteil [...] praktisch durch Erschwerungen unmöglich gemacht [wird]« (Ibid., 528): diejenige »eindeutige Beziehung des richterlichen Urteils auf die Exekutive«, die die »eigentliche Rechtsordnung« bildet, wird so im »Aufschub der Exekutive« aufgehoben (Ibid., 526). Die hier angesprochene Fragestellung mitsamt der damit verbundenen Unterscheidung zwischen dem »Standpunkt des Rechtes« und demjenigen der Gerechtigkeit (Ibidem) lässt sich mit dem problematischen Status des Gerichtsurteils in Verbindung setzen, den Rosenzweig im Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand thematisiert. Dem Misstrauen, das für den Richter dadurch entsteht, dass er in seinem Urteilen »sich an die Bezeichnung des Verbrechens [hält], wie sie das geltende Recht gibt« (Franz Rosenzweig, Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand, Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2018, 44), während die Strafe, die sein Urteil ausspricht, »weit in die Zukunft hineinstraft« (Ibid., 43), soll jedoch nach Rosenzweig nicht mit dem »anarchischen Suspens« begegnet werden, den Scholem mit dem »Handeln im Aufschub« verbindet (vgl. Scholem, Walter Benjamin, cit., 93), sondern mit der »Gewissheit«, dass »der Anfang, den der stets einzelne Mensch mit seinem Wort setzt, fort-gesetzt [werde] bis zum letzten Ziel der allgemeinen Sprache« (Rosenzweig, Büchlein, cit., 74). In seinem brillanten Aufsatz »›The All and the Everyday‹: Franz Rosenzweig and Ordinary Language Philosophy« (in: Iyyun. The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 69, 2021, 249–279) betont Benjamin Pollock, Rosenzweig würde sich hier auf eine Allgemeinheit beziehen, die in allen unseren konventionellen Sprechakten implizit vorhanden ist, und für deren Explikation und Verwirklichung wir Verantwortung 43

44

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4. Neutralisierungsstrategien Das Thema ist deshalb ziemlich kompliziert, weil Scholem sich später in verschiedenen Zusammenhängen des gewiss sehr suggestiven Neutrali­ sierungsbegriffs weiter bedient hat, ohne jedoch dabei eine ausführliche Theorie der Neutralisierung je zu bieten. Amir Engel meint deshalb sogar in seiner 2017 erschienenen intellektuellen Biographie Scholems, den Ausdruck »Neutralisierung« wegen seiner »begrifflichen Instabilität« vermeiden zu müssen46. Eine zentrale Rolle spielt in diesem Zusammenhang gewiss der 1969 erschienene Aufsatz über die »Neutralisierung des messianischen Elements im frühen Chassidismus«47. Wird aber hier der Neutralisie­ rungsbegriff – anders als in den Tagebüchern, wo ihm eine eindeutig posi­

übernehmen müssen. In diesem Sinne schreibt er: »If we recall Rosenzweig’s depiction of the mistrust a judge may come to feel when she catches a glimpse of her own role in maintaining human conventions, we might suggest this mistrust comes especially from being called on to determine what the case is regarding a particular person and action from the perspective of an ultimate human community that is not yet actual« (Ibid., 276). Andererseits kann aber das Vertrauen in die Möglichkeit, durch die Explikation der in unseren alltäglichen Sprechakten latenten Allgemeinheit den Standpunkt des Rechtes in denjenigen der Gerechtigkeit zu überführen, für Rosenzweig letztlich doch nur in der Überzeugung einer latenten Präsenz des Göttlichen in unserer Sprache gründen, bzw. in der »Gewissheit, [...] Wort aller zu werden«, die seines Erachtens das Wort Gottes in sich tragen würde (Rosenzweig, Büchlein, cit., 76; vgl. auch 103f.). Der Alltag bleibt in diesem Sinne auch im Büchlein, wie seine letzten zwei Kapitel zeigen, auf die Feiertage verwiesen, in denen das Leben vorläufig »die endgültige, in sich selber zurückkehrende Ewigkeit des Stromes [erlebt]« (Ibid., 113). – Für die Anregung, einen möglichen Vergleich zwischen Scholem und Rosenzweig um diesen weiteren, hier nur als Desiderat angedeuteten Aspekt zu erweitern, möchte ich mich an dieser Stelle bei Benjamin Pollock bedanken. Auf die auch hier zutage tretende Dominanz eines teleologisch-eschatologischen Paradigmas in Rosenzweigs Denken werde ich später zurückkommen. 46 Amir Engel, Gershom Scholem. An Intellectual Biography, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2017, 132, vgl. auch 161. 47 Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, Schocken Books, New York 1971, 176–202. – Nach Biales Rekonstruktion soll Scholem den Ausdruck »Neutralisierung« zum ersten Mal in seinem Aufsatz Nach der Vertreibung aus Spanien verwendet haben (vgl. David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, second revised edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1982, 79 und Gershom Scholem, »Nach der Vertreibung aus Spanien. Zur Geschichte der Kabbala«, in: Almanach des Schocken Verlags auf das Jahr 5694, 1934, 55–70, hier insbes. 56). Die Veröffentlichung der Tagebücher hat aber m.E. für die Diskussion dieses Themas neue und nicht unerhebliche Elemente ans Licht gebracht.

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tive Bedeutung zugeschrieben wurde48 – mit dem Quietismusverdacht verbunden, so ist sich Scholem andererseits nach wie vor (und vor allem nach der Verbreitung der revisionistischen Bewegung Zeev Jabotinskys) auch der Gefahren bewusst, die der »Missbrauch messianischer Katego­ rien für politische Aktionen« in sich birgt49. Welche Bedeutung kann also für ihn in diesem Zusammenhang die Strategie der Neutralisierung à la Rosenzweig haben? Bemerkenswert ist zunächst in dieser Hinsicht, dass an der Stelle, wo Scholem im Artikel »Zur Neuauflage des ›Stern der Erlösung‹« von Rosenzweigs Versuch spricht, die der Erlösung innewohnende zerstöre­ rische Gewalt »in einer höheren Ordnung der Wahrheit aufzuheben«50, in der von ihm genehmigten amerikanischen Übersetzung von Michael A. Meyer von Rosenzweigs Versuch »to neutralize it« die Rede ist51. In seinem Kommentar zu dieser Stelle schreibt David Biale, dass obwohl »die apokalyptischen und anarchischen Kräfte dem ›geordneten Haus‹ des Judentums neue Vitalität gaben, [...] sie ›neutralisiert‹ werden muss­ ten, damit das Judentum und die Juden nicht zerstört wurden«52. »Es war diese Neutralisierung, – heißt es dann bei ihm weiter – die Rosenzweig in seiner Philosophie vornahm. Scholem befürwortete eindeutig diesen Schritt, aber er bedauerte, dass Rosenzweig ihn unternommen hatte, ohne die historische Macht der jüdischen Apokalyptik anzuerkennen«53. Gerade um die Frage beantworten zu können, in welchem Maße Scholem Rosenzweigs Schritt befürworten konnte, mag eine nähere Berücksichtigung der Art und Weise relevant sein, wie sich Rosenzweig im Stern des Antizipationsbegriffs bedient. Die begrifflichen Grund­ prämissen seiner Theorie vom »Volk am Ziel« sind in diesem Sinne bereits im dritten Buch des zweiten Teils zu finden. Hier wird »das 48 Dasselbe gilt übrigens auch für den chassidischen Begriff devequt: vgl. Scholem, Tagebücher, cit., 361–363. 49 Vgl. Dubbels, op. cit., 303ff. – Über das Verhältnis zwischen Zionismus und Messi­ anismus vgl. Gershom Scholem, »Es gibt ein Geheimnis in der Welt«. Tradition und Säkularisation, herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Itta Shedletzky, Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, 101–105. 50 Scholem, »Zur Neuauflage des ›Stern der Erlösung‹«, cit., 233 (Hervorhebung des Ver­ fassers). 51 Scholem, The Messianic Idea, cit., 323. 52 David Biale, Gershom Scholem. Master of the Kabbalah, Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2018, 105; deutsche Übersetzung des Verfassers. 53 Ibidem. (ähnlich Maor, op. cit., 12, an der bereits in der Anm. 9 zitierten Stelle). – Zu Biales Interpretation von Scholems Zionismus als einem »neutralisierten Messianismus« vgl. Dubbels, op. cit., 318.

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Vorwegnehmen«, das die eigentliche Zukunft von der nie kommenden des unendlichen Fortschritts unterscheidet und sie in eine »Zeit der Ewigkeit« verwandelt, mit dem Umstand identifiziert, dass »das Ende jeden Augenblick erwartet werden muss«54. Vorwegnahme ist also für Rosenzweig grundsätzlich Vorwegnahme des Endes. Zunächst ist hier zu bemerken, dass die eschatologische Wendung, die so dem ganzen Sachverhalt gegeben wird, auch den Assonanzen mit Cohen, die sonst im Stern der Erlösung über die Verschränkung von Gegenwart und Zukunft durch die Antizipation zu finden sind, eine mit dem Cohenschen Ansatz völlig unverträgliche Bedeutung ver­ leiht55. Cohen braucht nämlich kein eschatologisches Tonikum, um die »ursprüngliche Tat der Zukunft« von der üblichen Auffassung derselben als ein unendliches Vorrücken in eine vorgegebene zeitliche ›Dimension‹ zu unterscheiden. Gegen eine solche mechanisch-zeitliche Unendlichkeit geht es vielmehr auch bei ihm, gerade wie bei Scholem, um die Auffin­ dung eines »messianischen Gesichtspunktes«. Wie Benjamin Pollock mit Bezug auf das Kapitel der Ethik des reinen Willens über »Das Ideal« mit Recht bemerkt hat, »versteht Cohen den Menschen so, dass er bereits an der Unendlichkeit – und damit am Messianischen – teilhat, insofern er den ewigen Gesichtspunkt der messianischen Menschheit einnimmt«56. Der »Blickpunkt« der Ewigkeit, von dem Cohen in jenem Zusammenhang behauptet, er bilde »den unendlich fernen Punkt [...] für jeden endlichen Punkt«57, darf aber nicht mit »dem einen fern und nahen Augenpunkt des Endes« verwechselt werden, in dem die jüdische Hoff­ nung sich für Rosenzweig »aus aller Vielfältigkeit der Zeit heraus ewig [vereint]«58. Beide oben genannten Punkte müssen für Cohen »zusam­ mengenommen werden«59, um dadurch zu zeigen, wie einerseits »die Rosenzweig, Stern, cit., 252. Vgl. vor allem Ibid., 250: »Ewigkeit ist eine Zukunft, die, ohne aufzuhören Zukunft zu sein, dennoch gegenwärtig ist«. – Hierzu vgl. Pierfrancesco Fiorato / Hartwig Wiedebach, »Hermann Cohen im Stern der Erlösung«, in: Martin Brasser (Hrsg.), Rosenzweig als Leser. Kontextuelle Kommentare zum »Stern der Erlösung«, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, 305–355, insbes. 345ff. 56 Benjamin Pollock, »To Infinity and Beyond: Cohen and Rosenzweig on Comportment toward Redemption«, in: Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman (eds.), Rethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2015, 174–194, hier insbes. 185; deutsche Übersetzung des Verfassers. 57 Hermann Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, Nachdruck der 2. Aufl., Berlin 1907, Einlei­ tung von Peter A. Schmid (= Werke, Bd. 7), Olms, Hildesheim u.a. 2012, 411. 58 Rosenzweig, Stern, cit., 386 (Hervorhebung des Verfassers). 59 Cohen, Ethik, cit., 411. 54 55

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Ewigkeit auf die Zeitlichkeit bezogen [ist]«, bzw. »in jeder Nussschale die Unendlichkeit [liegt]«, während andererseits »jede Stufe der Immanenz [...] zugleich den Abstand dar[stellt]«60. Bemerkenswert ist hier mit Bezug auf Scholem die Tatsache, dass es für Cohen die Gerechtigkeit ist, die »den Blick gespannt auf den Abstand der Wirklichkeit vom ewigen Ideal [hält]«: indem ihre Blickachse so die Dimension der Geschichte begründet und sie sich als die tragende Achse einer solchen Dimension erweist, verdient für Cohen die Gerechtigkeit den Titel der »Tugend der Geschichte«61. Im Gegensatz zu Rosenzweig geht es in Cohens Theorie der Antizipation nämlich darum zu betonen, dass die Zeit sich ihrer ursprünglichen Natur gemäß nur ›als Zukunft‹ erfüllen kann. Die Vorwegnahme hat also für ihn die Aufgabe, die ursprüngliche Öffnung der Zeit wiederherzustellen, um so die prinzipielle Unabgeschlossenheit der Geschichte zu ermöglichen62. David Biale hat bezeichnenderweise in dieser Auffassung der Geschichte als eines grundsätzlich offenen Vor­ gangs eine tiefgreifende Verwandtschaft zwischen Cohen und Scholem erblickt, die, trotz ihrer verschiedenen Ansätze, die Idee von einem »Aufschub der messianischen Zeiten in die Zukunft« teilen würden63. Mag nun im Gegensatz zu einer solchen Idee des Aufschubs Rosen­ zweigs Gedanke einer Vorwegnahme des Endes, das »jeden Augenblick Ibid., 424. Ibid., 601. Hierzu vgl. Pierfrancesco Fiorato, »Der Blickpunkt der Ewigkeit. Zur Optik des Messianismus bei Hermann Cohen«, in: Archivio di Filosofia, 71 (2003), 233– 244, insbes. 241ff. – An der bereits erwähnten Stelle, wo er im Nachlasswerk von der Verwandlung der Zeit in reine Zukunft spricht, schreibt Cohen bezeichnenderweise, dass gerade indem »das Dasein der Menschen [...] sich [...] in dieses Sein der Zukunft [aufhebt], [...] für das Menschenleben und das Völkerleben der Gedanke der Geschichte [entsteht]« (Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, cit., 291). 62 Über die grundsätzliche Verschiedenheit zwischen Rosenzweigs und Cohens Auffas­ sung der Geschichte vgl. Myriam Bienenstock, Cohen und Rosenzweig. Ihre Auseinander­ setzung mit dem deutschen Idealismus, Alber, Freiburg/München 2018, 190ff. 63 Vgl. Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, cit., 77f. und dann vor allem 109: »We note again how similar Scholem’s understanding of messianism is to Hermann Cohen’s in its deferral of messianic times to the future. Both are ›utopians‹ in their belief that the history of Judaism is open-ended [...]. Both renounce apocalyptic messianism, but Scholem’s understanding of the dialectic of Jewish history causes him to believe that apocalypticism is not overcome by a straightforward negation, but only by the dialectical neutralization of its destructive capacities«. – Über die Möglichkeit, den Begriff des Aufschubs für eine Interpretation von Cohens Messianismus zu verwenden vgl. Pierfrancesco Fiorato, »Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen’s Anti-Eschato­ logical Messianism«, in: Reinier Munk (ed.), Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism, Springer, Dordrecht 2005, 133–160, insbes. 142 u. 158. 60

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erwartet werden muss«, – so Elliot Wolfsons Einwand gegen Scholem64 – prima facie gerade die Idee einer apokalyptisch in die Geschichte einbrechenden Instanz hervorrufen65, so wird dieser Gedanke jedoch dann durch die Verbindung mit dem Zielbegriff in ein teleologisches Paradigma umgesetzt, das Scholems Gedankenwelt grundsätzlich fremd bleiben musste66. Das, was ich oben eine ›Neutralisierung durch Vor­ wegnahme‹ zu nennen vorgeschlagen habe, gewinnt teleologisch-escha­ tologische Züge, und dies muss m. E. als der entscheidende Punkt angesehen werden, der Rosenzweigs Distanz sowohl von Cohens als auch von Scholems Perspektive markiert. Das Thema der Offenheit der Geschichte ist bei beiden letztgenannten Denkern darüber hinaus mit einem grundsätzlichen ethischen Anliegen unzertrennlich verbunden, von dem bezeichnenderweise bei Rosenzweig, aufgrund der genannten Prämissen, sich nur schwerlich signifikante Spuren finden lassen. Die Neutralisierungsstrategie, die von ihm in Gang gesetzt wird, scheint nicht nur mit Cohens Geste einer ethischen Idealisierung des Diesseits kaum mehr etwas gemeinsam zu haben, sondern auch mit Scholems Versuch, so Christoph Schmidt, aus der »Neutralisierung des Messianischen« eine Ethik zu begründen67. Vgl. Elliot R. Wolfson, »Facing the Effaced: Mystical Eschatology and the Idealistic Orientation in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig«, in: Journal for the History of Modern Theology 4, 1997, 39–81, insbes. 63ff. 65 Beachtenswert ist diesbezüglich, was Scholem im Brief an Edith Rosenzweig vom 29. Oktober 1931 über das von ihm gebrauchte Bild vom »Blitz der Erlösung« schreibt, dessen »zerstörende Gewalt« Rosenzweig zu neutralisieren versucht haben sollte (vgl. Scholem, »Zur Neuauflage des ›Stern der Erlösung‹«, cit., 233): »Und dass es für einen Denker wie Rosenzweig den ›Blitz der Erlösung‹ nicht geben sollte, [...] dem scheint mir doch die Haltung des Sterns nicht minder als die Kommentare zu Juda halewi deutlich zu widersprechen. Auch für die antiapokalyptische Gesinnung Rosenzweigs ist ja die Erlö­ sung kein Pensum, das dargereicht werden könnte. Eine Erlösung, die der Spontaneität entbehrte, wäre keine mehr [...]. Eine transzendente Spontaneität aber ist der Blitz, und der alte Heraklit hat recht« (Scholem Briefe. Band I, cit., 249f.). 66 Über das »Telos des [...] dem Menschen gesetzlos erscheinenden messianischen Prozesses« vgl. Dubbels, op. cit., 66–68. 67 Christoph Schmidt, Die theopolitische Stunde. Zwölf Perspektiven auf das eschatologi­ sche Problem der Moderne, Fink, München 2009, 191 (hierzu vgl. auch Emmanuel Taub, »Historia y neutralización: el mesianismo judío de Gershom Scholem«, in: Eadem Utra­ que Europa, 9 n. 14, 2013, 115–136). – Schmidt stellt in diesem Zusammenhang Scholems Perspektive einer Begründung der Ethik »aus der Neutralisierung des Messianischen« ausdrücklich als Umkehrung von Cohens (und Bubers) Projekt dar, eine »Ethik auf der Grundlage des jüdischen Messianismus« zu entwerfen. Andererseits eröffnet aber die Affinität mit Cassirers »Ethik des Symbols«, die er in Scholems »Kabbala der symbolischen Formen« als einer »jüdische[n] Fortsetzung der Aufklärung auf der Grundlage der 64

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In der Sekundärliteratur gebührt vor allem Peter Eli Gordon das Verdienst, auf die sonst allzu oft übersehene Tatsache aufmerksam gemacht zu haben, dass die Ethik kein zentrales Anliegen in Rosenzweigs Denken gewesen ist. In seinem Buch über Rosenzweig und Heidegger hat er in diesem Sinne die durch die Levinas-Forschung begünstigte Lektüre von Rosenzweig als einem Ethiker bestritten: gegen die Neigung, ihn insbesondere als einen Theoretiker der Alterität zu betrachten, meint er, Rosenzweig eher in die Tradition des Holismus einordnen zu dürfen68. Diese Überlegungen haben relevante Konsequenzen auch für das hier von uns erörterte Thema. Gerade im Hinblick auf diejenige Erlösungslehre, die den Gegenstand unserer vorliegenden Ausführungen bildet, spricht Gordon von »a theory of temporal holism«69: Von dersel­ ben »brennenden Sehnsucht nach Ultimität [ultimacy]« getrieben, die Heideggers ›eigentliche Existenz‹ kennzeichnet, soll eine solche Theorie schließlich auch bei Rosenzweig zu einem Zurücktreten der ethischen Dimension gegenüber einer Ontologie geführt haben, die ihren letzten Horizont in der Geschlossenheit eines holistischen Paradigmas findet70. Dies scheint also schließlich das zwangsläufige Endergebnis derje­ nigen ›Neutralisierung durch Vorwegnahme‹ zu sein, die Rosenzweig im Rahmen seiner Erlösungslehre inszeniert. Scholem wird bekannt­ lich mehrere Jahre später, in den berühmten Seiten über den »Preis des Messianismus«, seine Vorbehalte gegenüber einem »Leben im Auf­ schub« äußern, »in welchem nichts in endgültiger Weise getan und vollzogen werden kann«, um dann auf dieser Basis die messianische Idee als »die eigentliche anti-existentialistische Idee« zu bezeichnen71. Auch diese Vorbehalte werden ihn jedoch keineswegs einer umgekehrten Neutralisierungsstrategie näher bringen können, die auf den Spuren von Heideggers Sorge um das Ganz-sein-können des Daseins, Gefahr läuft, sich zuletzt in einer präsentischen Eschatologie zu schließen72. Sie tilgen nämlich die Unruhe einer Geschichte nicht, die, von der Notwendigkeit einer dialektischen Neutralisierung (aber nicht Liquidierung) der zer­ Dialektik von Leben und Form« feststellen zu können meint (Schmidt, op. cit., 190), die Möglichkeit eines weiteren Vergleichs mit der ethischen Einbindung der Religiosität, die Cohens ›idealisierende‹ Aneignung des Messianismus kennzeichnet. 68 Vgl. Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger. Between Judaism and German Philosophy, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 2003, 11f. und passim. 69 Ibid., 202ff. 70 Vgl. Ibid., 288; für die zentrale Rolle der »ultimacy« vgl. auch 150. – Zu Rosenzweigs Ethik des »zu-nächst Nächsten« vgl. andererseits Dubbels, op. cit., 69f. 71 Scholem, »Zum Verständnis der messianischen Idee im Judentum«, cit., 167. 72 Hierzu vgl. P. Mendes-Flohrs Rede von einer »realized eschatology« in der Anm. 12.

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störerischen Potentialität des apokalyptischen Messianismus getrieben, nur in ihrer radikalen Offenheit zur Zukunft letztendlich ihren Sinn finden kann.

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Is Mathematics Essential in The Star of Redemption?

In memory of Norbert Samuelson (1936–2022)

Introduction The mathematical apparatus employed by Franz Rosenzweig is typically seen as a tool, or organon, used by him at one level of his system, particularly in grasping the elements in the first part of The Star.1 In that context, the infinitesimals, as they appear in the differential and integral calculus, hold paramount significance. This claim is generally known, as is Rosenzweig’s indebtedness to his »master« Hermann Cohen, specifi­ cally to Cohen’s 1883 and 1902 books. According to Norbert Samuelson, Rosenzweig strengthens Cohen's use of mathematics. His »universe is understood in terms of vector analysis and calculus. … [it] affirms a dynamic universe of endless intentional processes.«2 The question addressed here is, can we decide how essential is the use of mathematics in The Star? Often it is considered to be metaphorical or allegorical application of mathematical concepts. A typical opinion would be, »Evidently, Rosenzweig did not make up his mind whether the ›formal‹ language (symbols) with which he speaks of the element is mathematics or is only like mathematics. But of course it could only be the latter.«3 So, according to this assessment, mathematics is used merely as a metaphor, mathematical images function as a source of ideas, but they are not genuine mathematics. 1 Barbara Galli’s translation of Der Stern der Erlösung is generally used here (Rosenzweig 2005) and referred to as The Star. An earlier translation, by William Hallo, is sometimes mentioned (Rosenzweig 1970). 2 Samuelson 2007, 70. 3 Funkenstein 1993, 288.

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This opinion is rejected by Matthew Handelman in two highly interesting publications: 2012 and 2019. According to him, it is wrong to see it »only as a ›metaphor‹, an ›analogy‹.« He makes two steps that are supposed to change our appreciation of the role of mathematics in The Star and in Rosenzweig’s thought in general. First, in 2012, he shows that Rosenzweig was not only using Cohen’s insights – as was stressed by all commentators – but that he had read mathematical treatises before meeting Cohen and studying with him. Those books provided conceptual insights used later in The Star. Secondly, according to Handelman 2019, The Star’s messianic vision is also informed by those mathematical concepts. The present paper aims to reconsider the issue, taking into account Handelman’s contribution and the insights of Samuelson (1999 and 2007), and resorting to other recent scholarship devoted to Cohen and Rosenzweig, especially Edgar (2020), Giovanelli (2016), without disregarding critical attitudes of mathematicians to both Cohen and Rosenzweig. How is it possible to resolve the problem arising from contradictory opinions regarding Rosenzweig’s and Cohen’s use of math­ ematics? A natural way out is proposed: while mathematics is essential for The Star in the context of discovery, it is not essential in the context of justification.

Cohen’s part of the story Cohen’s 1883 book Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode and seine Geschichte: Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Erkenntniskritik represents, says Marco Giovanelli,4 »a strange case of an unsuccessful book’s endur­ ing influence.«5 It was unsuccessful because it was widely criticized as mistaken. Even »within the Marburg community, Cohen’s philosophy of the infinitesimal calculus seems to have been a source of embarrass­ ment.«6 At the same time, the book was influential because it introduced a method of doing philosophy of science that other members of the Mar­ burg school continued. What remained influential was Cohen’s method of historical analysis of cases done in order to reveal conceptual advances Giovanelli 2015 and 2016 is the source of the English translations of Cohen’s treatise used below. 5 Giovanelli 2016, 9. 6 Giovanelli 2016, 10. 4

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and the underlying general principles, for instance, the principle of continuity or the principle of sufficient reason (cf. Edgar 2020). The 1883 book defends »the claim that mathematical natural science can represent individual objects only if it represents infinitesimal magni­ tudes.«7 For Cohen, ordinary motion, »the finite inasmuch as it aspires to have objective validity,«8 is not simply ›given‹; to become a legitimate object of scientific experience, it should be regarded as a »result,« that is to say, »as the sum of those infinitesimal intensive realities, as a definite integral.«9 Cohen did a detailed study of the origin of calculus. Hence, he was aware that after »the discovery was completed and determined,« the discoverers of the infinitesimal method attempted »to affirm and defend it through the traditional method of limits«10 Cohen did not reject the method of limits. However, he believed that in order to discover calcu­ lus a proper handling of the infinitely small quantities was necessary. Whether such infinitesimal quantities really exist was not clear even for Leibniz. Nevertheless, Cohen saw it as a fact11, which was the main point of contention between him and his few followers on the one hand and the other philosophers, not to mention mathematicians, on the other. Cohen writes as if the differential dx had a meaning independent of the differential quotient dy/dx. His critics deny that. They could be quite harsh. As quoted by Giovanelli, Cantor stressed that »the meaning of the differential lies in the differential-quotient, which is nothing but the limit of the difference-quotient« and Russell 1903 wrote what mathematicians believed then and continue to do: »The dx and dy of a differential are nothing in themselves, and dy/dx is not a fraction.« Husserl men­ tioned »profound nonsense« of Cohen’s prose, and Nelson stated in 1905 that »Cohen located himself completely outside of that domain of science that we today call mathematics.«12 Despite those opinions Cohen kept

Edgar 2020, 461. Cohen 1883, 144. 9 Giovanelli 2016, 13. 10 Cohen 1883, 88. 11 This statement may be too strong. According to Wogenstein 2008, for Cohen »the infinitesimal cannot be thought of as an actualised infinitely small entity. In itself it has no being and may be considered nought. But in infinitesimal calculus and, by extension in the sciences, it is, as the differential, a realising, actualising element of thinking and constructing.« Still, Cohen did attribute an independent role to dx. 12 After Giovanelli 2016, 18. 7

8

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rejecting, reminds us Giovanelli, referring to 1902, 182–183, »the priority of the ›differential quotient‹ over the ›differential‹.«13 In addition, Cohen believed that the isolated infinitesimal dx is the »origin« of the finite entity conceived as an integral, or the (general­ ized) sum of infinitely many infinitesimals. According to Giovanelli, this was criticized even by Cohen’s collaborators, especially Cassirer. More­ over, Kurt Lasswitz observed that motion, taken as a primitive concept by Cohen, is not unproblematic. The main difficulty is that »motion presupposes the course of time.«14 Cohen was referring to the early period of calculus. Indeed, in the 17th century Gilles de Roberval treated a curve as »defined by the continuous motion of an infinitely small point that is driven in (at least) two directions.«15 Despite the controversies Cohen’s method of investigating the history of science was valuable. Yet the deepest influence he had on Rosenzweig. »Rosenzweig’s tracing of the course of the history of philos­ ophy … culminates … in a discussion of Cohen’s mathematical logic,«16 which should be understood as not so much »logic« but rather Cohen’s treatment of infinitesimals. (See, in particular, the sections »Mathematics and Signs« and »The Origin« in The Star). Rosenzweig made the specific, qualitatively determined nothings, modeled after Cohen’s presentation of the infinitesimal, the fundament of his vision of the nothingness, or »naught,« of the knowledge of the elements.

Rosenzweig’s experience of mathematics Handelman has demonstrated that, independently of the meetings with Cohen, which he had between 1913 and 1918, Rosenzweig studied four textbooks teaching calculus. They handled mathematical concepts in a way that proved inspirational for Rosenzweig. For them, »the infinitesi­ mal functions as an ambiguous, yet productive, linguistic placeholder.«17 Referring more specifically to two of those textbooks, we are told that »Nernst and Schönflies take the infinitesimal’s role a step further than Riecke and Schlömilch by establishing the infinitely small as the ele­ 13 14 15 16 17

Giovanelli 2016, 18. After Giovanelli 2016, 16. Edgar 2020, 450. Samuelson 2010, 575. Handelman 2012, 151.

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mentary building block of space itself. When the differentials dx indeed become ›infinitely small‹, the authors later explain, the integral F(x) equals the summation of the function multiplied by the differentials.«18 It is worthwhile to note that such approach is still used in education and by applied mathematicians, even though in theoretical mathematics it is absent, at least in the official presentation of calculus, and only the machinery of limits is used. The role of mathematical considerations in the development of Rosenzweig’s thought leading to the completion of The Star is undeniable. Yet is it more than a collection of metaphors that provoked some philo­ sophical constructs that, after all, remain mere metaphors? Saying »mere metaphors« I do not try to diminish their importance. Actually, the role of metaphor is absolutely essential in our use of language, as stressed, for example, in the classical study Lakoff & Johnson 1980. To handle abstract concepts, we must make use of metaphors, and this is true for mathematics as well (cf. Lakoff & Núñez 2000). It should be clear, then, that even if the image of mathematics that Rosenzweig (and Cohen) adopts is anachronistic, it can be employed to perform a constructive job and nobody can deny that this does provide one of the pillars of the system presented in The Star. For Rosenzweig, infinitesimals are nothings and somethings at the same time. This can make some idealistic philosophers happy, but it is problematic for mathematicians and some philosophers too. Mathemat­ ically we do something odd when, in one piece of reasoning, we divide by dx treating it as different form zero, and then in another line of the same calculation dx is eliminated as being equal to zero. This is a contradiction, claimed George Berkeley in his famous polemic. Indeed, but calculus worked fine, and has been convincingly confirmed since then. Something genuine – real? – has been detected and expressed in the formalism of calculus. The criticism was, however, taken seriously and the reworking was implemented: only sequences of finite quantities and their limits were retained. More generally, a revolution of rigor took place in the 19th century, symbolized by the names of Augustine Cauchy and Karl Weierstrass. This whole debate is nowhere alluded to by Rosenzweig. Possibly he did not know it. According to Handelman,19 he seems unaware of contemporary developments in calculus and mathematics. And Funken­ 18 19

Handelman 2012, 154. Handelman 2012, 159.

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stein notes that »Rosenzweig's allegorization of the differential is … removed from real mathematical concerns«20 of the early 20th century. (Incidentally, if the same question is asked about Cohen, the answer must be different. He did not disregard those developments. He »needed a logical grounding of reality in pure thought. This was possible due to the infinitesimal.«21 An explanation of his position can be given along the lines stressed by Scott Edgar: »For Cohen, the principle of continuity and, ultimately, the principle of sufficient reason are methodological commitments contained in mathematical natural science and revealed in that science’s evolving history.«22) Whatever their deficiencies were, Rosenzweig used Cohen’s ideas in a remarkably fruitful way. Primarily, as envisioned by Cohen, mathemat­ ics provided the means to explain the creation of something from nothing. This is achieved due to the concept of an infinitesimal – they generate knowledge of something from nothing. This is like the curve generated from the points that are »nothings.« For Rosenzweig »the modality of the infinitesimal thus hovers between actuality and potentiality, in a perpetual state of becoming.«23 The idea of the infinitesimal made possible calculus which enabled modern science. While mathematicians treat it as a façon de parler among scientists and especially engineers, the actualization of the infinitesimal is still present. Calculus was the main instrument in the process of the mathematization of nature initiated by Galileo and developed by Newton and other physicists up to now. Physics and other natural sciences deal with mathematical entities that are supposed to model the real world. Furthermore, the Pythagorean approach, with its emphasis on the role of natural numbers and their ratios, can be seen as the precursor of this trend. The contemporary computer era, with its digital modeling of reality, can be seen as a confirmation of the validity of that approach. (Cf. Krajewski 2018.) On the other hand, there have been philosophers who question mathematization as a distortion of the real world, disregarding its subtleties and instability. »For Horkheimer and Adorno, the proposed equation of mathematics with thought by the logical positivists in the 1920s represented the most recent example of the

20 21 22 23

Funkenstein 1993, 290. Smith 2012, 565. Edgar 2020, 467. Handelman 2012, 156.

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return of enlightenment to barbarism and violence,«24 says Handelman in order to stress the fact that Rosenzweig opposed this criticism. He, and according to Handelman, some of his contemporaries like Siegfried Kacauer and Gershom Scholem, wanted to use mathematics to support their worldviews. Rosenzweig’s main points were as follows.25

A. Reality in motion Infinitesimal calculus can take into account motion. Furthermore, move­ ment is the core of reality. Rest is conceived as the absence of motion. Finite entities are generated from infinitesimals by continuous move­ ment. This is the only way to explain the continuity of real things, and continuity is real. This dynamic view of reality is fundamental for Rosenzweig. He mentioned that already in his 1916 text »Volksschule und Reichsschule,« in which infinitesimal calculus is mentioned as a way to reform mathematical education and also as a tool: »the quantity ›aris­ ing‹ out that which has no quantity (the ›infinitely small‹),« is seen as »the method by which we could mathematically grasp motion as the primordial phenomenon [Urphänomen] and rest only as a limit-post [Grenzpfahl].«26 For Rosenzweig, Euclidean geometry is the example, or even the symbol, of static mathematics, which is bad or at least insufficient. Indeed, for classical geometry, the only important part of the line segment is its ends; what is in between is only a picture we add to assist our imagination. In contrast, in the dynamic approach, lines and curves are generated by a point, »which has no quantity« as it moves continuously through space. Using Samuelson’s account, we can say that Rosenzweig is motivated by the notion of a vector rather than a scalar. While Platonic or Euclidean approach deals with a static world of eternal objects, Rosenzweig’s is »a dynamic universe of endless intentional processes.« And it is »under­ stood in terms of vector analysis and calculus.«27 The universe consists of processes – the idea that was developed independently by Alfred Whitehead – and, according to Samuelson, all the paths (Bahnen) should be seen as vectors beginning in an ideal, negative origin and moving indefinitely, asymptotically, towards the ideal, but positive, endpoint. 24 25 26 27

Handelman 2019, 5. I rely mostly on Handelman 2019; also Samuelson’s expositions 1999, 2007 are helpful. After Handelman 2019, 113. Samuelson 2007, 70.

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B. Expressing the inexpressible According to Samuelson and Handelman, mathematics is used by Rose­ nzweig in order to express ideas that are normally inexpressible because they are unrepresentable in language. Samuelson claims that »in some sense Rosenzweig's understanding of the use of mathematical thinking is more sophisticated than that of his more recognized contemporaries such as Bertrand Russell. Whereas they think that thinking is limited to positive thought and their only model for such thinking is simple algebra, Rosenzweig, under the influence of Hermann Cohen, was able to incorporate negative thinking on the vastly more sophisticated model of calculus.«28 Handelman also stresses the term »negative« and talks about negative mathematics as »a style of reasoning that deals productively with that which cannot be fully represented by language, history, and capital.«29 Even if we ignore the rather surprising mention of capital the matter is not clear. The following hint can be helpful: »we must think of mathematics less as a simple and limited analogy for a formal methodology and more as a conscious and consequential rhetorical strategy.«30 To give an example of this strategy that can help express the phenomena that more usual linguistic means do not grasp, Handelman brings the well-known beginning of The Star, a treatment of death. Since »infinitely small quantities mediate between nothingness and finite existence,« Rosenzweig was able to apply »a conceptual language to approach phenomenon (such as death) that remained incomprehensible to other systems of thought.«31 What is meant is the following.32 For philosophers, or at least idealistic philosophers who are Rosenzweig’s main point of reference, death is nothing, so it is unreal. However, for us, normal human beings, this is not acceptable. As it is put in The Star (p. 10), »death is truly not what it seems, not nothing, but a pitiless something that cannot be excluded.« To us death is definitely something essential and mass death is obviously a huge issue. Now, it is like the differential of infinitesimal calculus: it »combines in itself the properties of the nothing and of the something…« (The Star, p. 28), or in the former 28 29 30 31 32

Samuelson 2007, 249. Handelman 2019, 10. Handelman 2019, 16. Handelman 2019, 105. I follow the presentation in Handelman 2012.

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translation, »the characteristics of the Naught and the Aught.«33 And multiple deaths are supposedly like the operation of integration. Handelman even mentions the famous critical phrase used by Berkeley to discredit the infinitesimals, »the ghosts of departed quan­ tities,« to enhance this interpretation: »the ›ghosts‹ of death forming the first steps toward knowledge.«34 This is, indeed, a rhetorical use of concepts.

C. Finite agents of revelation The rather unexpected move made by Handelman includes the infini­ tesimal calculus as a basis for Rosenzweig’s account of revelation and redemption. Namely, it introduced »a way of attending to and refusing to give up on even the infinitesimal and seemingly insignificant aspects of life, history, and the world.«35 An aspect of a situation can be so minor as to look as nothing at all, but properly approached it can give rise to significant entities. The Star »transforms the finite, thinking subject into the agent of revelation and an active participant in the creation of the eternal Kingdom of God on earth.«36 Thus, the activity of an insignifi­ cant »individual serves as the agent of redemption in the everyday world. « (Ibidem, 66) Finally, »Rosenzweig’s negative mathematics illuminates a messianism in which not only the individual moment but also the finite actions of individuals and groups in the here and now already contain a redemptive element.«37 The last remark includes Judaism and its ritual.

D. Messianic theory of knowledge Handelman makes an even stronger claim than putting infinitesimals as the basis of human, especially Jewish and Christian, redemptive work as conceived in Rosenzweig’s vision. »For Rosenzweig, the representational link between finitude and infinitude forged by infinitesimal calculus signified the contribution of the work and beliefs of individuals not only 33 34 35 36 37

Rosenzweig 1970, 20. Handelman 2012, 159. Handelman 2019, 10. Ibidem, 11. Ibidem, 107.

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to redemption but also to epistemology.«38 This remark refers to the mes­ sianic theory of knowledge (eine messianische Erkenntnistheorie), pre­ sented in »Das Neue Denken« in 1925. According to it, some truths are verified by the personal sacrifices we are ready to suffer for their truth. The most extreme case is when in order to verify the truth there is no other way than to sacrifice one’s life. And finally, we come to those truths »that cannot be verified until generations upon generations have given their lives to that end.«39 Of course, this description applies to reli­ gious truths, in particular, »the truths verified by the beliefs of individuals in the course of history—including historically marginalized groups, such as the Jews in Germany.«40 In that 1925 essay, Rosenzweig explicitly distinguishes such truths from scientific ones. »The hopelessly static truths like those of mathemat­ ics, which the old theory of knowledge took as its point of departure without ever really going beyond that point, are on the limits (the inferior limits), just as rest is a limit case of motion.«41 Yet, in Handelman’s account, it is mathematics that provides the basis of the messianic theory of knowledge.

E. Judaism associated with irrational and Christianity with rational numbers Another mathematical metaphor, having nothing to do with infinites­ imals, was employed by Rosenzweig in one of his letters quoted by Handelman (2019, p. 125). Namely, he associates Judaism with irrational numbers, while Christianity is associated with rational numbers. The reason for the attribution is that »Judaism’s theological relationship to time cannot be expressed through reference to other moments of time, whereas Christianity’s can in reference to Jesus. … Of interests here, however, is how the passage depicts the irrational numbers as equally necessary to the continuum, completing – indeed, ›redeeming‹ – the rational numbers.«42 Thus, standard mathematical construction of the completion of rational numbers by adding all irrational ones is summarized using the theological term »redemption«. 38 39 40 41 42

Handelman 2019, 68. In Glatzer 1961, 206. Handelman 2019, 11. In Glatzer 1961, 206. Handelman 2019, 125.

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F. Mathematics over mathematics Samuelson insists that not only the infinitesimals but also other mathe­ matical concepts are used in The Star. According to him, »Rosenzweig’s language throughout The Star is rich in its use of mathematics, both shorthand symbols for vectors and allusions to geometry, all introduced in the name of Jewish theology.«43 Vectors are supposedly illustrating many points, and because their origins and endpoints are not part of the movement located in the real world, the ideal, unreal nature of those ends is illustrated. For example, in Samuelson 1999, there are pictures with a series of arrows, or vectors, leading from a bottom line, representing the origin, to an (unachievable) upper line, representing the limit. Furthermore, according to Samuelson, the overall picture, the con­ figuration (Gestalt) can also be expressed mathematically despite Rose­ nzweig’s own belief that it cannot. The resulting star is for Rosenzweig beyond mathematics (übermathematischen). Samuelson indicates that it can still be seen as mathematical. What is needed is more sophisticated mathematics. This new mathematics over the traditional mathematics is fractal geometry introduced several decades after Rosenzweig death.44 The star of David can be replaced by Koch curves: each of the six points of the star is itself replaced by a smaller six-pointed star, then each of the resulting points is replaced by appropriately smaller stars, and then again and again. According to Samuelson (1999, p. 214), this correction would limit Rosenzweig’s anti-intellectualism, but would require no major revision of his system. Samuelson perceives more mathematics at work in The Star than does its author. For all his use of vectors and infinitesimals Rosenzweig’s »understanding of mathematics remains too narrow in that his mathematical expressions are arbitrarily restricted to at most two variables.«45

Overcoming the contradiction The above points summarize the position of Samuelson and the bold attempts undertaken by Handelman to demonstrate how essential math­ 43 44 45

Samuelson 2007, 27. Samuelson 1999, 213. Samuelson 2007, 249.

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ematics is for The Star. It should be added that Handelman’s description of Rosenzweig’s use of mathematics is just a fragment of a larger presen­ tation of several Jewish-German thinkers of the 20th century who used mathematical inspirations to advance cultural criticism and promote recognition of minority worldviews. Now, as much as I would like to accept those points and the new vision advocated by Handelman, I am not convinced. It is hard for a mathematically trained reader to appreciate mathematical insights in Rosenzweig’s system. All those uses of mathematics – be they infini­ tesimals, moving points, vectors, rational and irrational points on the line – are metaphoric and allegoric and do not seem truly substantial. In The Star, there is no mathematical reasoning. Equations are only symbolic codes for some phenomena. Could they appear in a calculation, a proof ? Clearly not. In general, all sorts of pictures, conceptual or other, can be inspiring. It is undoubtedly interesting to see all those mathematical pictures and ideas as inspiration behind Rosenzweig’s work, but they do not constitute any applications of mathematics. Well, Handelman, who is clearly competent in his treatment of mathematics and the history of mathematics, does not use the term »application of mathematics«, so such reservations may seem stretched. However, he does claim that Rosenzweig uses mathematics in an essential way. I do not think so. To make this criticism clear, Handelman did demonstrate that for Rosenzweig some of those mathematical illustrations were important, creative, and illuminating. Yet this is not mathematics as we know it or even as we knew it over a hundred years ago. Handelman is aware of that. He asks, »How, then, should those interested in not simply dismissing Rosenzweig’s productive yet problematic view of mathematics under­ stand his anachronistic and idiosyncratic ›modern‹ mathematics?«46 So what can be done? In particular, how can we harmonize the mathematical inadequacy and the philosophical fruitfulness of Cohen’s treatment of infinitesimals applied so brazenly by Rosenzweig? Well, let us treat seriously the fact that, according to Giovanelli (who refers to Cohen 1902, p. 135), »Cohen was careful to distinguish the historical ›dis­ covery‹ from the mathematical ›justification‹ of the calculus.«47 The distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification has been known and used, and also criticized as artificial and harmful, at least since Reichenbach 1938. In our context, this distinction 46 47

Handelman 2012, 160. Giovanelli 2015, 26.

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is very helpful. Thus, in the context of discovery, Cohenian ideas about mathematical concepts are highly relevant to Rosenzweig’s thought. There is no way to deny this. In this sense, the use of mathematics is essential in The Star. At the same time, mathematics seems not essential in the context of justification. It remains loosely analogical, illustrative, metaphorical, allegorical,… It is certainly far from being necessary in the way mathematics functions in scientific theories. To be more specific, the following can be said about the inessentiality of the use of mathematical concepts and ideas in The Star: 1) 2) 3)

it is not an application of mathematics; mathematical reasonings or even mathematical style arguments are absent; the same insights could have been achieved without mathematics, and often similar ideas were presented elsewhere; the grasp of mathematical concepts used, after Cohen or on his own, by Rosenzweig does not fit our understanding of the concepts nor our current philosophies of mathematics.

Regarding the last point, one could ask whether the current approach to the concepts can change and bring us closer to Rosenzweig’s position. There is no good way of answering except that never say never. Some modern developments have rehabilitated the infinitesimals, but not in the role attributed to them by Cohen. (See Points C and E below.) So Handelman’s claim that »mathematics and the concepts of infin­ itesimal calculus illuminated and represented alternative perspectives on concepts such as subjectivity, time, and redemption«48 is fine if what is meant is a mere illustration or metaphoric aid. However, it becomes doubtful if we understand the claim as assigning an essential role to mathematics. Below, specific illustrations are provided. The previously mentioned points made by Handelman (and Samuelson) are critically commented on, and additional comments are added.

The inessential character of Rosenzweig’s mathematics Pointing out the inessential character – inessential in the sense of the points 1), 2), 3) of the previous section – of Rosenzweig’s uses of mathematics, we follow more or less the presentation consisting of points A. to F. of an earlier section. Following Samuelson’s approach, some 48

Handelman 2019, 143.

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points presented below are supplemented with remarks on other relevant mathematical ideas than those known to Rosenzweig or in Rosenzweig’s lifetime. It is, however, not claimed that any of the additional ideas proves really essential, that is, can function, at least to some extent, in the sub­ stantial, strict manner that is typical to mathematized scientific theories.

A. Dynamic view of reality To stress motion as a basic aspect of all reality is certainly valuable since this is an important philosophical position. At the same time, it is not the case that »mathematics generates lines and curves out of absence and negativity.«49 To generate a curve, the mathematical subject must be equipped with considerable power to execute the movement of the moving point. It is not arising by itself out of nothing. Moreover, the continuum is presupposed under this approach. Moreover, the space is taken as given, presumably the Newtonian space. Thus a considerable amount of actual presence is assumed, so the idea that finite entities are generated out of nothing, out of absence, is misleading. If, rather than the mathematical subject, it is physical movement that generates the curve, then certainly, it is not emerging out of absence. Dynamic view of reality has been present in various philosophies at least since Heraclitus. In Rosenzweig’s era, it was adopted, for example, by Bergson and Whitehead. It is hard to say that they were using mathe­ matics, even though Whitehead was a mathematician. The inspiration of the infinitesimal mathematics – even if it was influencing Rosenzweig – seems ultimately inessential. Also Samuelson’s opinion that it is the vector calculus that is used by Rosenzweig is not convincing. While the picture of a vector field may be helpful to understand Rosenzweig’s vision, the use of mathematical concepts is not sufficiently substantial to consider it as a use of mathe­ matics. It is a conceptual inspiration, but it remains rather shallow if the depth of mathematical theories is taken into account. This position can be illustrated by the fact that Samuelson (1999, p. 212) presents simple pictures consisting of a series of arrows going from one line to another in order to illustrate the idea present in Rosenzweig’s system. It is a nice visualization, but it would be beside the point to expect that a mathematical reasoning could be made with those pictures. This shows 49

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that all that is important in using mathematics in The Star is inspiration. Of course, inspiration is important. It can be crucial in the context of discovery. However, justification must come from somewhere else. It can come from various sources, for instance, from a general philosophical standpoint or a perception of the flow that encompasses everything, a scientific account of material objects, or a biological account of evolution.

Additional remark As far as modern mathematics is concerned, motion is more clearly present in category theory as distinct from and opposed to or a rival of set theory. Actually, Ilya Dvorkin has begun an admirable attempt to present the vision of The Star in terms of the category theory. It is mentioned in his 2017. I am still not sure if this application of the notion of category can be done in mathematically precise way, and furthermore how far this proposal can go and whether it can serve as an illustration or perhaps get deeper and provide an explanation. Thus, interestingly enough, with respect to Dvorkin’s idea, the same problem arises as has been our original issue with Rosenzweig. Namely, category theory provides an analogy, a loose similarity of ideas to a certain reading of Rosenzweig’s system, but it is difficult to phrase this parallel in a mathematically acceptable manner, that is, such that would use the mathematical concepts in a substantial way.

B. Expressing the inexpressible As mentioned before, Handelman and Samuelson believe that Rose­ nzweig used mathematics to express insights that cannot be fully repre­ sented in ordinary language. The so-called negative mathematics belongs here. This is an interesting observation but its contents is not clear. After all, much philosophy can be seen as an attempt to expand the language to express something that is felt or vaguely perceived but is not properly represented in language. In the tradition of apophatic theology, the indescribability of the divine realm is taken as its main feature. In view of those approaches, infinitesimals do not seem exceptional. They also do not seem truly essential. At the same time, it is interesting that inexpressibility is present in mathematics, in rather regular mathematics and mathematical logic,

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not some »negative« variety. Various unrepresentable entities appear in modern set-theoretical mathematics, for example, due to the application of cardinality arguments stating that the class of describable (in some precise sense) objects is of lower cardinality than the class of all objects of a given type, which means that only a small minority are describable. However, we cannot really point out any indescribable one – because, if we could, it would be its description. Limitative theorems provide nega­ tive results, stating the non-existence of something that seemed desirable. Such results extend our knowledge, so they are seen as positive. This is the case with demonstrations that there is no polynomial expressing the number π (by making the value of the polynomial zero when π is substituted for the variable), that the halting problem for theoretical model of computers is undecidable (no program exists detecting in advance for every calculation whether it stops), that no adequate formal­ ization of natural numbers can be formulated by us (every achievable axiomatization is incomplete). All that seems hardly relevant for The Star.

Additional remark For Rosenzweig, infinitesimals mediate between nothingness and finite existence. Well, we now have better examples. Actually, much more is assumed in modern post-Cantorial mathematics. The universe of (co-called, pure) sets is created from the empty set alone. So all pure sets are generated from the genuine nothing. However, to do this we must imagine a transfinite process of generation. The power of creating the sets in a highly infinite way is assumed. This assumption has a theological flavor that would make Leibniz happy.50 Probably Rosenzweig also would have been impressed if he had lived long enough to learn about those developments – examples of pure creation out of Nought. Yet, again, such mathematical illustrations are possible but do not seem necessary for The Star and similar systems.

For more details on set formation, see textbooks on set theory; for some philosophical remarks, e.g., Krajewski 2022.

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C. The constructive role of the insignificant, especially regarding Redemption Handelman detects the role of mathematics in the rediscovering of the real individual for philosophy. He writes about taking »the ›private subject‹ from the margins of philosophy« and repositioning it »at the center of thought.«51 This is an important issue, a revolt against the ideal subject of the German idealistic philosophy, but that anti-Hegelian move was done by Kierkegaard. Later other thinkers, for example, Nietzsche, went in the same direction, and of course, Rosenzweig is aware of that revolt and refers to both of those philosophers. Moreover, their works show that no mathematical theory was needed to make that move. To say that summing up many tiny elements leads to a sizable figure is a common sense statement that hardly needs mathematical support, let alone reference to integration. Handelman makes an additional step and identifies practical insig­ nificance with mathematical infinitesimality. He praises the attitude of »refusing to give up on even the infinitesimal and seemingly insignif­ icant aspects of life, history, and the world.«52 Again, the question must be posed whether mathematics plays a role here. Furthermore, even if it provided a suggestive picture, how relevant is this use of math? In particular, do we really need infinitesimals to appreciate seemingly insignificant aspects of life? After all, such ideas were present, for example, in the Kabbalah. In the Lurianic kabbalah, the gathering of the sparks plays a similar role – it shows the relevance of small acts made by simple individuals for the global work of redemption. For that Jewish project, differentials were not used and are not needed. By the way, sparks provide a great illustration of something that is like nothing, as it is tiny and immediately disappears but still is real since it can generate fire. Also to me, despite my mathematical training, the picture of sparks feels more inspiring than that of differentials. We can see that traditional metaphors are not worse than the mathematical ones.

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Additional remark On the other hand, modern mathematical theories do deal with infinites­ imals as mathematical objects. Of course, their existence is as unclear and debatable as that of ordinary numbers and other mathematical objects. (Incidentally, a proposal to consider their existence to be of a particular character, called »suprasubjective,« is made in Krajewski 2018a.) Any­ way, we now have good theories of infinitesimals that »redeem« them as bona fide entities. For example, non-standard analysis developed by Abra­ ham Robinson provides an expansion of the real line »in depth« using methods of model theory (see Robinson 1974), and the surreal numbers introduced by John Conway add a huge variety of infinitely large and infinitely small (surreal) numbers.53 While non-standard analysis has found good applications, Conway numbers have not, but nevertheless, their philosophical significance is big. Both expansions of the real line would probably have captured Rosenzweig’s interest had he lived long enough to face them. Would they enhance or diminish possible develop­ ments of his system? It is hard to know, but the answer seems irrelevant, which shows again that mathematics can be a source of imagination but is not an argumentation method in The Star.

D. Messianic theory of knowledge – see below. This topic appears at the end because its discussion serves as the best summary of the whole argument of the present paper.

E. Judaism and Christianity concerning numbers and infinity As was mentioned above, Handelman quotes another mathematical metaphor used by Rosenzweig in one of his letters: Judaism is associated with irrational and Christianity with rational numbers. The point is that while »Judaism’s theological relationship to time cannot be expressed through reference to other moments of time«, Christianity’s can in reference to Jesus. The resulting contrast is rather doubtful since Judaism can refer to the Exodus or the Sinaitic revelation (although Rosenzweig himself refrained from that). For our purposes, the important point of 53

See Conway 2001, Gonshor 1986, and also popularization in Knuth 1974.

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the comparison is that the irrational numbers are as necessary to the continuum as are the rational ones. To say that the rational numbers are »redeemed« by the irrational ones is to use theological language with­ out justification. The analogy with numbers is shallow and inessential. The whole point seems to be apologetic. Mathematics is completely inessential here. Fortunately for Rosenzweig, he used it only en passant in a letter. Still another mathematical metaphor was used by Rosenzweig to indicate that Judaism differs from Christianity in its relationship to the infinite: »the intensive perpetuity of Judaism’s point and the extensive endlessness of Christianity’s line.«54 This is a reference to mathematical concepts to reaffirm the central picture in The Star: Christianity’s expansive character and the opposite nature of Jewish presence. Such uses of mathematics are certainly acceptable, but they provide an additional illustration, nothing more. That is why they are inessential, even if helpful.

Additional remark Rosenzweig's illustrative use of rational and irrational numbers assumes that the real line consists of them and nothing else. This was the standard view then and it is standard also now, but as mentioned in Point C above, we can have various constructions consisting of vastly more »numbers« present in the line. And we can attempt to do even more. Let us consider a – possible? – extension of the reals introduced in the following way. Because the infinite series 0.333… is natural for us, why can’t we take advantage of Cantor’s transfinite numbers like ω  +  ω  and introduce 0.3333…111… (with infinitely many 3’s and then infinitely many 1’s)? It is unclear to me whether the resulting number is a bona fide mathematical object, but if it is, it exists in some sense, and it is obviously infinitely close to 1/3 but larger than 0.333… = 1/3. We see that it is unclear of what the line is composed. We can have various theories, and also play with much richer pictures than the one Rosenzweig considered. To say that a type of objects »redeems« another class of objects is unjustified. Its connection to Judaism and Christianity is, at the very least, doubtful. It may be used as a metaphoric illustration, but it remains shallow and inessential. 54

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F. More sophisticated mathematics Samuelson stressed the importance of mathematical concepts used by Rosenzweig to illustrate theological points. Even some of the patterns that to Rosenzweig went beyond the mathematical were, according to Samuelson, mathematically expressible if the right sort of math was used. His »additional remark« contains the suggestion to use fractal geometry. The idea is only sketched; no substantial development has been attempted. For sure, it is attractive and helpful to see the possibility of considering all three main elements of the overall structure of The Star as present somehow in each of the six points of the Star of David comprising the whole scene of reality. This move can be repeated with the points of the resulting shape. To suggest, however, that we can go further and somehow continue the process, perhaps indefinitely, seems to me exaggerated. In fractal geometry, we study the limits of such processes rather than just two or three levels. True, even the picture of two or three steps of the process can be illuminating. Koch curves become very quickly like snowflakes. Yet little mathematics is used when we stop at the second or third step. Only an analogy, a metaphoric illustration, is presented. This is more sophisticated mathematics than what was available to Rosenzweig, but again we have a general picture as the starting point, and mathematics serves only as a mode of illustration, making the picture more graspable. It is not a truly essential use of mathematics. In addition, as mentioned before, Samuelson wants us to expand Rosenzweigian approach, which is described as restricted to two vari­ ables, and to go beyond it. While it is not quite clear what kind of mathematics is mentioned here, another remark by Samuelson indicates that mathematics should be considered very broadly. With regard to the discussion of the elements, he states about Rosenzweig: »The mode of expression in this case is philosophical-scientific-mathematical. For him these last three terms are interchangeable.«55 This is a revealing statement. It means that the point is not mathematics as such but a strict approach, similar to scientific accounts and to analytic philosophy arguments. At some point, strict reasoning must be left behind and a more imaginative, poetic, artistic method adopted.

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D. again: the »messianic theory of knowledge« As explained above, some truths cannot be verified in any other way than by sacrificing one’s life. And some of them require sacrifice of many, even entire generations. This is the messianic role that individuals can assume in Rosenzweig’s theory of knowledge. No doubt it is an impressive idea. It does reveal a particular aspect of some religious truths, the need to defend them by being ready to pay the highest price. Well, clearly self-sacrifice can also occur in defense of nasty quasi-religious statements; how to tell the rightful from the unacceptable ones is a question we disregard in the present analysis. Our problem here is whether Rosenzweig’s insight is related to mathematics. Contrary to the thesis advocated by Handelman, I believe that it is better to follow in this case the opinion of Rosenzweig himself. His insight suggests not sticking to math but rather leaving mathematics behind. He explicitly reminds us of non-religious, more common truths. To quote again, »the hopelessly static truths like those of mathematics, which the old theory of knowledge took as its point of departure without ever really going beyond that point, are on the limits (the inferior limits), just as rest is a limit case of motion.«56 I believe that this remark contrasting the nature of mathematical truths with that of the truths that can be approached only with the use of a messianic theory of knowledge can serve as a summary of the whole argument of the present paper. Namely, Rosenzweig had great ideas, some of which were suggested by his acquaintance with mathematics as well as Cohen’s insights. In this sense, mathematics was essential for his work of discovery. When, however, these ideas are developed into a system of The Star, mathematics is left behind and rendered inessential. It was essential for Rosenzweig himself, but it is not mathematics, at least for those who know mathematics, appreciate the way it functions and is applied, and lack Handelman’s readiness to accept loose, metaphoric applications. Many insights mentioned in the previous points, especially the idea of qualitative nothings generating somethings, remain interesting. Nevertheless, it is not mathematics. It is rather only like mathematics, as stated already by Amos Funkenstein. Even if mathematics was essential for the creation of The Star it is ultimately inessential in The Star.

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References Hermann Cohen, Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte: Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Erkenntniskritik, Dümmler, Berlin 1883. Hermann Cohen, System der Philosophie, Erster Teil: Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1902. John Horton Conway, On numbers and games, 2nd ed., A K Peters, Ltd, Natick, MA 2001. Scott Edgar, »Principle of the Infinitesimal Method: A Rationalist Interpretation«, DRAFT of April, 2014. Scott Edgar, »Hermann Cohen’s Principle of the Infinitesimal Method: A Defense«, in: HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 10 (2), 2020. Ilya Dvorkin, »A Mathematical Road to Liturgy. Religion and Mathematics in Franz Rosenzweig’s Philosophy«, in: Judaica Petropolitana № 7 (2017), 70–80. Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish history, University of California Press, Berkeley 1993. Marco Giovanelli, »Hermann Cohen’s Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode: The History of an Unsuccessful Book«, long draft of Giovanelli, 2016. Marco Giovanelli, »Hermann Cohen’s Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode: The History of an Unsuccessful Book«, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 58:9–23 (2016). Doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2016.02.002 Nahum Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, His Life and Thought, 2nd ed., Schocken Books, New York 1961. Harry Gonshor, An Introduction to the Theory of Surreal Numbers, London Mathematical Society, 1986. Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger Between Judaism and German Philos­ ophy, University of California Press, Berkeley 2003. Matthew Handelman, »Franz Rosenzweig’s Modern Mathematics«, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Vol. 57, 2012, 145–161. Matthew Handelman, The Mathematical Imagination: On the Origins and Promise of Critical Theory, Fordham University Press, New York 2019. Donald Knuth, Surreal Numbers, Pearson Education, 1974. Stanisław Krajewski, »Can a Robot Be Grateful? Beyond Logic, Towards Religion«, in: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 4 (6)/2018, 4–13. Stanisław Krajewski, »On Suprasubjective Existence in Mathematics«, in: Studia Semiotyczne XXXII, No 2, 2018b, 75–86. Stanislaw Krajewski, »Is Mathematics Connected to Religion?«, in: B. Sriraman (Ed.) Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice. Springer, Cham 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19071-2_77-2 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1980.

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George Lakoff and Rafael E. Núñez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mmind Brings Mathematics into Being, Basic Books, New York 2000.Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction. An Analysis of the Foun­ dations and the Structure of Knowledge, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1938. Abraham Robinson, Non-standard Analysis, Princeton University Press, Prince­ ton 1974. Rosenzweig, Franz. The Star of Redemption, transl. by William W. Hallo, Holt, Reinehart and Winston, Inc., New York 1970. Franz Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, transl. by Barbara E. Galli, Madison 2005. Norbert Samuelson, A User’s Guide to FR’s Star of Redemption, Curzon Press, Richmond, Va. 1999. Norbert Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007. Norbert Samuelson, »Review of Pollock’s 2009 Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy«, in: Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2010, 573–576, doi: 10.1093/jaarel/lfq015 John H. Smith, »The Infinitesimal as Theological Principle: Representing the Para­ doxes of God and Nothing in Cohen, Rosenzweig, Scholem, and Barth«, in: MLN 127, No. 3, 2012, 562–588. Sebastian Wogenstein, »Alterity and Liminality in Hermann Cohen’s Writings«, in: Naharaim: Zeitschrift für deutsch-jüdische Literatur und Kulturgeschichte 2, 2008, 159–173.

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»Eine Strophe, die nur von zwei einzelnen Stimmen gesungen wird« Therapy as a Form of Rosenzweig’s Category of Redemption

Abstract Religious crisis and the horrors of war formed the background of Rosenzweig's composition of the Star of Redemption, leading some of its interpreters to consider it to be the outcome of a therapeutic path. This viewpoint on the Star gains further strength if we bear in mind that its main theses were first sketched and essayed in exchanges with his main interlocutors, especially in speech-letters. In the second part of the Star, the model of encounter proposed by Hermann Cohen, underlining the singularities in the Jewish conception of revelation, will be decisively furthered by Eugen Rosenstock's views on grammatical thinking, especially in the primacy of the other's calling. In this paper, I will argue that the Star's transition from revelation to redemption, particularly the passage from the dual to the »we«, can be read from a therapeutic perspective. This is suggested by the fact that, in the Büchlein, attempting to summarize the message of his main oeuvre, Rosenzweig resorts to the therapeutic setting as an illustration of the re-establishment of health. Emphasizing the role of exercise, Rosenzweig seems to go beyond the therapeutic metaphor, sketching a full program of diagnosis, treatment, convalescence, and return to everyday life. Tackling questions that will be decisive in the differentiation of therapy, Rosenzweig’s work provides an essential starting point for both Buber and Levinas, * Email: [email protected]. This work is part of my post-doctoral project devoted to »Melancholy and the constitution of the therapeutic medium in modern society«, developed at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Porto, and integrated into the RG Aesthetics, Politics & Knowledge. It has been possible with the support of a fellowship provided by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) with reference SFRH/BPD/116555/2016.

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opening further perspectives on the transformative potential of mutual conversation and the radical priority to the other.

0. Franz Rosenzweig’s engagement and demarcation from the dead ends of Gnosticism -the background of his conversion process1-, has been interpreted as a therapeutic path2. It can retrospectively be read from the Star’s conception of world redemption correlating with what the author termed a »life-centered view«, free from the obsession with a definition of immanence and transcendence3.

1 Benjamin Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig’s Conversions: World Denial and World Redemp­ tion, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2014, 15–50. 2 In »The Unpublished Correspondence between Franz Rosenzweig and Gritli Rosen­ stock-Huessy on the Star of Redemption« (in: Jewish Studies Quarterly, 9, 1, 2002, 21–70, p. 27), Ephraim Meir sustained that, abandoning both the self-centredness of the tragic hero and the self-enclosed forms of mysticism, »Rosenzweig found the therapy necessary for his wounded soul in the unity of people, in the ›we‹-community of humanity anticipating redemption where the commandment ›Love thy neighbour‹ is heard«. For a developed approach to this perspective, see: Ephraim Meir, Letters of Love. Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters, Peter Lang, New York 2006, 32–34; Agata Bielik-Robson, »From Therapy to Redemption: Notes Towards a Messianic Psychoanalysis«. in: Agata Bielik-Robson and Adam Lipszyc (Eds.), Judaism in Contemporary Thought: Traces and Influence, Routledge, London 2014, 86–99, and Id., »Is the Human Being Redeemable? A Meditation on Rosenzweig’s Claim That Death Is Very Good«, in: The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 29, 2021, 57–77. 3 Rosenzweig’s concept of redemption and its systematic framework are grounded in biographic experiences, particularly his identification with Hegel’s early battling with »sick ideals« causing melancholy in intellectual life, cf.: Pollock, op. cit., 51–58. This acknowl­ edgement of the »melancholic, intellectually uncertain Hegel of the mid-1790s«, molded Rosenzweig’s interpretation of the authorship of the »Oldest System-Program of German Idealism«, cf.: Benjamin Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philoso­ phy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York 2009, 14. As part of his criticism of the youth-romantic ideals, this biographic confrontation with hypochondria had a counterpart in Hegel's system. In § 396 of the third volume of the EPW, the German phi­ losopher sustains that in order to become a full citizen, both the life crisis and the successful process of its overcoming are mandatory. Georg W. F. Hegel, Werke 10. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830) Dritter Teil, Die Philosophie des Geistes, mit den mündlichen Zusätzen. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1970, 75–86. Cf. Roland Lambrecht, Der Geist der Melancholie. Eine Herausforderung philosophischer Reflexion, Fink, München 1996, 67–76.

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In the present article, I propose to clarify the terms in which contem­ porary therapy replaces the vertical tension of God's transcendence (or absence) as its ultimate guarantor with a type of care that shares some of the features of Rosenzweig’s »horizontal transcendence«4. As we will see, the therapeutic »step outside the current«5 is to be distinguished from that which is taken by the speculative philosopher in whom the »stream of life has been replaced by something submissive—-statuesque, subju­ gated«6. What I call »therapeutic transcendence« is an approach to life that aims to secure a form of well-being that is neither »negative«, in the sense of being passive or stoic, nor »positive«, in the sense of being active but in the service of some external goal. It is rather a way of being in the world that enables one to be more receptive to the fullness of its variety and complexity, while avoiding the pitfalls of both negative and positive thinking. Due to the therapeutic imagery used in Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand to illustrate its assessment of the Star, some argued that Rosenzweig »himself understood his work as a kind of intervention in the domain of psychopathology«7. However, Rose­ nzweig’s ironic presentation of philosophical paralysis makes clear that he is addressing a very restricted form of disorder. Gérard Bensussan, Dans la forme du monde. Sur Franz Rosenzweig, Herrmann, Paris 2009, 259. 5 Franz Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God, transl. Nahum Glatzer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA 1999 [Here­ after: USH], 102. Franz Rosenzweig, Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Men­ schenverstand, Nahum N. Glatzer (ed.), Joseph Melzer, Düsseldorf 1964 [Hereafter: Büchlein], 114. Regarding the various parallels between Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein on the difficult alternation between the imperatives to exit and re-enter the stream of ordinary life, cf. e.g. Jean Greisch, Vivre en philosophant. Experience philosophique, exercises spirituels et therapies de l’âme, Hermann, Paris 2005, 445–6, 459; Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison. L’invention de la philosophie de la religion, vol. 1 – Héritages et héritiers du XIXe siècle, Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2002, 210–1. On the resort to the imagery of the margin, referring to a spatial, temporal, and relational suspension of everyday life which is deemed the condition for one's change or conversion, see: Peter Sloterdijk, Du musst dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 2009, 210–216, 338–355. 6 USH 40–1 (Büchlein, 29–30). 7 Eric Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Rosenzweig and Freud, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2001, 55. In »Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy and Psychotherapy: Religious Anthropology as a Therapeutic Stimulus« (in: Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 25, 3–4, 1988, 178–90), Gerda Elata-Alster and Benjamin Maoz proposed a comparison between Rosenzweig’s religious anthropology and the presuppositions of Freudian Psychoanalysis. 4

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The basis for a therapeutic perspective, encompassing a much larger spectrum of problems concerning the relation with the other and oneself, arises from Rosenzweig’s views on redemption, particularly those exposed in the third book of the second part of the Star of Redemption. These are explored in the context of the demarcation from the mystical self-enclosed form of revelation – preserving a tension between God and man, which André Neher considered to be unique to Judaism8-, and the realization that »love for God must be externalized in love for the neighbor«9. Along with this separation between the love of God and the love of the neighbor10, and close to Cohen’s critique11, Rosenzweig opposes a reduction of love to anthropological determinants that empirical methods could assess and correct. This conviction is particularly salient when he considers the redemptive tasks of education and therapy. Their service depends on the constitution of a responsive relation that discovers the other as a singular I, stirring imaginative processes that, while promoting the nearness to God and the Other, do not suppress their constitutive distance12. André Neher, L’Existence juive, Seuil, Paris 1962, 7. H. Cohen’s understanding of the correlation between God and man also emphasized the divergence from a fusional model, positing a tension that is the condition for man's sanctification. In that sense, »Cohen’s Beziehungsdenken helps Rosenzweig to discover the philosophical importance of the ›small word‹ and correlating God and humanity, humanity and God, God and nature, nature and God« (Jean Greisch, Vivre en philosophant, 449). 9 Franz Rosenzweig, Stern der Erlösung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1988 [Hereaf­ ter: Stern], 239. Addressing this exclusive openness to God, Rosenzweig affirms that »[d]er nur gottgeliebte Mensch ist vor aller Welt verschlossen und verschließt sich selber.« (Stern, 231). 10 In Rosenzweig’s path, this implied a previous confrontation and revision of the inconsistencies of his Marcionist position, taking place in the context of the Leipziger Nachtgespräch. As a resonance of the confrontation with Rosenstock, Rosenzweig realizes how he was simultaneously attached to a »Gnostic God placed beyond the absurdity of the world, and (…) to a God who reveals Himself, as held by Judaism and Christian­ ity« (Irene Kajon, Contemporary Jewish Philosophy. An Introduction, Routledge, New York 2006, 36). 11 As expressed by Leo Strauss: »Our fellowmen we do not know through experience pure and simple but only by virtue of the command that we love them. Only on the basis of this intrahuman correlation can the correlation of God and man become actual: in man’s behavior toward men, not in his behavior toward God, the distinction between good and evil arises.« (»Introductory Essay«, in: Hermann Cohen, Religion of reason out of the sources of Judaism, transl. Simon Kaplan, Scholars Press, Atlanta 1995, xxix). 12 According to Martin Buber, they allow for the manifestation of the gift, resisting both the intrepidity of ego and theomania: »Wie der ichsüchtige Mensch, statt irgend etwas, eine Wahrnehmung, eine Zuneigung, unmittelbar zu lehen, auf sein wahrnehmendes oder 8

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The »conceptual fecundity and prophetic power« of Sprachdenken are evident not only in the »development of philosophical debate in the second part of the twentieth century«13 but also in the therapeutic and educational discourses and practices, as conceived by Rosenzweig and further articulated by Martin Buber. In his pursuit of a new conception of language that surpasses its constriction to a representative or informative function, Rosenzweig saw those activities as events where the saying confronts the said, a temporal dynamic where man finds himself as a spoken and speaking being14. Rosenzweig is one of the first authors to sustain that, prior to its thematic content, dialogue is grounded on separation as the condition of relation with a »real« other15, constituting, in Francesco Paolo Ciglia’s words, »an event of interhuman alterity«16. Contrasting with Socrates’ triumphant dialogues and pure inner speech, in »The New Thinking«, speech »means to speak to someone and to think for someone; and this someone is always a very specific someone and has not only ears like the general public, but also a mouth«17. Language is the medium that enables the temporal acknowledgement of the other, whose word cannot be anticipated: »[n]eeding time means not being able to anticipate anything,

zugeneigtes Ich reflektiert und damit die Wahrheit des Vorgangs verfehlt, so reflektiert der gottsüchtige Mensch (der sich übrigens mit jenem recht gut in einer Seele verträgt), statt die Gabe sich auswirken zu lassen, auf das Gebende, und verfehlt beides« (Id., Ich und Du, Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, 111). 13 Francesco Paolo Ciglia, »Dialogue«, in: Salomon Malka (ed.), Dictionnaire Franz Rosenzweig, Une étoile dans le siècle. Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2016, 100–105. 14 »Language is not a given, but an event that takes place when people speak to each other« (Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, Rosenzweig im Gespräch mit Ehrenberg, Cohen und Buber, Karl Alber, Freiburg/München 2006, 37). 15 »All dialogue presupposes the radical, irreducible and permanent otherness [altérité] of the interlocutors, without which it would turn into a fusion or ambiguous confusion between identities, which would deprive the dialogue of its most proper and authentic character« (Ciglia, op. cit.). 16 Ibidem. 17 Franz Rosenzweig, »Das neue Denken. Einige nachträgliche Bemerkungen zum Stern der Erlösung«, in Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer (Eds.), Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften III, Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Den­ ken, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster 1984 [Hereafter: GS III], 152. This is indeed affirmed as »der Unterschied zwischen altem und neuem, logischem und grammatischem Denken« (GS III, 151).

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to be constrained to wait for everything, being dependent on the other for what is the most proper.«18.

1. Revelation and its therapeutic dimension. Rosenzweig echoes Hermann Cohen’s cut with the restriction of redemp­ tion to »social morality«19, positing the encounter with the Thou as the condition for the »transformation of the individual into the I«20. Developing the doctrine of correlation, the philosopher from Kassel will highlight the redemptive power of personal relations, prayer and, rit­ uals21. The therapeutic potential that one may find in Rosenzweig's work cannot be dissociated from the influence exerted by Eugen Rosenstock’s views on the care of the soul, especially the conception of man as »ein angeredtes Wesen«. In fact, Rosenstock presented the first for­ mulation of »grammatical thinking« as an intrinsic part of »social ther­ apy«22: »Primal grammar [Ur-grammar] has to become the organon to reveal and treat the peculiar lacunae in the souls of individuals and existing 18 GS III, 151. In accordance with the Goethean motto, instead of clinging to timeless observations, deemed the origin of fixed ideas, the temporal density of experience as the condition for real learning and transformation is repeated throughout »the New Thinking«, also with an analogy to the medical encounter: »Jeder weiß, daß für einen behandelnden Arzt etwa die Behandlung Gegenwart, die Erkrankung Vergangenheit und die Feststellung des Todes Zukunft ist und daß es keinen Sinn hat, wenn er aus dem Tic des zeitlosen Erkennens heraus etwa versuchen wollte, in der Diagnose Wissen und Erfahrung, in der Therapie Kühnheit und Eigensinn, in der Prognose Furcht und Hoffnung auszuschalten.« (GS III, 149). 19 According to which »[t]he ethical individual, as an isolated single being having the basis of his life in metabolism, disappears, to be resurrected in the I of the state and, by means of the confederation of states, in mankind. This is the climax ethics can achieve for the human individual« (Hermann Cohen, Religion of reason out of the sources of Judaism, transl. Simon Kaplan, Scholars Press, Atlanta 1995, 178). 20 Ibid., 187. 21 See: Reiner Wiehl, »Identity and Correlation in Hermann Cohen’s System of Philoso­ phy«, in: Reinier Munk (ed.), Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism, Springer, Dordrecht 2005, 68ff. 22 Eugen Rosenstock, »Angewandte Seelenkunde«, in: Id. Die Sprache des Menschenge­ schlechts. Eine leibhaftige Grammatik in vier Teilen, vol. 1, Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1963, 794.

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communities', or at least to alleviate their consequences. A lacuna is the symptomatic formation of the life of the soul«23.

The essay on the Practical knowledge of the Soul, published in 1924, origi­ nated in a Speech Letter addressed to Rosenzweig in 191624. In the ensuing correspondence, Rosenzweig articulates some of the crucial features of his understanding of revelation: »the actual miracle is that the I does not arise in the I at all, the I as the substance (›ante festum‹) is not my I at all, but I in general, and through the He it is multiplied, but now as a thing among things. Rather, my I arises in the Thou. By saying you, I understand that the other is not a ›thing‹ but ›like me‹. But because an other [ein Andrer] can therefore be like me, the I ceases to be the single ›transcendental‹ ante omnia festa and becomes an I, my I, and therefore not an It [doch kein Es]«25.

In his work, Rosenstock developed a critique of the charms and ambitions of psychology and occultism, sustaining that, while centered on the Self, their practices obliterate the interpersonal dimension of the soul26.

23 Ibid., 795. Approaching problems at the center of his later sociological work, Rosenstock notes how modern production and consumption technologies altered and distorted human grammar, cf. Ibid., 802ff. 24 The original letter has been lost, and we do not know to what extent the published essay draws on the views initially shared by Rosenstock. What is certain is that, after receiving the definite text dedicated to him, on April 5, 1924, Rosenzweig sent a letter to Rosenstock expressing his discontent with the final version (Die Gritli-Biefe, 807ff.). However, in the following year, as part of a retrospective exercise on the writing of the Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig acknowledges his profound debt to the first draft of Rosenstock’s essay (GS III, 152.). 25 Rosenzweig to Rosenstock (19.10.17), Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften I, Briefe und Tagebücher, Springer, Dordrecht 1979 [Hereafter GS I], 471. 26 »Rosenstock's concern in his writing was to make it comprehensible that the ›Thou‹ comes before the ›I‹; that the very first experience of the child itself, like that of any human being, is to comprehend that it is a ›Thou‹ to another; that it is addressed. If one understands this, according to Rosenstock, one also understands that every ›spiritual science‹ must be built on an investigation of language, understood as the grammar of the soul. For Rosenstock, this ›spiritual science‹, which should rather be called ›Seelenkunde‹, was therefore first and foremost a grammar, that is, knowledge of a language that is not structured on the basis of an ›I‹ and its reflection, but starts from the ›You‹ and its ›call‹ or – in today's common terms – from the ›dialogue« (Myriam Bienenstock, Cohen und Rosenzweig. Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem deutschen Idealismus, Karl Alber, Frei­ burg/München 2018, 135). Therefore, the assertion of the singular individual against the speculative system that was present in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche is articulated in Rosenstock’s terms, immediately becoming »a religious interpellation« (Ibid., 137).

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The personal name as the ground for disruptive interpellation27 and the precedence of the Ur-grammar that is made present through collective prayer28 will be critical for Rosenzweig’s views on the potential of the dialogical openness to the Other29. In the Star of Redemption, the constitution of the dialogical principle is much more than the renewal of theology. It concerns a deeper transfor­ mation in the conception of man as an isolated and relational being whose questioning occurs between the past of creation and the anticipation of redemption. It proceeds from a divergence between the status of man as a member of the species, dominated by the natural law of self-preservation and self-interest, whose domestication is deemed the ever-renewed work of civilization30, and the awakening of subjectivity in relation to the other. Addressing the various figures of this awakening, Rosenzweig points to a different conception of health and accomplishment as goals of reorientation. In its stronger sense, as a revelation, the interpellation of the other may be conceived as an exodus from the ordinary, targeting a trace that exceeds the attributions of social identity31. Similarly to Kant's moral order, the domain of freedom interrupts the containment of organic life, and, certainly part of his close reading of Cohen, in the concept of revelation, Rosenzweig determines new goals 27 »Man gibt mir einen eigenen Namen, darum bin ich« (Rosenstock, op. cit., 766) replaces the proposition of the self-determining cogito, see: Myriam Bienenstock, »Mythe et révélation dans l’Etoile de la Rédemption. Contemporanéité de Franz Rosenzweig«, in: Archives de Philosophie, 55, 1, 1992, 17–34, esp. 32–33. 28 Cf. Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1992, 62–79, and Martin Brasser, »Rosenstock und Rosenzweig über Sprache. Die Angewandte Seelenkunde im Stern der Erlösung«, in: Id. (ed.), Rosenzweig als Leser. Kontextuelle Kommentare zum Stern der Erlösung, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, 173–207. 29 »Mit dem Anruf des Eigennamens trat das Wort der Offenbarung in die wirkliche Wechselrede ein; im Eigennamen ist Bresche in die starre Mauer der Dinghaftigkeit gelegt.« (Stern, 208). 30 This gap between natural existence and constitution of the individuum as part of the species, -as explored in the psychiatry and psychology models that will remain dominant until the sixties-, and the individual person, was already opened in Hermann Cohen's work. See Gesine Palmer, Konversionen und andere Gesinnungsstörungen. Zur bleibenden Relevanz des jüdischen Denkens nach Hermann Cohen und Franz Rosenzweig, vol. 2: ›Innere Umkehrung‹ und Seelenlehre, Epubli, Berlin 2015, 11–19. 31 This awakening or exodus refers to an intrusion that proceeds from the interpellation of oneself as part which always leaves a remnant. Reciprocal conversation bears the possibility of acknowledgment of singularity: »in der Offenbarung wird das ganz und nur Bestimmte, der Eigenname des Einzelnen, der einzig in seiner Art, in seiner eigenen und nur ihm eigenen Art ist, angerufen.« (Stern, 263).

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of integrity, education, and health, which overcome the spontaneous vari­ eties of egotism32. Striking our sensibility with a glimpse of the infinite, Kant’s concept of the mathematical sublime prepares us for the irruption of absolute alterity33. However, by virtue of his Hegelian formation, along with the transcendental sources of practical reason, Rosenzweig was also attentive to the immanent realization of the Objective Spirit in social time. The communal ordering of time convokes the individual to participate in various activities -rituals of prayer, interpretation, and celebrations- which provide a unique sense of belonging and identity. While its room for singularity may be disputed, religious experience allows an involvement that suspends the »natural« assumptions of civil life and the rational deductions of philosophy. The Star operates a movement of translation from the external viewpoint of philosophical discourse into the interior of an existence that unveils the lived world while immersed in it. Revelation is structured by language. It is conceived as a dialogue that exposes oneself to the reference system of the other34. The unfolding of God’s commandment of love, the care of »der Nächste«, proceeds from the world, which, through action, loses the purity of its elemental character35. This is a distinctive feature of Rosenzweig’s category of redemption; its anticipatory structure depends on a recursive transformation of immanence as the fulfillment of creation and revelation. Instead of conceiving man as a harmonious continuity between past and future, under a cumulative Bildung, Rosenzweig allows us to think in decisive instants. These events become occasions to readdress

32 Irene Kajon, »Societas in exteriore homine. Le problème de la construction du ›Nous‹ chez Rosenzweig«, in: Myriam Bienenstock (ed.), Héritages de Franz Rosenz­ weig. ›Nous et les Autres‹, Editions de l'Éclat, Paris 2015, 35–54. 33 Stéphane Mosès, The angel of history. Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem, transl. Barbara Harshav, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2009, 53–5. 34 Stéphane Mosès, Système et Révélation. la philosophie de Franz Rosenzweig (3rd ed., revised and augm.), Verdier, Paris 2016, 129. 35 The commandment is to be distinguished from a positive law, an object of conscious­ ness. It consists in an experience which counters isolation of the substance, occasioning a discontinuity which enables a disposition absent from nature: love. This is considered the only commandment which resists conversion into law, the highest: »sein Inhalt leidet nur die eine Form des Gebots, der unmittelbaren Gegenwärtigkeit und Einheit von Bewußtsein, Ausdruck und Erfüllungserwartung. Deshalb, als das einzige reine Gebot, ist es das höchste aller Gebote, und wo es als solches an der Spitze steht, da wird alles, was sonst und von außen gesehen wohl auch Gesetz sein könnte, gleichfalls Gebot.« (Stern, 197).

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our commitments36. In Rosenzweig’s view, this exercise is propelled by the desire for the other, a conception that is at the center of the therapeutic encounter. While not necessarily resigning from their guidance roles, the rabbi (or the pastor), the teacher, and the therapist, at some point in their careers, tend to realize that, paraphrasing Freud’s famous remarks, they are devoted to »impossible professions«37. This realization relates not only to their dealing with the constitutive opacity of the other’s mind or her reluctance to follow good counsel but primarily to the persistence of non-objectifiable goals. Similar to those other functions, therapy has been calling for a deep revision of externalist and paternalist models, which presume a complete (or better) knowledge of the truth, at least of clients’ truth. In the Star, one of the stronger affinities with this condition of the therapeutic task is to be found in the considerations of redemptive action, particularly when indeterminacy is said to constitute the framework in which God’s command for love is to be fulfilled. Rosenzweig points to the labor involved in the ever-renewed actualization of an unconditional conditioning that takes hold of the contingent: »[i]ndeterminacy, then, is the sign under which the act of love creates its object for the neighbor«38. In line with this refusal of trivialization of the other, common with some forms of psychoanalysis and second-order therapies, Rosenzweig rejects the assumptions of complete knowledge precisely by pointing to the temporal and linguistic dimensions of human existence. At the same time, although recognizing the individual’s situated and circumstantial character, where time and language are forms of openness to the other, the commandment preserves a transcendent tension absent from secular forms of assistance. It grounds experiences of revelation which suspend everyday assumptions and reductive categories, thereby encompassing a Instead of an escape »from ordinary life into a space beyond« it is »a release from the fantasies that keep us in thrall of some sort of exceptional ›beyond‹«. Santner, op. cit., 30–1. 37 Sigmund Freud, »Die endliche und die unendliche Analyse«, in: Schriften zur Behand­ lungstechnik, Fischer, Frankfurt a.M. 1982, 387. In Le rabbin et le psychanalyste: L'exigence d'interprétation (Hermann, Paris 2020), Delphine Horvilleur sustains that these profes­ sions entail a promise of revelation of meaning which is constrictively limited by the openness of their subjects’ desire. A final meaning, even under the guise of the »authen­ tic« life purpose of the believer or the analysand, would imply the imprisonment under a presumed necessity, a closure of interpretation that, in pastoral as well as in therapeutic work, prevents operations of second-order recursion, i.e. the reappraisal of previous assumptions with new perspectives. 38 Stern, 263. 36

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revision of the rigidity of those therapeutic forms39. This insight, which will be at the center of Buber’s personal encounter, has been captured by J. Lear, which reconceived therapy as an »existential Sabbath from ethical life«40. In the Star of Redemption, as the return to the seventh day, in a sacralization of the week as the social time par excellence, the »Fest des Ruhens und Betrachtens« figures as an anticipation of a messianic realm. The analogy with Shabbat concerns also the gap between this glimpse of another realm and the unplanned plans required for its coming. However, as a collective celebration. the Shabbat »ist der Traum von Vollendung, aber nur ein Traum«41; thereby entailing a call for redemption. The glimpse of an ideal order of »existence«, as anticipated in the Law and rituals, steaming from a »millennial spiritual technique«, draws on the concentration in the present moment, with deep analogies with perspectives opened by the therapeutic work42. In Rosenzweig, the present is the moment of articulation of the different modalities of time. Since preserving the tension between recollection and anticipation, it presents the opportunity for reconfiguration, refusing to be added as a passing moment in the path of history43. Prayer is not in the order of demand or dialogue; it implies a reali­ zation in the world. Pursuing a via media between messianic impatience and egotistic self-realization, it aims for what is impossible, or at least not guaranteed, under the present order of things. Unlike the unbeliever and the enthusiastic, the prayer strives for »a true turning of eternity into a

Revelation is always a personal experience, an act of love by which one states »I«, abandoning his monological plenitude, and is received by the »You«. Therefore, of revelation »one can only speak resorting to analogy«, namely with the Kabballah. This is entailed in the proper name: »Was einen eigenen Namen hat, kann nicht mehr Ding, nicht mehr jedermanns Sache sein; er ist unfähig, restlos in die Gattung einzugehen, denn es gibt keine Gattung, der es zugehörte, es ist seine eigene Gattung.« (Stern, 208). 40 Jonathan Lear, Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 2000, 128. By its intensification of phenomenal space and time, the Shabbat presents the opportunity to access a different order, as representative of the holidays which still appear, »even when their religious meaning has been lost, as enclaves of sacred time« (Mosès, The angel of history, 61). 41 Stern, 348. 42 »The possibility of seeing messianic promises realized today stems from a millennial spiritual technique, an ancestral familiarity with the internal experience of condensation in a single point of the three dimensions of time« (Mosès, op. cit., 59). 43 Ibid., 10, 49–53. 39

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today«44. To such accomplishment, it has to understand the other also as a Self45. In the second part of the Star, Rosenzweig stresses the need to accept one’s immersion in the world, referring to the acknowledgment and confirmation of the »you« as the way to self-discovery: »The I discovers itself at the moment when it asserts the existence of the You by asking where the You is«46. In the third part, he highlights this as a temporal, spatial and ritual form of life: »Life, and all life, must be entirely temporal, entirely living before it can become eternal life«47.

2. The transient dual in the workings of redemption. The distinctive features of constitutive »dual« of personhood considered in the Star48, are central to the therapeutic relationship. The »dual« is transient, implying not the comfort of a permanent housing but a temporary stay, a stage in the formation or reworking of oneself. It depends on the recursive recognition of the other as other, thereby refusing the reduction of the Nächsten to general categories or her Star, 307 (Stern, 322). »Die Brücke, die vom Ich zum Er, von der Offenbarung zur Schöpfung führt und über der geschrieben steht: Liebe deinen Andern, er ist kein Andrer, kein Er, sondern ein Ich wie Du, »er ist wie du«, – diese Brücke weigert sich das Ich, das um den Tod des andern bittet, zu betreten; es will genau wie der Mystiker, dessen heimliche Sünde der ehrliche Sünder, der Verbrecher, frei ausspricht, durchaus in der Offenbarung bleiben und die Schöpfung den »andern« überlassen; so leugnet der Sünder, der offene Verbrecher wie der mystische Heimlichtuer, die Erlösung…« (Stern, 305). 46 Stern, 195. »Dein Nächster ist ›wie du‹. Der Mensch soll sich nicht verleugnen. Sein Selbst wird eben hier im Gebot der Nächstenliebe erst end-gültig an seiner Stätte be-stätigt. Die Welt wird ihm nicht als ein unendliches Gemeng vor die Augen gerückt, und mit dem hinweisenden Finger auf dies ganze Gemeng ihm gesagt: das bist du. Das bist du – höre also auf, dich davon zu unterscheiden, gehe in es ein in ihm auf, verliere dich daran. Nein, sondern ganz anders: aus dem unendlichen Chaos der Welt wird ihm ein Nächstes, sein Nächster, vor die Seele gestellt, und von diesem und zu-nächst nur von diesem ihm gesagt: er ist wie du. »Wie du«, also nicht »du«. Du bleibst Du und sollst es bleiben. Aber er soll dir nicht ein Er bleiben und also für dein Du bloß ein Es, sondern er ist wie Du, dein Du, ein Du wie Du, ein Ich, – Seele« (Stern, 267). 47 Star, 306 (Stern, 320). 48 Stern 262. Following the musical analogy, Rosenzweig compares it to a fugue (fugato), contrasting with the initial cry (Kohortativ) of the one which exited the choir. In »The New Thinking« he contrasts this relational dual, based on mutual openness, with the solitude of the all-powerful thinking thinker (GS III, 151). 44

45

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instrumentalization. As such, it bears a new promise of a type of union which preserves the »traces« of this relation of awakened singularity: »in truth, it leaves its traces everywhere in this wandering [hinterläßt sie bei dieser Wanderung überall ihre Spuren], by setting the sign of singularity everywhere in the plural of things; where the dual has once dwelled, where someone or something has become the neighbor of a soul, there a piece of the world has become what it was not before: soul«49.

But »in the last stanza of the song«50, these voices appear in the unissono of the we, following its rhythm51. Here, for their polyphony, the Psalms are the textual reference of a transformation of the »singular I that is entangled in all the pains of a lonely heart, chained in all the confines of its poor soul«52 which can only find »the audacity [Kühnheit] to express its own misery« through the voice of the congregation [Gemeinde]. Since the anguished heart carries more than an individual burden, this mediation in the community is required for the self to regain a particularity that is never simply his own. Psalm 111 marks this elevation [»Steigerung der eigenen Seele«] on the self in the community as already entailed in revelation53. Rosenzweig’s concept of the dual captures decisive aspects of the therapeutic encounter. In Buber’s terms the pulsating relation between an I and a Thou enlivens the community of the all [Allheit], »flowing into a greater stream of reciprocal communication such as the living we (…)«54. Contrasting with the Hegelian fusion of the I in the We, not only does the We of the community differ from a mere sum of I’s and Thou’s, it is decisively marked by the constitutive nature of the relation between these55, tributary of the openness to the other that comes to be recognized Star, 252 (modified transl.), Stern, 262. Star, 254 (Stern, 263). 51 In the words of Jean Greisch, »[p]ronounced hastily or lightly, the ›We‹ risks being no more than a substitute, at the level of the interpersonal encounter, for a totality that denies the fact of original separation…« (op. cit., 458). 52 Star, 268 (Stern, 279). 53 Ibidem. 54 »…the real one, which, where it is completed, includes the dead who once took part in the conversation and now continue to take part in it with what has been handed down to them« (Martin Buber, »Dem Gemeinschaftliche folgen« [1956], in: Id., Logos. Zwei Reden, Lambert Schneider, Heidelgerb 1962, 66–7). 55 Exposing how the Humboltean study of language influenced Rosenzweig’s conception of the dual, supplementing shortcomings of Rosenstock’s conception, Donatella Di Cesare argues that »[t]he dual thus affixes to the usually impersonal plural the mark of personal 49

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as a Thou. This hosting of the other as a Thou, the accommodation of the alterity, implies the expansive character of the dual. Since it promises an inclusive acceptance of the other, it is in the relation with the Neighbor that redemption may be glimpsed: »what else is redemption but this, that the I learns to say you to the He?«56. It was proceeding from the dual that Buber articulated the dimension of the »between«, where »the function of receiving is no longer given over to the Thou-I but to a genuine Thou which either remains one that is thought and yet is felt as supremely living and ›other‹, or else is embodied in an intimate person«57. Instead of aiming its suppression, in order to acknowledge and confirm the other, therapy has to work on this between, providing it with an adequate density, where proximity can only be achieved through the recognition of an unsurmountable distance58. But wouldn’t the reunion of these voices in a ›we‹ make each one dependent on the other, suppressing an autonomy that some deem essential in therapy? Here, there is a remarkable agreement with Bub­ er’s dialogical philosophy: »the word always arises only between an I and a Thou, and the element from which the We receives its life is speech, the communal speaking that begins in the midst of speaking to one another«59. The transient and recursive »we« of therapy is never completely closed. For its unfolding, it depends on the outside Third it comes to constitute. This instance is a crucial part of its validation, forcing a constant revision of any assumption of unification between I and Thou singularity. In this sense, the dual inaugurates in Rosenzweig's philosophy a new concep­ tion of the ›community of all‹ which appears in the form of the We.« Id., »L'expression du duel dans la Rédemption. À propos de la généalogie du Nous chez Rosenzweig«, in: Myriam Bienenstock (ed.), Héritages de Franz Rosenzweig. ›Nous et les Autres‹, Editions de l'Éclat, Paris 2015, 114–23. 56 Stern, 305. 57 Martin Buber, »Dialogue (Zwiesprache, 1929)«, in: Id., Between Man and Man, transl. Ronald Gregor-Smith, Taylor & Francis, London / New York 1993, 31. 58 Although Buber’s views had a determinant influence in the development of various currents of humanist therapies, his perspectives on the »in between« of men have been especially praised in systemic therapy, see: R. D. Laing, Self and Others, Penguin, New York 1969, chaps. VII-VIII; Paul Watzlawick, Janet H. Beavin, and Don D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication, Norton, New York 1967, 82–90. The unsurmountable gulf between each person calls for an analysis of interpersonal relations as communicative processes, whose causality cannot be explained in a mechanical framework. 59 Martin Buber, »Elements of the Interhuman«, in: Martin Buber on Psychology and Psychotherapy. Essays, Letters, and Dialogues, J. Buber Agassi (ed.), Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 1999, 106.

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dependent on an always precarious interpretation of one’s singularity which strives not for suppressing opacity but for a better form of self-observation. At the heart of the Star we find this paradox: what drives me to search for the other, the accomplishment of God’s commandment to love, is deception60. The commandment, which cannot be reduced to a law or object of consciousness61, implies a »complete sequence of acts« [ganze Reihe von Akten], which inherent recursion has no previous bias or set goals, acts »completely lost in this instant«62. As a sequence of revelation, it forces a renewed listening, which opens to new ways of redemp­ 60 »Diese Erfüllung von Gottes Gebot in der Welt ist ja nun nicht ein einzelner Akt, sondern eine ganze Reihe von Akten; die Liebe des Nächsten bricht immer neu hervor; sie ist ein Immer wieder von vorn beginnen; sie läßt sich durch keine ›Enttäuschungen‹ beirren; ja im Gegenteil: sie bedarf der Enttäuschungen, damit sie nicht einrostet, nicht zur schematischen organisierten Tat erstarre, sondern immer frisch hervorquelle. Sie darf keine Vergangenheit haben und in sich selbst auch keinen Willen zu einer Zukunft, keinen ›Zweck‹; sie muß ganz in den Augenblick verlorene Tat der Liebe sein.« (Stern, 240). According to this religious perspective, which may inform therapeutic practice, when following the command to love, deception results from an inability to fully understand its implications and reach. On the other hand, »[b]ecause my love affair is with a distinctly existing world, I must be disappointed by it. A distinctly existing world cannot possibly satisfy all my wishes. Out of the ensuing frustration and disappointment, I am born. Melancholia, or some archaic precursor, must lie at the heart of every I« (Jonathan Lear, Love and its Place in Nature. A Philosophical Interpretation, The Noonday Press, New York 1990, 160). Also concerning world redemption, Stéphane Mosès sustains that, similarly to Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, Rosenzweig proposes a messianic perspective of redemption that opposes the historicist or cumulative view of progress: »the end of belief in a meaning of history did not involve abolishing the idea of hope. On the contrary, it is precisely on the rubble of the paradigm of historical Reason that hope is formed as a historical category« (The Angel of History, 12). 61 Irene Kajon (Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, 130) underlines how this conception of the commandment, decisive in contemporary Jewish philosophy, has its ascendency in Kant’s Critique of Practical reason, especially in the idea of »God’s voice« as the ultimate source of respect that, through its interruption of natural necessity, may aim for a redemptive ordering of the world. 62 Stern, 240. At the core of Rosenzweig’s depiction of Islamic religion, this passage on the loving pact between God and humans exposes central truths of humanistic therapeutic approaches. In Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen in Anschluss an Edmund Husserl (M. Nijhof, The Hague 1971, 366), Bernhard Waldenfels articulated a similar perspective that became pivotal in his subsequent works: »familiarity with the You cannot mean the reliability of the One who stands ready on the basis of habituation or agreement, but only the reliability of the One who, of His own accord, always holds ready [bereit halt] anew; otherwise we were not dealing with the You in His original and unique presence«.

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tion63. Otherwise, it would have been »utter obedience, decided and resolved«64. The not anticipatable is outside the horizontal axis of the historical sequence of events but is always imminent. It depends on the renewed reception and understanding of the commandments at each generation, which, already in the »Atheistic Theology« implies the replacement of an acritical belief in progress with the need for Testi­ mony65. In the context of Thanksgiving, as the condition of the kingdom of God, Rosenzweig conceives the calling for the awakening, and the need to exceed both the narration (creation) and the dialogue (of revelation), opening to an indeterminate future66. He considers the »not-yet« of the redemptive bound between Man and World, attributing priority to the

Bielik-Robson highlighted the role of disillusionment in the Star, as the condition to overcome the natural assumptions of natural pleasures and gratifications: »For it is only thanks to the disillusionment that we can enter into a truly post-phantasmatic relation with the neighbour, which can be any other thing in our vicinity (just a Platzhalter); a relation which makes a place for a real transcendence that reaches infinitely beyond our possible needs and expectations« (op. cit., 95). Before contemporary assumptions of narcissism -revised in Pascal Quignard’s Le Sexe et l’effroi (Gallimard, Paris 1994, 274ff.)-, the maturation of love, beginning with the openness to be loved, is decisive in the Kabbalistic tradition, whose speculations were part of the restitution of an authentic conception of transcendence as a relation with the incessant (unhoped and unexpected) that exceeds our expectations and desires. 64 Stern, 240. 65 Franz Rosenzweig, »Atheistische Theologie« in GS III, 696. A remote origin of the vocabulary of redemption, which in Rosenzweig’s thought entails individual and collective salvation, is to be found in the Kabbalah. Rosenzweig’s interest in kabbalist literature is undoubtedly part of a larger reaction towards various generations of Jews that capitulated to the integrative pressures of national states, presenting at the same time an alternative to the views propelled by Zionistic movements. It contributes to his views on the role of Israel as the elected guardian of tradition passed through generations. As we see in a letter dating from April 5, 1918, this speculative perspective emerged in Rosenzweig’s lived evidence. Soon after the death of his father and Hermann Cohen, he realizes that, until then, he had been nothing but a »simple branch«, while now he »took root and became a lineage« (Die ›Gritli‹ Briefe. Briefe and Margrit Rosenstock-Hussey, Inken Rühle / Reinhold Mayer (Eds.) Bilam, Tübingen 2002, 67). 66 In Santner’s words (op. cit., 63, n.29): »[w]ithout a supplementary orientation toward the Kingdom, the historical imagination remains stuck in an overly narrow and rigid conception«. Contrary to the common notion of progress that resists the realization of the ideal goal, the messianism of the Kingdom rejects a purely processual view where the future is »keine Zukunft, sondern nur eine in unendliche Länge hingezogene, nach vorwärts projizierte Vergangenheit« (Stern, 253–4). Without anticipation that is indexed in an eternal moment, there is only a natural history of states and empires. 63

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Neighbor [der Nächste]67. And, in order for him to awaken the souls it is necessary that, precisely by virtue of his deceptions, the human continues to desire68. But must the fulfilment of the commandment avoid a dis­ crimination between different objects of love?

3. Destiny and therapy. Along Rosenzweig’s work, we are confronted with this paradox: it is the openness to transcendence that can place us in life, in proximity to the neighbor. According to Rosenzweig, only after one’s formation as a citizen -i.e. the individual in its »integration« in the sittlichkeit-, is it possible to conceive finitude of the Self and its relation with transcendence. Prior to opening and questioning one’s autonomy before the face of the other, one has to achieve it so that the rupture in one’s being acquires a transformative reach. It implies a breach in one’s ipseity that comes from interpellation but extends into a transformative act69. In analogy with the observations about the mystic as God's pampered child, the initial comfort of the welcoming encounter should give way to a work of 67 Stern, 243–55. As part of the process by which the existent world comes to its essence relying in the human being’s action, Rosenzweig posits an indissoluble bound that is paradoxically reinforced in their detachment: »Aus dieser wechselweisen Bindung können sie also selber sich nicht lösen; denn indem sie sich selber entbinden, binden sie sich nur fester in- und aneinander. Sie können sich selber nicht von einander lösen, sie können nur miteinander – er-löst werden, erlöst von einem dritten, der eines am andern, eines durch das andere erlöst.« (Stern, 255). 68 According to Garrido-Maturano, in the »domain of redemption it is the function of Desire as pathos to avoid falling into mysticism, transforming the response to God's call into love for one's neighbour« (»El amanecer del Deseo. Análisis fenomenológico de la relación yo-tú y nosotros-vosotros en La Estrella de la Redención de Franz Rosenzweig«, Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofía, vol. 37, 2010, 247–263, 249). 69 In his contribution for the papers celebrating Rosenzweig’s 40th anniversary, while interpreting Moses’ reception of the divine word, Rosenstock subscribes the importance of the disruptive dimension of divine message: »nur weil Moses sie mit-teilte, weil er den Widerstand des Volkes wagte und überwand, nicht weil er dachte, sondern weil er kündigte, war der Geist des Menschen Mosis heilig« (Id. »Der Geist des Menschen ist der heilige Geist«, in: Franz Rosenzweig Collection. Leo Baeck Institute (ed.). http://ww w.archive.org/stream/franzrosenzweig_01_reel01#page/n138/mode/1up). This difficult task of transmission helps to explain why, according to the biblical narrative, forty years were required for children of Israel completing the desert crossing and arriving at the Promised Land.

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confrontation with the traumatic, overcoming the defenses of the present adaptive configuration, often similar to learned dependency70. This work also allows a demarcation from a simple accommodation to the past, a reception of the past of creation, in which it takes part, waiting for the future. The rabbi, the educator, and the therapist take their part in a com­ munity already constituted, with certain assumptions regarding the good. As in relation with God, the transition from revelation to redemption is decisive, so that desire does not become a self-enclosed enjoinment, opened to God, but closed to the world and man. Buber considered that in these relations (spiritual leader-congregant; teacher-student; therapist-patient), the »sphere of between« implies a considerable level of openness to the other: »by their very nature [these relations] may never unfold into complete mutuality if they are to remain faithful to their nature«71. In all three, Rosenzweig helps to consider the primacy of relations over substances or essences. In the notation used in the first part of the Star, the substances come into relation, transforming themselves without dissolving in one another. In Rosenzweig's terms, in order to envision the immanent transformation of the world (redemption) they must acknowledge the primacy of creation (past) and the moments of revelation. At the same time, they can only be conceived as joint move­ ments, not technical interventions. In their different engagements, the inclusive »We« remains the referent that supports mutual transforma­ tion72. This is particularly pertinent in the constitution of the therapeutic medium and the requirements of active forms of understanding that refuse a reduction to the same. Like the other social systems oriented by subjective experience, ther­ apy must leave room to question the law and its guiding categories. From this perspective, therapy shall aim to more than a consolation of neurotic existence facing the finitude or enforcing resignation with the current order, enacting the anxiety associated with incompleteness and precariousness, reconverting it in desire. As a suspension of ordinary duties, instead of freezing life outside of time, therapy examines its 70 Following Santner (op. cit., 5), Redemption »signifies not some final overcoming or full integration of this agitation but rather the work of traversing our fantasmatic organizations of it, breaking down our defenses against it«. 71 Martin Buber, I and Thou. Free Press, New York 1970, 178. 72 »[I]t is through the first-person plural on the one hand and the future tense on the other that we express our nostalgia for a better world« (Mosès, The Angel of History, 49).

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conditions and elections, receiving a newly heightened awareness, one may say, a ›revelation‹ that renews the projects of redemption. According to Eric Santner, in Rosenzweig the demand is never fully absorbed by its reception, something recalcitrant, intractable remains73. The therapeutic question will be: can this remnant be liberated from the enmeshment in one’s personality and the certainties of the world? Although the parable of apoplexia philosophica developed in Büchlein can be read as a partial illustration of broader problems of therapy, its diagnosis and treatment of philosophical paralysis may provide a better understanding of Rosenzweig’s view of therapeutic practice. The parable cannot be dissociated from Rosenzweig loss of affective engagement with the academy, culminating in the resolute declination of a professorship offer by Friedrich Meinecke. Embracing the Goethean »Forderung des Tages«, as head of the Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus, Rosenzweig states: »Cognition [Erkennen] no longer appears to me as an end in itself. It has turned into service [Dienst], a service to human beings«74. The goal of therapeutic closure exceeds knowledge. Its suspension of the warranties of the world elaborates on evidence or insights that require proof in the world of the human being and, in that sense, calls for the renewal of therapy’s conception as a service. In Büchlein, Rosenzweig considers the »delusions of the misdirected reason« which may be »naturally« dispelled by a »sudden fright, an unexpected happiness, [or even] a blow of fate beyond the ordinary«75. However, the pervasive force of habits and routines originate a new accommodation that dulls life, and since one becomes aware of his own decay, turns into a form of bad consciousness of the philistine (close to acedia), where one’s beliefs and convictions are incongruent with action76. Desire is deadened. This calls for a »reawakening« which is the task of therapy to promote convoking the patient for its center77. Santner, op. cit., 64–5. To Meinecke (30.8.1920) in: Franz Rosenzweig. His Life and Thought, Nahum Glatzer (ed.), Hackett, Indianapolis 1998, 96–7 (GS I, 680). 75 USH, 56 (Büchlein, 51). 76 In Büchlein, Rosenzweig reinforces this idea positing the illusions of self-determination and autonomy of the waking state: »Im Wachen ist der Mensch ›bei sich‹, er ist Mensch, Mensch unter Menschen, Mensch gegenüber der Welt. Könnte er leben, indem er nur wachte, so wäre er allmächtig. Die Welt wäre nichts als bildsamer Stoff für seine schaffenseifrigen Hände, er selber sich der einzige Mittelpunkt, er selber sich Gott. Aber so ist es nicht. Es kommt die Nacht […]« (109). 77 Jean Greisch (op. cit., 482–90) proposed to read Büchlein, from its three weeks of cure to the reinsertion in everyday life, as a spiritual exercise. 73

74

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As sustained by Santner, this involves the suspension of the whole-part logic structuring (some type of ) therapeutic practice, replacing it with a part-part »encounter«78. This obviously implies a certain inversion of the perspective according to which religion’s answers to suffering -and here therapeutic practices that maintain a notion of transcendence at their core-, are a way to replace the individual neurosis resulting from the ever-renewed demands of civilization, i.e. repression, with a collective one79. According to this view, therapeutic categories such as neurosis, are already the result of a generalization and possible imposition on one of the parts. While both psychoanalysis and therapeutic forms inspired by Rosenzweig agree that »[b]etween the subjectivity enclosed in its own interiority and the subjectivity misunderstood in history, there is the assistance of a subjectivity which speaks«80, they present different ways of hosting this subjectivity and its traumatic relation with the other. Rosenzweig prefigures a mode of encounter that, as sustained by Levinas81, is not based on intellectual apprehension of the other, but on a »relationship prior to understanding«82 originating a desire that cannot find ultimate fulfillment. In the exchange of expert letters, which composes the fifth chapter of the Büchlein, it becomes clear that this task must be distinct from shock and pharmacological interventions. In order »[t]o be effective, it must be part of living experience«. Therapy has to involve the patient by changing his environment -it is indeed conceived as an »Environmental treatment«83. This means that Rosenzweig recognizes the technical problem of therapy, saying it »is feasible only to the degree that such encounters can be artificially arranged«84, enabling the application of protocols and strategies.

Santner, op. cit., 90. A view repeatedly exposed in Freud’s later writings on culture. 80 Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini. Essai sur l'extériorité, Kluwer, Paris, 1990 [1971], 199–200. 81 »L'étoile de la rédemption qui rompt la totalité dans l'angoisse du néant, ne ramène pas l'étant humain aux souci pour son être même; elle conduit à la relation frontale avec l'autre homme«, Emmanuel Levinas, »Introduction«, in Mosès, Système et Révélation, 21). See also: Id., Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l'autre, Grasset, Paris 1991, 137. 82 Ibid., 17. 83 »›Terrainkur‹ dürfte das Schlagwort sein, mit dem wir dem Unfug alter wie neuer Impf-, Spritz-und Schmierkuren entgegenzutreten hätten« (Büchlein, 58). 84 USH, 58 (Büchlein, 55). 78

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The function of waking up the other from the numbness of the natural conscience is not exclusive to the therapist85. However, in him, it becomes »technical« at the same time that, by its very reach, it is invested with enormous responsibility. At the same time, awakening the conscience of others is not the same as becoming its supplier, but, on the contrary, to provide a space of resonance of one’s saying. The individual problems always exceed their categorization, embed­ ded as they are in the relation with the other. These are already weaved in a relational form, arising in the building of interdependencies which conform the subject to certain roles and attributes, indicating that problems are rarely purely personal, i.e. »if not already in eternity, at least detached from all historical temporality«86. They concern the experience in the world, involving personality, but also »destiny« as the visible form of insertion in time and relation. Therapeutic redemption requires relinquishing the current defenses towards life, unfreezing the current bounds with the world. Some experiences, particularly the discovery of one’s finitude, reveal the artificiality of everyday assumptions and commitments. However, as Rosenzweig realizes early in his path, this differs from a disdain of the world as purely illusory. It shows instead that, albeit constitutive, those assumptions and fantasies may be inadequate or counter productive. The bound with the therapist, safeguarded from everyday life, may suspend the natural attitude (first-order constructs) and enable a ques­ tioning of beliefs and passions, prompting self-examination. However, the phenomenological instruments shall not constrain this relational dimension with a conceptual framework -either in the form of transcen­ dental or quantitative analyses-, which narrows the openness to the other, replacing speech-thinking, as the temporal process of co-construction of meaning, with a metalanguage supposed to evade the situatedness of the subject. In agreement with Rosenzweig, Levinas will hold that the problems of personal redemption are far from being restricted to the »âme s'entren­ ant avec elle-même«87, always involving openness and dialogue, and for the philosophe de la différence, the precedence of the other. In Levinas’ »For a soul to awaken, it needs someone to call out to it. It takes someone who, precisely because of all its disappointments, is still looking for someone. It takes someone who is still longing« (Garrido-Matutano, op. cit., 263). 86 Mosès, Système et Révélation, 272. 87 Emmanuel Levinas, Hors sujet, Fata Morgana Paris, 1987, 15. 85

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ethical idea, the demand of the other always precedes and exceeds my positioning towards it, my reception. Here, the acknowledgment of the other’s alterity occurs in the tension between the impossible hosting and the need to »irritate« its present state. If »la séparation est la possibilité de la parole parlante«88, which breaks the totality, the precedence of the Thou aggravates the sense of inner opacity and the call for a responsible interlocutor. Levinas’ radicalization of dialogical philosophy has deep implica­ tions in the conception of therapeutic encounter. The asymmetry of the dialogue calls for my responsibility for the other which is transformative. But the unconditional being-for-the-other, by refusing mutuality in the name of the singularity of the other, makes it hard for therapy to provide a secure orientation to those seeking it. After Levinas' work, particularly regarding the traumatic condition of the human, the terms of the hospitability and listening of the other lead to intense questioning of, among others, the pre-emptive categorizations of the other, the ideals of authenticity and the symmetric models of therapeutic relationship. * As a system of modern society, the therapeutic medium acknowl­ edged and mobilized some of Rosenzweig’s perspectives on therapy as a form of redemption. But its responsive practice follows a regulated model of care, integrating legal, medical, and economic constraints. It takes responsibility towards the other, attending to her suffering but always by establishing operational ways to safeguard itself from complete exposure to her trauma. Grounding their divergence on the ethical model of caring for the other, in Buber and Levinas89, the main problem concerning therapy will be if the technical dimension of its intervention blemishes its constitutive transcendence. The question remains whether the therapeutic forms strive to metabolize a recalcitrant singularity according to the social mandates imposed on identity or, suspending pre-emptive schemes of validation, are able to pursue an ethics opened to the Other. Rosenzweig 88 Danielle Cohen-Levinas, »L’éclat de l’extériorité. Notes sur la critique de la Totalité chez Franz Rosenzweig et Emmanuel Levinas«. Les Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg, I, 2011, 135–149, 139. 89 Here, I can only provide a brief overview of the contrasts and similarities between mutuality and asymmetry, adjourning a more detailed discussion of their conceptions to an upcoming work.

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tackles questions that will be decisive in the differentiation of therapy, the problem of the resort to abstract categories that frame the individual, e.g.: the question of asymmetry between therapist and client, the potential and limitation of spontaneous and unconstrained interest in the other, or the role of the environment as having a transformative potential. This certainly explains the influence of Rosenzweig’s New Thinking in Buber and Levinas, philosophers that assumed a decisive role in the conceptualization of humanistic therapies. But apart from their divergences on the matters of the unconditional encounter with the other, both approaches have particular valences. Buber's dialogical theory, based on mutual trust and openness, provided a dynamic model that inspired various innovative therapeutic technics, namely the systemic. In its turn, Levinas ethics of alterity, based on the unconditional eminence of the other, calls for a new hosting of the traumatic condition.

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Leopoldo Sandonà1

1921–2021. A dialogical Christian perspective about Rosenzweig’s Star between redemption, eschatology and history

... only much later, long after the great war that rightly, in my opinion, is called »world war«, not because the whole world did it, but because we all, as a result of it, have lost a world, our world ...2

Abstract The pandemic situation has confronted the entire West with an »end of time«, with a rupture of the ordinary through an extraordinary event. The beginning of the twenty-first century projects us into the »emptiness of history«, in the contingency of global disorder, in a history devoid of direction, as anticipated by the philosophical reflection of the twentieth century. All these events describe a history made of crises, so close to the situation of the end of the First World War, the frame of the gene­ sis and writing of the Rosenzweighian masterpiece. Concentrating on a work and writings of one hundred years ago, therefore, does not mean celebrating a masterpiece on a »monumental« historical level, but mak­ ing these paths so similar to those that humanity is currently experiencing resounds as a »critical and constructive history«. Rosenzweig does not give us a philosophy of history in the sense of a detached analysis of historical events, as an objective genitive, but rather a philosophy of history as subjective genitive, we might say as a philosophy for history, capable of becoming again political philosophy. As a first step of the contribution, the paper focuses on some mean­ ings of the term redemption, before approaching a comparison between Divinity Faculty of Triveneto, Vicenza-Padua, Italy. Joseph Roth, La Cripta dei Cappuccini (Die Kapuzinergruft), Einaudi, Turin 1974, 49 (Italian edition). For a Rosenzweighian suggestion about the First World War, see Wolfgang D. Herzfeld, Rosenzweig, »Mitteleuropa« und der Erste Weltkrieg: Rosenzweig politische ideen im Zeitgeschichlichen Kontext, Alber Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau-Mün­ chen 2013. 1

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the eschatological perspective of Christian eschatology of the twentieth century and the perspective offered by Rosenzweig. In this first part, the meaning of redemption of the biblical tradition is compatible with the opening to the hope proper to contemporary Christian eschatology, which does not project salvation into an indistinct future. Still, it leads the human being to a concrete commitment to history, freeing it from its claim to a closed autonomy and monological absoluteness, as well as the pretensions of easy and immanent messianisms. The opening of history is not an opening beyond history, but from the historical prospective of God in revelation. Without the time, we cannot speak about the redemption and salvation. Christian eschatology is placed in the perspective of a human contribution to redemption and not simply of a work that comes from God. In the twentieth century, this eschatology, is based on the critique of the »immanent eschatologies«. At the highest level, this perspective is embodied by Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope. Eschatology is critical and a crisis in itself. The second step is placed in particular on the second and the third parts of the Star. Only in an adequate understanding of the theology of creation, understood according to the Jewish-Christian tradition, is it possible to fully understand the destiny of the human being and of the renewed creation itself. The redemption of Psalms reveals the possibility of living running towards the future, in the fulfilment of the time. The world's incompleteness eliminates any totalitarian perspective and simultaneously removes from the Kingdom the temptation to become a political messianism. The ultimate truth at the end is also the first for Judaism and Christianity, religions which constantly free themselves from their adherence to the religious, always making the world anew a-religious. In the different parts of the Star we also find a comparison between ancient time, with the individual life superseded by the polis and the latter immersed in the totality of the ecumenical world, and modern time with the individual who in his individual experience lives in the life of State in the dialectical form of freedom and determinism. While previ­ ous epochs have built principles in their philosophical, theological and scientific vision, principles that are still valid even if often contradictory, today dialogical thought is called, even in political forms, to speak of these forms of thought in a dialogical and non-dialectical perspective. Now the world is definitely a globus, even through the pandemic situation. The new time of the twenty-first century is no longer a time of freedom or need, a time for individual life or social interconnections, but it is a time of justice, in which everything in it is held. And justice is also a name of redemption.

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In the third part, the eschatological perspective, which can be com­ pared with the Christian theologies of hope, contains important political elements in itself, not because it anticipates the last times in a utopian way, but because it draws, in comparison with other Rosenzweighian texts, a particular role for politics, States and history. We may ask ourselves what concrete evidence emerges from Rosenzweig’s political instance. We could answer with the image of a negative theo-politics: Rosenzweig does not speak precisely of what politics is but indicates what it should not be, showing the links with the eschatological fulfilment in the Kingdom.

Premise The pandemic situation has confronted the entire West, not so much geopolitical as cultural, with an »end of time«, with a rupture of the ordinary through an extraordinary event. We do not know if we will be able to fully learn the lessons of these years; the beginning of the twenty-first century projects us into the »emptiness of history«, in the contingency of global disorder, in a history devoid of direction, as anticipated by the philosophical reflection of the twentieth century. The fall of the Twin Towers in 2001, the endemic economic crises that followed one another from 2007–2008 onwards, the pandemic tragedy of recent years. But we could also turn our eyes to the dramatic and symbolic burning of Notre Dame in 2019, as well as to surprising resignation of pope Benedict XVI in 2013. All these events describe a history made of crises3, so close to the situation of the end of the First World War, the frame of the genesis and writing of the Rosenzweighian masterpiece4. 3 Tadeusz Gadacz, »Freiheit un Verantwortung – Hegel, Rosenzweig, Lévinas Philoso­ phie der Krisenzeit«, in Angelica Bäumer – Michael Benedikt (Eds.), Dialogdenken – Gesellschaftsethik, Passagen Verlag, Wien 1991, 331–361. But the thought of the crisis in Rosenzweig isn’t a thought of apocalypse or catastrophe, see Fabrizio Desideri, »Catastrofe e redenzione. Benjamin tra Heidegger e Rosenzweig«, in Walter Benjamin. Tempo, storia, linguaggio, Editori Riuniti, Rome 1983, 193–207. 4 It is not without importance that Rosenzweig also shared with the presence situation the experience of the epidemic situation, through malaria disease, as mentioned in Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić-Francesco Paolo Ciglia, »Introduction«, in: Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić-Francesco Paolo Ciglia (Eds.), The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, Ubiquity Press, London 2021, 3: «Having contracted malaria shortly thereafter, he worked on his text in various hospitals, as the German army retreated in defeat». This commentary to the Star faithfully represents Rosenzweig’s intent

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Concentrating on a work and writings of one hundred years ago, therefore, does not mean celebrating a masterpiece on a »monumen­ tal« historical level, but making these paths so similar to those that humanity is currently experiencing resound as a »critical and construc­ tive history«. Rosenzweig does not give us a philosophy of history in the sense of a detached analysis of historical events, as an objective genitive, but rather a philosophy of history as subjective genitive, we might say as a philosophy for history, capable of becoming again political philosophy. These suggestions of the Star and of the whole Rosenzweighian produc­ tion, project a new light not only on the twentieth century’s history but also on our history, more and more full of darkness from the end of the »short century«5. The perspective questioned here doesn’t intend to »use« Rose­ nzweig’s philosophy to arrive at conclusions external to his thought. If anything, starting from a perspective of dialogical Christian philosophy and theology – marked by God’s justice for man as an ontology of dedication (P. Sequeri) and by the structurally relational understanding of reality (P. Coda) –6, to enter deeply into dialogue with Rosenzweig’s text, to grasp its consequences for Christian world and for the whole philosophical-theological context. Authentic dialogue doesn’t exploit the Other for its own aims, but captures, in the confrontation with the Other, relevant elements for one’s own experience, for one’s own life, and for one’s own cultural vision.

in the different parts and books a century after the first edition. Star is not only a book but a book of books. 5 If we consider Eric Hobsbawn’s title The short century. The Age of Extremes, we can probably think on the one hand that the short century is taking us into a new world through the extreme events of these first twenty years of the third Millennium, on the other hand we can see the short century in continuity with the first part of this wounded century. 6 For a framework of my thought, see Leopoldo Sandonà, Dialogica. Per un pensare teologico tra sintassi trinitaria e questione del pratico, Città Nuova, Rome 2019 and Leopoldo Sandonà (ed.), Dialogo dunque sono. Come prendersi cura insieme del mondo, Città Nuova, Rome 2019. For an ontological perspective about redemption in action, see Michele Del Prete, Erlösung als Werk. Zur offenbarten Ontologie Franz Rosenzweigs, Alber Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau-München 2009.

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Star, redemption and eschatology As a first step of the contribution, it seems relevant to focus on some meanings of the term redemption7, before approaching a comparison between the eschatological perspective of Christian eschatology of the twentieth century and the perspective offered by Rosenzweig. As recalled by Massimo Giuliani8, the first root from which the term redemption derives is ga’al (redeem, avenge), to which the terms ge’ulà (in the proper sense of redemption) and go’el (who pays the ransom/the saviour) are linked. This matrix has to do with the semantics of law. Redemption can have a socio-juridical meaning, like ransom, or denote a meaning more linked to the price, to the liberation that has a cost to pay. A second root is padah which highlights the meanings of liberation. According to the reflection recalled, this root puts redemption under the perspective of an acquisition, which necessarily has a price. The legal aspect is associated here with a deeply symbolic element. Finally, we find the traditional meaning of being saved through someone, through a person’s action of testimony. This third root, prefer­ red by the Prophets and liturgical language, is linked with hoshi’à, which indicates how to procure the salvation of someone or for someone. God saves through the work of intermediation and not only directly. From a biblical-historical perspective, one can understand how the term has an abundant plural use: God does not cause redemption but works redemptions in many different ways (jeshu’ot). In Rosenzweig’s Star, redemption is ultimately not only a redemp­ tion for human being – revelation – and for the world – creation – but also redemption for God. God is redeemed and saved: »in redemption he’s not only redeemer: since the work of creation and the act of revelation are now to some extent behind him and now act on each other autonomously [aufeinander wirken] and as he were not here, he, as we shall see, ultimately redeems himself«9. In redemption we can experience the real comprehensiveness of totality: »in redemption man and world 7 In the light Rosenzweig’s thought, redemption is also a key for interpreting of the whole contemporary philosophy and theology. See Alin Bontas, Franz Rosenzweig’s Rational Subjective System: The Redemptive Turning Point in Philosophy and Theology, Peter Lang, New York 2011. 8 Massimo Giuliani, »Le doglie della redenzione. Ebraismo tra storia e utopia«, in Tempo e salvezza. Hermeneutica Annuario di filosofia e teologia 2018, Morcelliana, Brescia 2018, 50–51.

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disappear, but God is fulfilled and comes to fullness [Gott aber vollendet sich]. Only in redemption God becomes what the human thought has always sought everywhere, affirmed everywhere, and yet has never found, for it could not yet be found anywhere, for it was not yet: All and One [All und Eines]«10. Thus the redemption of God opens to an eschatology not projected into the future, but as a kingdom that grows in the becoming of human history. So God needs the time, »not as such for Himself [nicht er selbst für sich selbst], but He needs it as the redeemer of the world and of man, and not because it is needed by Him, but because it’s needed by world and man«11. Certainly the Star follows the steps of a dialogical time, in which active revelation opens us to a future that is always to come, which puts history in the wake and on the traces of eschatology. We can thus connect these meanings of redemption with the passages of Christian theology, especially evangelical and Catholic, of the twentieth century, and with the meanings deeply connected to an ethical character. The categories of future, hope and eschatology, dear to twentieth-century theology, are closely intertwined with the perspective of care and responsibility that emerges throughout the ethical thought of the last century12. Christian eschatology is placed in the perspective of a human contribution to redemption and not simply of a work that comes from God. In the twentieth century, this eschatology is based on the critique of the »immanent eschatologies«13. At the highest level, this perspective 9 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1988, 257; Italian edition Franz Rosenzweig, La stella della redenzione, Vita & Pensiero, Milano 2005, 239. 10 Ibid., 266 [247]. 11 Ibid., 280. See Bernhard Grümme, »Theologische Durchblicke. Die Zuspitzung messia­ nischen Zeitdenkens«, in: Theologie der Gegenwart, 42, 199, 120–130. 12 For an overview of Christian eschatology in contemporary theology, see Giacomo Canobbio-Mario Fini (Eds.), L’escatologia contemporanea. Problemi e prospettive, Messag­ gero, Padova 1995. In connection with contemporary philosophy, Josef Wohlmuth, Mistero della trasformazione: tentativo di una escatologia tridimensionale, in dialogo con il pensiero ebraico e la filosofia contemporanea, Queriniana, Brescia 2013. 13 We could say that, in the reading of history, Rosenzweig grasps political meanings, without reducing history to the theological, but opening history to the transcendence, thus avoiding the risks of pure immanence. See Ulrich Bieberich, Wenn die Geschichte göttlich ware: Rosenzweigs Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel, Eos Verlag, St. Ottilien 1990; Gérard Bensussan, »Inachèvement du monde et redemption chez Franz Rosenzweig. Du théologique au politique«, in Emmanuel Cattin -Laurent Jaffro – Alain Petit (Eds.), Figures du théologique-politique, Vrin, Paris 1999, 251–263; Stephane Mòses, »Politique et religion chez Franz Rosenzweig«, in Jean Alperin – Georges Levitte (Eds.), Politique et religion.

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is embodied by Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope. Eschatology is critical and crisis in itself14, in a world constantly living in crisis forms, the same devastated and wounded world in which Rosenzweig wrote at the end of the »Great War«. But at the same time, crises open up the time of promises – always plural – a time of opening up to the closed and immanent history of late-modern ideologies. As Moltmann points out, Christian eschatology has been excessively influenced by the forms of a certain Greek thought, the God of Parme­ nides and not the God of Exodus and Resurrection15, which sees in the logos the epiphany of an eternal present of being and discovers the truth. But the language most proper to Christian eschatology is not the language of the Greek logos, but the promise that marked the language, the hope and the experience of Israel. Israel did not find the truth of God in the logos of the unveiling of an eternal present, but in the word of promise which is the foundation of hope, in which the present kairós is founded on the promise of the eschaton16. The promise announces a reality which does not yet exist and comes from the future of truth17. It is found in a sort of specific inadaequatio rei et intellectus which concerns

Données et débats, Gallimard, Paris 1983, 281–328; Id., »Hegel pris au mot. La critique de l’histoire chez Franz Rosenzweig, in Revue de Methaphysique et de Morale, 90, 3/1985, 328–341; Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, “’Gott in der Religion’, nicht ›Gott in der Geschichte‹, in Hegel Studien, 38, 1998, 225–250. 14 Jürgen Moltmann, Teologia della speranza. Ricerche sui fondamenti e sulle implicazioni di una escatologia cristiana, Queriniana, Brescia 19713, 237–238. 15 Ibid., 81. 16 Ibid., 36. 17 Kurt Appel, Tempo e Dio: aperture contemporanee a partire da Hegel e Schelling, Queriniana, Brescia 2018. The time as a subject is a time open to God and in God, with a fundamental difference from the objective time of science but also of some metaphysical tradition. In this openness, we can also meet the Trinitarian sense of the Christian experience of God, Id., Trinità e apertura di Dio, Pazzini Editore, Verrucchio (Rn) 2021. In this opening, through the thinking of Karl Löwith, see Lorenzo Calabi, La filosofia della storia come problema: Karl Löwith tra Heidegger e Rosenzweig, ETS, Pisa 2008. The linguistic, historical and relational understanding of the time also allows us to save ourselves from the Gnosticism, without redemption, of a categorical or hyper-categorical reality created by technology, as shown in Pierangelo Sequeri, Postfazione. Disporre del tempo di Dio, in Appel, Tempo e Dio, 224–231. About the connection between the totality of virtuality and the Star, see Lucas Scott Wright, »Das All is nur virtuell: Paganism, Fiction, and the Concepts of Redemption, Truth and God in der Stern der Erlösung«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), Gebet, Praxis, Erlösung. Prayer, Praxis, Redemption. Rosenzweig Jahrbuch/Rosenzweig Yearbook n. 12, Karl Alber Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau-München 2021, 230–244.

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the given reality18. This is not the place to retrace Moltmann’s theology of hope. Still, in relation to Rosenzweig’s concept of redemption, it is essential to emphasize the inclusiveness of the promise of the Kingdom of God, in which all things come to justice, life, peace, freedom and truth. The promise/promissio of the Kingdom is the foundation of the mission/missio of love to the world19. If the future is not closed, we can move towards a path of hope and ethical commitment. Suppose the principle of hope has grown in the thought of twentieth-century also because of ecological, atomic and global dangers. In that case, the Star anticipates the interconnection of these themes by tracing some of the classic meanings of the philosophy of history of the Jewish-Christian tradition: the world is created with a direction of meaning and significance; creation does not negate the scandal of evil, in nature, in ethical life, in political dimension; the human being has a definite and non-substitute task in leading the world towards fulfilment. In particular, we can note how in contemporary Christian escha­ tology, the sense of the task of the Christian and of the believer are rediscovered, even in contrast to the contemporary ideologies of the transformation of the world, in an ideological-political sense as in the case of Marxism, in a technological-consumeristic sense as in the case of the advanced capitalist techno-economies. As the Catholic theologian Alfaro affirms, »the relationship of man to others and to the world is not juxtaposed with the relationship with God, but is included in it with the same indivisible unity which integrates, in the being of man, the spirit and body as all-encompassing dimensions of his existence; man brings his relationship to a truly and authentically human fulfilment with God in relation to other men and creatures. [...] The world's transformation by man's work is integrated into the anticipatory beginning of his future salvation«20. Thus, human experience is not aimed at commitment to the world, but this task represents a theological imperative even more than an ethical one. »The Moltmann, op. cit., 82. Ibid., 229: »the promise of the Kingdom of God, in which all things come to justice, life, peace, freedom and truth, is not exclusive but inclusive. Thus, his love, sense of solidarity with his neighbour, and compassion are also inclusive. They do not exclude anything, but include in hope all that God will be in all things. The pro-missio of the Kingdom is the foundation of the missio of love for the world». 20 Juan Alfaro, Speranza cristiana e liberazione dell’uomo, Queriniana, Brescia 19732, 187–188. 18

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essential requirement of Christian hope, in its community dimension, is the radical commitment to the integral liberation of the human being, from now on, in the world«21. This hope for the human being who lives on earth, imposes on the Christian the responsibility of witnessing, through faith and actions, that the Kingdom of God always is coming. The human being can take part concretely in the transformation of the world. In this sense, hope becomes redemption by connecting some meanings of the Christian tradition to what is indicated by the Jewish tradition. Man and world are closely intertwined. Redemption is the work of man in the world: »alone they cannot dissolve into one another [nicht von einander lösen]; they, together, can only be dissolved/redeemed [er-löst] by a third who redeems them into one another«22. Even when human work seems to be a purely earthly work towards the world, it is accomplished in God and in his presence. On the one hand, eschatology should not be confused with apoca­ lyptic thought. If the times in which we live do not hide elements of uncertainty and fear, eschatology is fundamentally marked by the hope of getting involved and trying to mark steps toward peace. Consequently, the eschatological perspective, just as in Rosenzweig’s proposal, is open to ethical commitment, without claiming that the human construction of ethics has the last word but allowing the human being to make his own contribution to redemption. Christian tradition has also indicated two opposite »sins« in rela­ tion to salvation. The desperation of salvation and the presumption of salvation. In both cases, the twentieth century experienced the nihilistic despair of salvation, in a history without horizon and without direction – Rosenzweig would say without Orientierung23 – and the presumption of salvation in which history is only the result of human actions in social, political and techno-economic terms. From the critique of the present as absolute present derives and takes shape a sense of openness to a future made of hope. The believer’s commitment to the world becomes a way of orienting himself to the Ibid., 193. Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 255 [237]. 23 This perspective is well expressed in the correspondence of the of 1916, Franz Rose­ nzweig-Eugen Rosenstock, La radice che porta. Lettere su ebraismo e cristianesimo, Editrice Marietti, Genoa 1992. GS I/1, 191–194; 197–199; 218–223; 229–234; 245–256; 275–293; 298–306; 310–320. 21

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world, knowing that it is not merely human action that orients us towards the future. There is, therefore, a reciprocity between the open vision proper to the Jewish-Christian tradition and the vision of human and social planning: »Christian eschatology needs rationality while planning for the future needs the dimension of the human mystery«24. We cannot forget the differences between the Jewish world and the Christian world. For example, in Rosenzweig’s hermeneutics, Christian­ ity lacks a feast of redemption. The only one approaching is Christmas25. In this first part, then, the meaning of redemption of the biblical tradition is compatible with the opening to the hope proper to contem­ porary Christian eschatology, which does not project salvation into an indistinct future, but leads the human being to a concrete commitment to history, freeing it from its claim to a closed autonomy and monological absoluteness, as well as the pretentions of easy and immanent messian­ isms. The opening of history is not an opening beyond history, but from the historical prospective of God in revelation. Without time, we cannot speak about redemption and salvation.

The heart of the Star: between redemption and revelation Coming to properly Rosenzweighian contents, our focus will now be placed mainly on the second and the third parts of the Star, but retrospec­ tively also on the first. The second part manifests the break-in of revelation fracturing ordinary time. The triptych of Genesis-Song of Songs-Psalms shows this irruption plastically. The creation of Genesis (first book of the second part) is the past of the future, the possibility of establishing a future in the possibility of the future: »the creation of the world must find its end only in redemption [Die Schöpfung der Welt braucht ihr Ende erst zu finden in der Erlösung]«26. Only in an adequate understanding of the theology Dietrich Wiederkehr, Prospettive dell’escatologia, Queriniana, Brescia 1978, p. 269. Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 408 [376]: »the opening of the house to the bursting of untouched nature, who is granted the right of hospitality in the warm room, under the guise of a tree cut in winter, and then the manger of a foreign barn, into which comes the Redeemer of the world, have their exact counterpart in the open sky that the roof of slander leaves. Let it shine in remembrance of the tabernacle which gave rest to the eternal people when they wandered». 26 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 132 [123]. Jules Simon, »Part Two, Book One: Creation, or the Everlasting Ground of Things«, in: Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić24

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of creation, understood according to the Jewish-Christian tradition, is it possible to fully understand the destiny of the human being and of the renewed creation itself. Creation is a chance for the future. In a recent manifesto, Saving fraternity – together, it is emphasized that the »dualism which must, once and for all, be reconstructed for the benefit of a new paradigm for life and ecclesial mission, is that which separates – and even creates opposition in – the world of creation (reflected in nature) and that of redemption (outside of nature). This parallelism no longer fulfils the ontological and political function for which it was developed. [...] And the freedom of God’s creatures, which grants them the honour and the burden of making the world of the living habitable while waiting for its redemption, is protected by the grace which encourages us to hope for redemption with all our might. This change of tone is crucial for the current kairós«27. The Rosenzweighian perspective anticipates this post-modern drama of the separation between creation and redemption, calling attention to what is both last and first. The revelation is the ground of the entire Rosenzweighian building, as we can see also in the third part of the Star: »only in the immediate proximity of the heart-point of the All, in the revelation of divine Name, also of the creator and redeemer becomes clear what can be manifested to us; revelation teaches us to trust in the creator, to wait faithfully for the redeemer. Thus, it enables us to recognize also the creator and the redeemer only as the One who loves. He who loves is the only one we perceive. Only as the lover is God not the Lord. Here he is in action. He is not above his action. He is in it. He is one with it [Er ist eins mit ihr]. He loves«28. Here we give greater importance to the third book of the second part. The redemption of Psalms reveals the possibility of living running towards the future, in the fulfilment of the time. In the end, the experience of the future that must be accomplished represents a very difficult task because it requires humility on the part of man, on the ethical, political and religious level, to avoid that he believes himself to be the last builder Francesco Paolo Ciglia (Eds.), The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, op. cit., 83–97. This first book of the second part of Star denotes a change of style, with the dynamic, plastic and performative language of creation. 27 Pierangelo Sequeri et al., Rescuing Fraternity – Together, Libreria Editrice Vaticana – Pontifical Academy for Life, Vatican City 2021, 28. 28 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 424–425 [392]. For a theology of divine Name, see Heinrich Assel, Geheimnis und Sakrament. Die Theologie des göttlichen Namens bei Kant, Cohen und Rosenzweig, Vandenhoeck & Rupreckt, Göttingen 2001.

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of a definitive construction. »The world is the other pole towards which love of neighbour tends. [...] In the commandment (Leviticus 19,18) this »something« is referred to as the neighbour [der Nächste], and the term, both in the sacred language and in Greek, surely means the one who from time to time is, in the very instant of loving [in dem Augenblick des Liebens]«29. In opening up to others, which opens up to the future, we encounter the incompleteness of the world, the impossibility of enclosing the other, the future, and history in certain categories: »the world is not yet complete [Die Welt ist noch nicht fertig]. In it, there is still laughter and weeping. Tears are not yet wiped away from all faces. [...] If you also wanted to tell the future, then you would inevitably make it a rigid past [starren Vergangenen]. The future demands to be foretold. The future is experienced only in expectation [Die Zukunft wird erlebt nur in der Erwartung]. Here what is last must be, in thought, the first [Das Letzte muß hier in Gedanken das Erste sein]. [...] So it is, palm after palm, something that comes, indeed a coming. It is what is to come [das was kommen soll]. It is the Kingdom«30. From this point of view, religious fundamentalists are closely inter­ twined with totalitarian forms of politics [in tyrannos!]31 but also with the soft totalitarianism of well-being. The world's incompleteness eliminates 29 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 243 [225–226]. About the love of the neighbour, see also Francesco Saverio Tommasi, »Redemption and the Commandment to Love the Neighbour Rosenzweig’s Kritik to Kantian Ethics«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 220–229; Renate Schindler, »Zweiter Teil, drittes Buch: Erlösung oder die ewige Zukunft des Reichs und Schwelle«, in: Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić-Fran­ cesco Paolo Ciglia, (Eds.), The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, op. cit., 113–130. The centre of redemption is not the end of time in a transcendent revelation, but the real, practical and living connection between the love of God and the love of neighbour. 30 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 244 [227]. 31 Not casually, the third part [das Reich zu erbeten] is in opposition with »tyrannos«, as the first part about the possibility of knowing the whole reality [das All zu erkennen] is in opposition with philosophers [in philosophos!] and the second part about the miracle [das Wunder zu erleben] is in opposition with theologians [in theologos!]. See Gabriella Caponigro, »The Suffering of the Kingdom of Heaven«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 95–111; Gabriella Caponigro, »Part Three, Introduction: On the Possibility of Entreating the Kingdom«, in: Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić-Francesco Paolo Ciglia, (Eds.) The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, op. cit., 143: the sense of redemption for Rosenzweig is »against all totalitarianisms of heavens, all presumption to embrace all of history and the entire truth, against radical subjectivism that overcomes creatural limits».

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any totalitarian perspective and simultaneously removes from the King­ dom the temptation to become a political messianism32. The anticipation of the Kingdom of Heaven is the idolatrous form par excellence. From this confusion, both theological and political, derives every form of idolatry of religious and political totalitarianism33. Together we find an authentic idea of the future in the growing Kingdom. »Eternity is not a very long time, but a tomorrow that could just as well be a today. Eternity is a today that is however aware of being more than a today«34. The moment [Augenblick] described in the Star is very different from the nihilistic moment of those who live as if there were no future. Surely, this moment is an unrepeatable experience – to some extent liturgical – of the expected fulfilment. Thus, it is possible to reconcile an oriented reading of history and the experience of the moment as an eternal return (or eternal anticipation) of the future: »the choir increases the intensity to the immense unison of the »we« of all voices, of the »we« who exhor­ tatively breaks all future eternity into the present »now« of the moment [ins gegenwärtige Nun des Augenblicks]. But we are eternal [Die Wir sind ewig]«35. In the eternal »we«, the dual experience of body and soul finds some ways of fulfilment.36. Gabriella Caponigro, Unde malum? Libertà e tirannia in Franz Rosenzweig, ETS, Pisa 2015; Irene Kajon, »La critica della tirannia in Franz Rosenzweig«, in: Archivio di Filosofia, 59, 1–3/1991, 219–241. 33 The prayer is a way to enter the deepest meaning of religious life, against the (violent) misunderstanding of religious experience, Bernhard Casper, Evento e preghiera: per un’er­ meneutica dell’accadimento religioso, CEDAM, Padua 2003. Faced with the temptation to act as absolutes, prayer reminds us of the humility inherent in the human condition, needing the other in the time given to us: »the occurrence of prayer thus becomes the ever-new beginning of an adult human life, assigned in history», 149. True prayer is also a possibility to avoid the risk of mysticism anticipating the Kingdom of God. See Giacomo Bonagiuso, »La dimensione dell’oltre. Tentazione mistica e utopia della storia nel pensiero di Franz Rosenzweig, in: Filosofia e teologia, 2/2001, 313–328; Francesco Paolo Ciglia, »Fra totalità ed escatologia. La questione della mistica nel pensiero di Franz Rosenzweig«, in Aniceto Molinaro-Elmar Salmann (Eds.), Filosofia e mistica, Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo, Rome 1997, 233–272. 34 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 250 [232–233]. 35 Ibid., 281 [261–262]. 36 Franz Rosenzweig, Il grido, Morcelliana, Brescia 2003, 63: »in noi si unifica la corrente del tempo che è nata duplice, nella nostra pena, nella nostra pena comune e tuttavia sempre divisa; unica deve sfociare nel mare dell’eternità [In uns eint sich der zweigeborene Strom der Zeit, in unsrer Not, gemeinsamer, dennoch immer geschiedner Not; einfach muss er münden ins ewge Meer]». 32

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Eschatology opens in the third book through the events of Israel and the Christian world, forms of recent times, parallel but not separated, expressions of a truth that is both dual and certainly dialogical. In Jewish life »past and future, mostly mutually foreign, since the former retracts when the latter advances, grow together until they become one [hier wachsen sie in eins]; the generation of the future [das Erzeugen der Zukunft] is immediately to bear witness to the past [Bezeugen der Vergangenheit]«37. If the Christian world is the world of time, in the sequence of before and after, the end of Christianity in the secular age is a crossroads [Kreuzweg] between the loss of meaning and a new sense of history. In the third part, we find further elements of openness to the future: prayer, which establishes the human order of the world38, which on the Shabbat unites creation and redemption. It is not a mere cosmic celebration but a »creation for redemption«39. In eschatology, through the conclusions of the Star, truth is manifested as dynamic truth, inver­ sion, in the return of the Buberian Alltags des Lebens which takes up the sanctification of the daily [Heiligung des Alltags] of Hasidism40. This 37 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 331 [307]. Petar Bojanić, »Part Three, Book One: The Fire or The Eternal Life«, in: Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić-Francesco Paolo Ciglia, (Eds.), The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, op. cit., 150. The passage to the third part is the definitive transition to the »We« found in the redemption of the second part: »Constructing »Wir« or the phrase »Wir sind ewig« is the axle that holds all other concepts together, giving place to all concepts in a stable order». 38 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 298 [276]. Gabriella Caponigro, »Part Three, Introduction: On the Possibility of Entreating the Kingdom«, in: Martin BrasserPetar Bojanić-Francesco Paolo Ciglia, (Eds.) The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, op. cit., 133–144. 39 Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 349 [323]. We cannot focus here on the liturgical dimension of Rosenzweig’s reflection. Still, we have to recall that the liturgy is one of the main themes in the debate about Rosenzweig’s thinking, both in the past and in the most recent intervention, as in: Martin Fricke, »Da hört man nichts mehr von Sache noch von Tat« (Rosenzweig) – Liturgie und Erlösung«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 37–45; Gesine Palmer, »Redeeming Liturgy: A Eulogist’s Perspective on Rosenzweig’s Concept of Liturgy«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 46–59; Giacomo Petrarca, »Erbeten, Prayer and Action: Theological-Political Glimpses at Franz Rosenzweig«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 79–94; Sybille-Kathryn Lunau, Kunst zwischen Patologie und Erlösung, LIT, Münster 1997; for a specific connection between politics and liturgy, see Cordula Hufnagel, Die kultische Gebärde: Kunst, Politik, Religion im Denken Franz Rosenzweigs, Alber Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau-München 1994. 40 For the educational consequences of this philosophical-performative approach, see Ludwig Wenzler, “’Lernen, um zu tun’. Franz Rosenzweigs Sprachdenken und die Lehre

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ultimate truth is also the first for Judaism and Christianity, religions which constantly free themselves from their adherence to the religious, always making the world anew a-religious [die Welt auch wieder unreligiös zu machen]41. At the same time, this openness manifests the inadequacy of the pre-world: Western thought, in its greatness, remains in a hypothetical time, in a history not realized or touched by the event of revelation; the same image of God is an image necessary to say something about God but not sufficient to live the experience of God and with Him42. Even in the present context, we need to replace the hypothetical thought of the classic-metaphysical tradition not so much with other hypothetical thoughts – even if pragmatic – such of those of techno-science, but rather by giving life to knowledge through the leaven of a thought able to speak with scientific thought, which powerfully describes the present world with economic, environmental and medical questions. In these three parts of the Star, we also find a comparison between ancient time, with the individual life superseded by the polis and the latter immersed in the totality of the ecumenical world, and modern time with the individual who in his individual experience lives in the life of State in the dialectical form of freedom and determinism. While previous epochs have built principles in their philosophical, theological and scientific vision, principles that are still valid even if often contradictory, today dialogical thought is called, even in political forms, to speak of these forms of thought in a dialogical and non-dialectical perspective: together and alone, freedom and reciprocity, authority and community, uniqueness and individuality. Now the world is definitely a globus, even through the pandemic situation. The new time of the twenty-first century is no longer a time of freedom or need, a time for individual life or social interconnections, but it is a time of justice, an »open« time43, in des Alltags«, in Raimund Sesterhenn (Ed.), Das Freie Jüdisches Lehrhaus – eine andere Frankfurter Schule, Verlag Schnell & Steiner, München-Zurich 1987, 109–129. 41 Franz Rosenzweig, GS I/2, 768. We can speak openly of a redemption for religions or, better, of a redemption from the degenerations of religions, religions that are no more gen­ erative and fruitful, see Ephraim Meir, »Redeeming Religions«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 23–36. 42 Francesco Paolo Ciglia, »Part One, Book One: God and his Being, or Metaphysics«, in: Martin Brasser-Petar Bojanić-Francesco Paolo Ciglia, (Eds.), The Star for Beginners: Introductions to the Magnum Opus of Franz Rosenzweig, op. cit., 23–40. 43 For the comprehension of time in Rosenzweig compared with the utopian perspective, see Pierre Bouretz, »Histoire and utopia. Fukuyama/Hegel, Mosès/Rosenzweig«, in: Esprit, 61, 2/1992, 119–133.

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which everything in it is held. And justice and truth is also a name of redemption: »the truth doesn’t make itself recognized, as the teacher of the school thinks, in relation to mistake [am Irrtum]; the truth attests itself [die Wahrheit bezeugt sich selber], it is one with all the reality, it doesn’t produce division [sie scheidet nicht] in reality«44. The way of the one truth is a way against a politics of violence, a politics of division. An erratic attitude could become a way to the truth, and an erroneous way would become a way for division and violence.

Perspectives for politics The eschatological perspective, which can be compared with the Chris­ tian theologies of hope, contains important political elements in itself, not because it anticipates the last times in a utopian way, but because it draws, in comparison with other Rosenzweighian texts45, a particular role for politics, States and history. Rosenzweig shows how, on the basis of Christian thought that brings truth to the whole world, this world is concretely one, globalized and interconnected. Although unable to predict all geopolitical develop­ ments, Rosenzweig captures a fundamental element of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this perspective, the thoughts of Judaism and Christian world are central, while indications concerning other religious worlds are less present46. Rosenzweig is a commentator of Hegel’s thought; the modern State is ultimately the utopian way to anticipate the Kingdom of God. Paradoxically, the Jewish and Christian Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, op. cit., 427 [394]. To relate theory of truth and theory of time in Rosenzweig, see Rivka Horwitz, Ewigkeit und Wahrheit. Die Messianische Erkenntnistheorie Rosenzweigs, in Evelin Goodman-Thau (Ed.), Vom Jenseits: jüdisches Denken in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte, Akademic Verlag, Berlin 1997, 143–167. 45 For a recent intervention about Hegel und der Staat Roberto Navarrete Alonso, »El libro de Franz Rosenzweig sobre Hegel y el Estado«, in: Pensamiento, 77, 2021, 737– 759. There is no doubt that the reading and reception of this text weighed the same judge­ ment of Rosenzweig, who stressed, in a letter to Friedrick Meinecke, the difference between the author of Hegel und der Staat and the author of the Star, GS I/2, 687–682, mentioned also in the Italian introduction to the book, Remo Bodei, Introduzione all’edizione italiana, in Franz Rosenzweig, Hegel e lo Stato, Il Mulino, Bologna 1976, XXXIX. 46 For the opening to other cultures in social dimensions see Naomi Tanaka, »Die Bedeu­ tung von »Erlösung» in sozialer Dimension. Zur Akzeptanz des Rosenzweigs-Gedankens in nicht-jüdischen Kulturbereichen«, in: Luca Bertolino-Irene Kajon (Eds.), op. cit., 142–157. 44

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faith are the ways to leave the world free to express itself in pluralistic political forms. And paradoxically, the loss of power of Christianity is an opportunity for Churches to become freer in the announcement of the faith in the pluralistic society. The modern Enlightenment saw in religions the ancient tyrannoi; now, the free powers in the world seem to become the new tyrannoi of a world with only apparent freedom. In the time regulated and scheduled by techno-economic intelligence, the future is a rigid past; the future is only the repetition of what is just happened. This is also the auto-critic of contemporary philosophical thought, as in the Frankfurter Schule (Adorno-Horkheimer). But it’s also a teaching for the political degeneration of a world made of the present of Big Data that is orienting our apparently free choices. We may ask ourselves what concrete evidence emerges from Rose­ nzweig’s political instance. We could answer with the image of a negative theo-politics: Rosenzweig does not speak precisely of what politics is, but indicates what it should not be, showing the links with the eschatological fulfilment in the Kingdom. The significance of history has a prophetic meaning, and this vision does not fail to grasp certain geopolitical trends which will become clearer in the course of the twentieth century, such as the loss of centrality for Europe and its need to become the soul of the world47. In a retrospective view, Rosenzweig’s vision, which is a philosophi­ cal-theological, political and epochal vision, can lead us, with Rosenzweig and beyond him, to see developments for the world, for Christianity and for political forms, increasingly interconnected, which do not claim to determine the future but to commit themselves ethically, as imperative for survival and sustainability. In the world made definitely a globus, Europe48 is the soul of the world, not the centre of power, but the centre of the spiritual, esthetical and cultural life. The connection between the Continents is not the connection of a war field as in the ages of Francesco Paolo Ciglia, Fra eurocentrismo e globalizzazione, in Franz Rosenzweig, Globus. Per una teoria storico-universale dello spazio, trad. it. of Stefania Carretti, Marietti, Genoa-Milan 2007, 169. GS III, 313–368. The importance of Globus must be inserted in the genetic context of this text during the war experience, not without relation to other political writings in GS III. Roberto Navarrete Alonso, »Globalización y geo(teo)política de la Historia: Franz Rosenzweig y Carl Schmitt«, in: Éndoxa. Series philosophica, 40, 2017, 183–202, highlights Rosenzweig’s ability to anticipate geopolitical developments. 48 This new centrality of Europe is very similar with Romano Guardini’s reflection on power and politics after the Second World War, Romano Guardini, La fine dell’epoca moderna – Il potere, Morcelliana, Brescia 200410. 47

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Colonialism and Imperialism. Nations and States are now definitively autonomous but also interconnected. The world has to choose between new nationalist wars (warm or cold) or the necessary cooperation in different ways, not utopian but based on the dialogue between different interests. Rosenzweig’s Globus doesn’t indicate a specific type of prag­ matic response, but »only at turning points are recognizable thoughts that become models for the whole world«49. In our age of crisis, we are at a turning point in history or in an always-changing history. Globus’ thought is not pragmatic-political thought but a thought of criteriology for future policies. »We still have the greatest battles ahead of us, the battles for the definition of an authentic idea of the world«50. The prophetic anticipation is to see already, a century ago, that »political awareness embraces the globe entirely [den runden Ball] on which we live«51. In the Star, we cannot read a certain form of politics. However, in the life of the Jewish and Christian communities, we find the trace of a deep political experience, almost a sign of the religious’ outdated political prophecy. Beyond the ideological drifts of the twentieth century and the apocalyptic images of dystopia, it is possible to describe a path towards a good place [eu-topos] or another place [etero-topos] compared to the image of an impossible society [ou-topos]. At the end of history, we can have the experience both cosmological-ecological and social-communitarian of the apocalyptic world, in the sense of ruins and destructions, or the experience of the renewed world, becoming the new garden of creation, the new city of peace, not the Babel tower in which all the things are similar, but the Jerusalem-city of peace in which the differences are together-Peace, as in the Star, is not an irenic situation, but the result of a challenging path not exempt from risks, not in the absence of differences but living together with other Nations, States, religions. We cannot find in thought of one century ago easy solutions for today and for the future. But the framework for reading a relational reality can lead us to a construction of ethical and dialogical places in where society can progress, in the face of the threats of an authentically global and anonymous system. If the world has become global, dialogue must also become global. This possibility opens up in the horizon of the eternal »we«: »as the first limited »I« [begrenzte erste Ich] and its equally limited propagation to the first »we« [ersten Wir] marks the first moment 49 50 51

Rosenzweig, Globus, op. cit., 36. Ibid., 82. Ibid., 110.

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of history, at the same time as the last unlimited »we« [unbegrenzte letzte Wir] and its equally unlimited deepening to the last »I« [letzten Ich] marks the last moment of history«52.

52

Ibid., 35.

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Beyond Éros and Agápe. Reflections on Rosenzweig’s Phenomenology of Revelation

Abstract The Rosenzweigian notion of Revelation is of remarkable originality. In this article I will explain how Rosenzweig argues that the idealistic tradition was incapable of giving a reason for it, and how from this misunderstanding one of the most fatal prejudices of Western thought was derived: that there must be a language (ideal, mathematical, ...) higher than the »natural« language, just as there must be a (spiritual) love higher than »carnal« love. Following his reading of the Song of Songs, I will show how, for Rosenzweig, language and love are the areas of human life in which the intersection between »immanence« and »transcendence« takes place. The main conclusion to be drawn is that both cannot be disassociated from each other, and that this is the basic teaching of the entire biblical anthropology.

1. Éros and agápe: an ill-considered problem The misunderstanding that I intend to modestly illuminate here – the sharp distinction and supposed incommensurability between éros and agápe – dates back to ancient times, and belongs mainly to the field of theology, in which I openly declare myself to be a layman. However, its »effectual history« transcends this disciplinary boundary in that it has penetrated into wider cultural spheres, and it is for this reason that I dare to speak out on it. No one will deny that »love« is one of the hottest issues of our time. Sociologists, philosophers, psychologists and even neurologists are trying to shed some light on our contemporary experience of love, but the perplexity we feel about it does not diminish. In no small measure, this seems to be due to the fact that this experience takes place on the

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basis of well-defined historical-anthropological presuppositions: on the one hand, the hangover of »sexual liberation« with its concomitant disinhibition and lifting of inveterate »repressions« in sexual matters; on the other hand, and intimately related to the former, the growing individualisation (or, what amounts to it, the growing exculturation) in our most intimate attitudes and dispositions towards love and sexuality. In my opinion, the healthy benefits of the former are strongly counterba­ lanced by the impoverishing limits imposed by the latter, since without a shared cultural framework, however tacit it may be, it is difficult to propose minimally intelligible diagnoses of an issue which, like the one I am dealing with, crosses the social body from one end to the other – albeit in very different ways. My working hypothesis is that the contemporary drifts of love cannot be adequately understood without taking into account in a fair and comprehensive way the specific cultural tradition against which background they are set, either to execrate it or to claim it, namely biblical anthropology. Although it has both positively and reactively permeated many other aspects of Western life in our »secular age« (conceptions of political power, work ethics, social welfare, etc.), nowhere else is the ambivalence of this legacy more evident. Of course, as we know since Freud, nothing about love will ever cease to be profoundly and essentially ambivalent, so this ambivalence cannot be neutralised. In fact, expressing myself in a somewhat tortuous way, I would like to risk the following interpretation of the misunderstanding: the ambivalence in the receptions of biblical sexual anthropology, that is, the division into »libertine« receptions that claim the liberation of éros from the moralising and repressive yoke of the agápe, and »puritan« receptions that advocate keeping »true« love uncontaminated from the onslaught of éros; Such ambivalence paradoxically springs from the incapacity for ambivalence congenital to theoretical rationality which, although naturally much older, becomes culturally hegemonic only with the passage to the Modern Age. Not surprisingly, it is also then that the dispute – not without an underlying connivance – between »Puritans« and »libertines« came to the surface. If I take, as it is reasonable to do, the Enlightenment as a fundamental symbol of Modernity and of the modern conception of reason, it is not by chance that two human types so radically marked, each in their own way, by the Enlightenment spirit are the best examples of this dispute, and it is not surprising, therefore, that Jacques Lacan once invited us to read »Kant with Sade«. There is the obverse and the reverse

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of the same misunderstanding: while the one demanded the suppression of all »inclination« in order to enter the realm of ethico-religious life, the other demanded, no less consistently, the need to suspend and annul all moral judgement in order to experience the natural inclinations with which human beings are incontrovertibly endowed, or, in other words, in order not to fall into self-deception. None of them, in short, was in a position to grasp the ambivalence of love, its indefinable plasticity and its capillarity spread throughout the whole of human existence. The latter being what most properly defines love in the biblical sense, the misunderstanding I am echoing here could not but be greatly increased by the milestone in theological literature that established the rigid incompatibility between éros and agape and guided much of the subsequent debate, namely the publication in 1930 of Anders Nygren's Eros and Agape, whose title should have been an exclusive disjunction rather than a conjunction. For Nygren's thesis is clear and unambiguous, and reads as follows: however much éros and agape may have intertwined on a poetic, rhetorical or ornamental level throughout Christian history (especially in pre-reformed Western Christian history, in the form of caritas), as existential motifs or ultimate life orientations they are in every way antagonistic, and the one can only reign to the exact extent that it completely dislodges the other. Or to put it in concrete and very pregnant names: either Plato, or St. Paul, tertium non datur. Eros would thus be a self-centered impulse that imperiously demands, above all else, its full satisfaction. However refined it may be (that is, elevated above crass »worldly« pleasures, as is undoubtedly the case with the Platonic ideal of éros), it will not fail to confirm and strengthen the – still according to Nygren – essentially autocentric structure of erotic desire. The whole ethico-religious horizon of Antiquity would have been permeated by such a self-centeredness of desire, which would be seen in the fundamentally eudemonistic character of all classical ethics, whichever version of it one chooses1. Nygren takes it for granted that, of the two senses of éros that Plato puts into the mouth of Pausanias in Symposion 181a-b – that is, those linked to the two births of Aphrodite, from the genitals of Uranus 1 Anders Nygren, Eros y agape. La noción cristiana del amor y sus transformaciones, trans. by José A. Bravo, Sagitario, Barcelona 1969, 36–37. Only up to this point can I agree with Nygren's interpretation of ancient ethics, for I confess that it escapes us what sense it might make to attribute to ancient ethics, as he does in those same pages, an »individualistic« character as well.

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(Aphrodite Urania) and of Zeus and Dione (Aphrodite Pandemus) respectively – only the first would be a true and worthy adversary of the Christian agape. For only the former, that which originates in the Aphrodite who only has a father and to whom, therefore, all intercourse is foreign, only that one, honoring his »heavenly« paternity, enables humans to love »souls« beyond »bodies«, which is as much as to say that she alone »induces to love beautifully«. On the contrary, the éros of Aphrodite Pandemus, Plato writes in an eloquent play on words, »is, in truth, vulgar (pandemos)«, it is the love of the populace, the love of indolent and ordinary men who love the first thing that comes their way, even those moronic and incomplete beings that are women2. What I propose here is a radical inversion of Nygren's reading, who suggests that only the »celestial« éros can concur, given its spiritual cha­ racter, to supplant the agápe – albeit always in a failed way, since éros needs to rise to the spiritual and never ceases to be self-centered, while agápe is already spiritual and heterocentric from the outset. From my point of view, it is precisely the »vulgar« éros, in its unpredictable and sometimes capricious gratuitousness, which is unsuspectedly close, though not always or in any way, to the biblical agápe, as »de-centered«, no doubt, as Nygren noted, but much less »excarnated« than is usually thought. But before saying goodbye to the Swedish theologian, let me note one last discrepancy with his view of the matter: Nygren agrees with Nietzsche that Christian love is a »transvaluation of all values«, although he departs from the – in his opinion too close – association between Christian love and Jewish »ressentiment« that we find in The Genealogy of Morals. It is not difficult to infer from what has been said about his disquisitions on agape that Nygren is at all times bordering on Gnosticism, so that one would have expected his stubborn refusal to acknowledge any kind of Old Testament antecedent to the Christian notion of love. To take some heat off the awkward fact that what Jesus is telling the doctor of the Law who asks him about how to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25) is to recall the two well-known passages in Deuteronomy 6:5 (»You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart...«) and Leviticus 19:18 (»You shall love your neighbor as yourself«), Nygren resorts to the familiar clichés – which suffer from an unforgivable exegetical negligence – of Jewish »particularism« and »legalism«. In his view, Christianity would have »overcome« the latter by becoming the Plato, Diálogos III. Fedón, Banquete, Fedro, trans. by José Luis Navarro, Gredos, Madrid 1986, 206.

2

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first religion built on the truism that its religiosity is intrinsically ethical, and its ethics intrinsically religious, or, in other words, by »internalising« those supposedly »external« commandments and endowing them with an unprecedented spontaneity and creativity, thus transforming the »communion of law« with God and neighbor into an unmotivated and universal »communion of love«3.

2. Revelation as »grammar of Éros« The quagmire into which Nygren's positions – in reality very widespread, even if dressed in various guises – lead us is obvious: éros is the human tendency to »possess«, to incorporate into oneself – at best – excellent objects (Beauty, God himself, ...) which will require a certain »ascension« to gain access to them; agápe is the divine love which »descends« freely from God and which is purely disinterested, both on its vertical axis God-man and on the horizontal axis between »neighbors«. To fully realise the latter it is necessary, not to transform or transfigure in some way, but to annihilate the former, to mutilate the human reality, so to speak, in order to make room for the divine one. Devoid of theological connotations, the same idea is present in the conception that éros is something inherently disturbing in love or conjugal life, to be kept at bay and subordinated to other more decorous and respectable ends. What strictly follows from the biblical notion of Revelation is that Revelation takes place, certainly as God's asymmetrical prerogative, but not by mutilating human reality, but by communicating with it, entering into a dialogical process with it, altering it by altering Himself. Thus his privileged figure – in a sense, as I shall show, not at all »allegorical« – will be love, a love therefore beyond éros and agápe. It is no accident that it was a Jewish philosopher – perhaps the Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century – who noticed the above-mentioned connection better than anyone else before4. I refer, of course, to Franz Rosenzweig, and to the analyses he devotes to the notions of »Revelation« and »love« in his fascinating work The Star of Redemption, which it seems no exaggeration to consider as the keystone of the whole book, and Anders Nygren, Eros y agape, cit., 55–60. Two works published after The Star should indeed be mentioned here, for they continue the way opened by it: The Concept of Love in St. Augustine (1929), by Hannah Arendt, and Love and the West (1939), by Denis de Rougemont. 3

4

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thus of the true philosophical-theological-political revolution that the book represented5. In keeping with the idiosyncratic Jewish »carnality«, Rosenzweig has nothing to do with a Revelation or a love that would annul the human condition as it is presented to us here and now, in via, with its limited and precarious, but no less indestructible, freedom. Indeed, any overly »spiritualist« conception of love would run the risk of slipping into a kind of Stoicism. A heterocentric Stoicism, certainly, but a Stoicism nonetheless, whose ideal of self-rule has been transformed into that of being ruled by the Other – by an Other who supposedly »loves« us, even if it is a strange love that annuls our freedom. Ultimately, this being dominated by the Other, this heter-archy, nevertheless perfects the ideal of imperturbability and apathy: it suffocates and liberates our passions even more effectively than any self-centered and autarchic »technology of the self«, for it destroys all worldly and natural anchorage of subjectivity in which they were rooted. Naturally, all this is nothing but an illusion, a pretense to free oneself from freedom itself. On the contrary, revelation presupposes freedom – both divine and human – and is realised, takes place through it. Except that »in contrast to the freedom of God, this [human] power is refused to it from the very beginning«, nevertheless, »its willing is as unconditional, as unlimited as the power of God«6. Given its intrinsic finitude, human freedom will inevitably be outside itself, disjointed, defenseless, but, as radically unconditioned, I can in no way get rid of it, abolish it, escape its paradoxical heteronomous imposition – as I would apparently do when entering the immaculate enclosure of agape, as Nygren described it to us. Thus, against any ideal of self-denial – »ascetic« in the precise Nietzschean sense – that promises some kind of liberation from the passions, what biblical anthropology promotes, in Rosenzweig's version of it, is a liberation through the passions, or, in other words, what it promotes is the passion of freedom. This, and nothing more than this, is what Revelation »reveals«, which is to say that Revelation, properly speaking, does not reveal anything, does not »add« anything to what is already given; if it were to be defined by its relation to what is given, one would have to say that, in any case, it would be an inversion of what is given, a turning it completely upside down from its »natural place«. 5 I do not claim any originality in pointing this out, for the author of The Star himself openly declared that the section on the »grammar of eros« constitutes »the central part of this whole work« (Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. by Barbara E. Galli, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2005, 220). 6 Ibid., 75.

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Indeed, certain Kabbalistic echoes resound here, for Rosenzweig goes so far as to assert that Revelation in some way involves a retrospective illumination of Creation as God's Creation, and thus brings to the fore the real – factual, but trans-ontological – patency of God, buried before it behind the elements of the world. In a certain sense, it could be said that Creation already realises the patency of God, with the genitive in its subjective sense (God produces this patency), but that only Revelation will also realise it in its objective sense (God himself is made manifest). Indeed, according to the Lurianic doctrine of God's tzimtzum or »self-contraction«, Creation is a manifestation of God through which God himself is hidden. Thus understood, Creation would already be a »Revelation«, but an essentially mute Revelation and therefore not yet a true Revelation. Creation, which puts everything (the »being«), does not reveal anything of God. Revelation, which lays down nothing (no »entity«), communicates to us everything of God (his »word«7), makes us »all ears«, is the singular way in which it addresses us. This is how the author of The Star expresses this enigmatic ambiguity of God's Revelation in a passage of extraordinary poetic height: The Revelation that I am seeking must be quite essentially Revelation, and nothing else. But that means: it can be nothing other than the self-negation of a merely mute essence by a word uttered out loud, the opening up of something locked, of a silently reposing permanence by the movement of a blink of the eye. In the illumination of such a blink of the eye there resides the force to transform the created-being that is touched by this illumination by turning the created »thing« into the testimony of a Revelation that has come to pass8.

In contrast to God the Creator, who places everything simultaneously, once and for all, the God who reveals Himself, if I may use the metaphor, makes fruitful; he places very little, a fragile and insignificant »seed«, but this little thing, unlike the rigid and all-embracing »being« of Creation, already »infinite«, is capable of growing and increasing, no less than of dying; It is, as that incomparable verse of the Song says, »strong as death« (Song of Songs 8, 6), it struggles between life and death, crossing the gorge that unites and separates them, standing up to the latter. And, like all fecundation, Revelation must take place at a given moment, at this instant, and not at any other. The time that Revelation It is worth noting that the Hebrew term davar means both »word« and »thing«. We are not allowed therefore to dissociate God from his word. 8 Ibid., 174.

7

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inaugurates, which is the time of the experience of love, cannot therefore be defined in any other way than as Husserl defined the internal time that underlies and is revealed by the phenomenological enterprise: namely, as »living present«9. It is not, of course, the abstract present of the chronometer, which slips through our fingers, which is never there where we think it is, always already elapsed and not yet arrived. On the contrary, it is about the instant, certainly fleeting, but in whose fleetingness one, far from trying to »apprehend« it, immerses oneself, surrenders to its constant inconstancy and strives to renew it permanently by consolidating it in fidelity. That which is capable of growing, of immersing itself fully in the instant of the living present and adhering in unswerving fidelity to it, that is what Rosenzweig calls the soul. Another way of naming it is as that which is capable both of loving and of being loved. But first of all to love, for the love that Rosenzweig makes pulsate at the heart of Revelation is marked by a dizzying asymmetry: it is always God who loves first. And here more than in any other aspect it is hinted why I can speak of Revelation as an inversion of what the world in its elementariness simply »is«. It is not »monotheism« per se, or at least not as a metaphysical thesis (a thesis subscribed to, implicitly or explicitly, by all monistic philosophy, which are the majority), that produces such an inversion. The elementary world remains perfectly intact in the face of the emergence of any philosophical monotheism, to which, indeed, it fits like a glove. Let us think, for example, of two pillars that lie at the very base of the architecture of ancient philosophy and which are irremediably shaken by the irruption of this God who loves first. On the one hand, the idea that love (the Platonic éros) is essentially a lack and therefore a longing for fulfilment; that love is necessarily the affair of imperfect beings, whose compulsion will one day cease to be felt if they have the good fortune to overcome their wretched imperfection. On the other hand, the Aristotelian idea that God, pure act, spreads his energy throughout the world, but does so only »as that which is loved«. The biblical audacity lies in presenting us with a God who is also sovereign over the world (and therefore »lacks« nothing), but no less vulnerable than any miserable, abandoned lover. A God who, rather than moving as that which is loved, moves himself as a lover: hos éron, and not hos erómenon, as only the Stagirite conceded. 9

Ibid., 175.

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For Rosenzweig it is clear where the revolutionary aspect of the biblical conception of love lies, namely in the shocking and defiant assertion that love – not even divine love! – is »not a quality of the lover«10, it is not the pursuit of the »satisfaction«, of whatever kind, of some »need« of the lover, nor, in the case of a »perfect« lover, since he would have no need at all, the expression of his innermost »essence«. I cannot attribute neediness or lack to the lover (and much less, precisely, as a motive for his love), since the lover, when he loves, does not »need« anything else but to love. Nor can I attribute essentiality to love, because love, does not belong to the lover. It is not an expression of an essence or character that would express »who the lover is«, but it happens to him, it happens to the lover, making him see that he is not who he thought he was, and that what he thought he was – a set of needs that were in principle satisfiable – were nothing more than defense mechanisms against the vulnerability of love. Love, »ephemeral self-transformation«11, rather expropriates us from ourselves: it is our death (as subjects endowed with certain attribu­ tes) and our resurrection (as pure lovers). And it is the same for God: in Revelation, he to a certain extent lays down the »omnipotence« of which he gave evidence in Creation. Thus Revelation »does not know of any father who is universal love«, since »God's love is always wholly in the moment and at the point where it loves; and it is only in the infinity of time, step by step, that it reaches one point after the next and permeates the totality with soul. God's love loves whom it loves and where it loves«12. See, then, how far we are from Nygren's agápe, with its non-negoti­ able »all or nothing«, for which either God was everything (and hence the human being nothing; or, at most, inert »recipient« of the divine agápe), or the human being was everything (and God hence nothing; or, at most, »object« of our voracious éros). Love here is not poured down indiscriminately and without regard to the inner disposition of the human being (or, rather, demanding the annihilation of all inner disposition on the part of the human being). Here God is almost everything (for he begins to love), but at the same time he is nothing at all without the human response to his love; a response which is certainly almost nothing, but which cannot in any way be »forced«, and in that sense, somehow, all depends on his fragile and ineradicable freedom. As with that rare Talmudic wisdom it is said in Berakhot 33b, »everything 10 11 12

Ibid., 176. Ibid., 177. Ibid.

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is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven«. This fear, which is but the flip side of love, cannot be aroused by God – unlike certain sublime feelings of which the human soul is naturally capable – through the elements of the world and their overwhelming ineluctability. This does not mean that God does not love everyone equally, but it does mean that he does not love everyone at the same time and in the same way. He has to go soul by soul, one by one, lingering in the subjective drama of each one in order to reverberate in it, and only in it. And that, of course, requires time, it requires history. Since Revelation is necessarily a two-way affair, since it is, so to speak, a bipolar magnetic field, it cannot take place without man prepa­ ring himself for it, which neither God, nor any »powers« or »dominati­ ons« can ever do for him. To name this »preparation«, the genius of the Hebrew people invented the fundamental word teshuvah, »conversion«, which, above all else (repentance, abandonment of sin, etc.), means the opening of subjectivity to the word and to love. Only teshuvah makes us capable of adopting what Rosenzweig calls the »dialogical form« that determines these two, without which these two are not possible, as he tries to show in that decisive section entitled Grammar of eros. For only teshuvah endows us with that extraordinary and paradoxical freedom which, by bracketing the realm of worldly validities and experiencing the unavoidability of the divine interpellation that follows, makes us independent of the world (though without detaching us from it), instilling in us the feeling that I can neither work nor be in any other way than by responding to that interpellation. In other words, it is only through teshuvah that I leave the horizon of being, for, as Rosenzweig writes, »it is quite simply against ›all‹» that it must delimit what is designated as ›so and not otherwise‹"13. There is, therefore, a founding dimension of negativity in the process of Revelation, insofar as it takes place, first of all, by subtracting all relevance from being. But, following the path marked out by the late Schelling, this and not otherwise, which characterises the genesis and constitution of the I (for, indeed, this is what it is all about), unlike Fichtean idealism (with which Rosenzweig would share, however, the idea that the I re-centers itself by alienating itself from the world), does not come about through a self-positioning of the I, but through an exogenous interpellation. The Fichtean ego, which, of course, dissociates itself from »being«, does not, on the other hand, do so from »thinking«, for what defines it is precisely 13

Ibid., 188.

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self-reflexive thinkability. This implies, in Rosenzweig's eyes, that it is a philosophical proposal that is still burdened by monological (non-)dis­ course. From a radically dia-logical conception of discourse such as that defended by Rosenzweig, or in other words, taking as a starting point the »the entirely real linguistic expression of language«14 (namely, of natural language in its prosaic, ambiguous and informalisable everydayness), it must necessarily be recognised that one can only speak of an I properly insofar as it addresses or is addressed by a Thou. Rosenzweig speaks of »the I that is not obvious, the emphatic and underlined I«; that is, it is an essentially intentional or extro-verted I (i.e. directed, not at an »object« to designate, but at an addressee with whom to come into contact), unconditionally situated or sensitive to its context, and inevitably connoted, alien to any »neutrality«. Applying this conception of language to the case of Revelation, I find that there can be no divine »I« without an »autonomous You [...] which stands freely facing the hidden God, and upon facing him could discover itself as I«15. As a relation between free agents (although, of course, between differentiated free agents), such a relation must be devoid of any element of thematisation or objectification. The first and foremost thing that I and Thou do with each other is nothing more – but also nothing less – than to seek each other; in short, the I can do no more than crying out, as God did to Adam after his companion and he had succumbed to the diabolical seduction (Genesis 3, 22), where are you?: This question about the You is the only thing that I already know about it. But the question is enough for the I to discover itself; it does not need to see the You; by asking about it, and by testifying by means of this question that it believes in the existence of the You, even when it is not within sight, it addresses itself and expresses itself as I. The I discovers itself at the moment where it affirms the existence of the You, through the question about where it is16.

Immediately after the passage quoted above, Rosenzweig notes an essen­ tial difference between two divine interpellations as presented to us in the book of Genesis: on the one hand, there is the one I have just mentioned, God asking where Adam is after the primordial fault. Adam – which, let us remember, for it is not without decisive implications for Rosenzweigian 14 15 16

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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argumentation, in Hebrew literally means »human being« – can still in that case wriggle out of the question, decline and turn a deaf ear to the divine interpellation, attributing responsibility for what happened to the woman, who for her part will do the same to the serpent (the non-subject, the »It« par excellence, as Rosenzweig acutely observes); and he can do that, because in the context of pure Creation, Adam is still nobody, he is only a »universal concept«. He has done nothing and is therefore incapable of teshuvah. It is only when the I has truly advanced to the Thou, that is, when it is named, that the dialogical form attains the intensity and purity of the vocative; or, in the terms of Rosenzweigian systematics, it is only when Revelation has taken place, that »every exit to objectification is cut off to the man«17. I have already hinted that the privileged figure through which Revelation is expressed is the experience of love, but I must now add that, within the Old Testament mentality, the experience of love in relation to God is absolutely inseparable from its materialisation in the form of the covenant. As we shall see, this is the key to a proper understanding of the midrash Song of Songs Rabbah, which often borders on the allegorical approach (establishing the God-Spouse/Israel-Bride parallelism), but which never ends up being completely reduced to it. Therefore, if Adam can be interpreted as homo creationis (or, simply, as homo), Rosenzweig reads the second interpellation to which I referred, that of God to Abraham, as the first in which the homo revelationis appears. It is not by chance, therefore, that it was Abraham, once his name had been changed by God himself and once he had been called by him (by him and by Him), who was the first to utter the »here am I« (hinneni) with which all the great prophets of Israel also sealed their vocation (Genesis 22, 1). Abraham thus inaugurates a new human type (namely, what I call here »biblical anthropology«); one whose very humanity resides paradoxically in his free and unconditional being referred to God, or, as Rosenzweig writes, in his being »still totally receptive, still only opened, still empty, without content, without essence, pure readiness, pure obedience, all ear«18. Only for the one who, like Abraham, is thus disposed, the vocative is already an imperative, the being called already a being ordererd; specifically, ordered to love, not in general or by any »third

17 18

Ibid., 189. Ibid., 190.

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party«, but ordered by the one who already loves, and to love the one who already loves. Thus, the Love me with which God invades the subjectivity that has turned towards Him – which is characterised precisely by this »turning towards«, by conversion, by teshuvah – is »the root-word of the whole dialogue of Revelation«, a word which »rises in protest against any translation by He«, which must always take place in an irreplaceable hic et nunc19. But what is the human response (Ant-wort) to this root-word? How is it conjugated, how is it declined? In the first place, Rosenzweig maintains that it must be confession, since every response, if it is recognised as such and does not claim, so to speak, to have given itself the word – and, therefore, to be a root-word, and not a response -, must start from the uncomfortable fact of never being equal to the preceding interpellation that constitutes it as a response, of never being able to reabsorb it in a space of discursive homogeneity in which the asymmetrical differentiations between interlocutors are abolished. The specifically biblical notion of sin is rooted in this mismatch, in this constitutive failure to live up to it. This is why Rosenzweig, perhaps surprisingly for those who have a too masochistic – or too Gnostic – idea of sin, fully identifies the confession of sins and the confession of God. From this identification, it becomes clear to us that it is not those who are simply ashamed of themselves who can confess their sinfulness, but those who have already experienced the gratuitousness of the love that comes to them from outside and are in the process of giving themselves to it. The only thing of which, in a biblical sense, I can fully say that I am guilty of is that I have not loved; to feel the guilt is already to love and to regret not having begun to do so earlier. In that sense, all confession, both of sins and of God, »always testifies that the personal experience of love must be more than a personal experience«20. That love is not a narcissistic hallucination: this is perhaps the fundamental truth that is enunciated within the polyphonic frame of Revelation. A prerequisite for it is the existence of some kind of foundation – positive and historical, though not »objective« – that exceeds the ipseity of both the lover and the beloved and makes communication between the two possible. In the case of the beloved, such a foundation is, as I say, sin, the antechamber of love which the soul, closed in on itself, could in no way feel. In the case of the lover, such a foundation is the testimony that the 19 20

Ibid., 192. Ibid., 196.

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beloved then, and only then, dares to give of him. Rosenzweig takes up an old saying of Shimon bar Yochai in the midrash Pesikta 12, 6 in order to express this. Beyond any metaphysics, beyond any »truth of reason«, what God reveals to his people is a very contingent and precarious condition: »If you testify to me, then I shall be God, and otherwise not«21. God cannot directly cause such a witness – namely, by taking his faithful as »means« and as speaking through them – any more than the soul alone can bear it. It is in this tension that the bipolar magnetic field, which is Revelation, must be sustained. At this point one of the aspects of biblical anthropology that is most repugnant to our preconceived ideas and yet most relevant to the development of our argument comes to the fore. Indeed, I spontaneously take it for granted that the conquest of a certainty frees us from some uneasiness, that by settling in it I can now calmly forget the long journey of longings and agonies that have led us there. Well then, the »foundation« referred to above to which the soul gains access by confessing its sins is none other than the certainty that this confession produces, namely that of being loved. However, this certainty, while being in truth unshakeable, far from stilling any longing, arouses it in an incomparable way; it arouses the unheard-of desire to correspond to this love and for it not to withdraw, a desire to expand and dilate the present – the only time that evelation knows – the present never being anything other than a fugitive instant. Certainty is the force, the only force, that can sustain such an extraordinary desire – a desire that is something more than a »self-experience« – rather than promising its satisfaction. Such a certainty is a certainty of desire itself, and not of its eventual termination. In a few lines that already put us on the trail of his reading of the Song of Songs, Rosenzweig describes how this inner limit is implied by Revelation, or, in other words, by the »grammar of eros« – the limit from which its unsuspected fecundity is born: Revelation peaks in an unfulfilled wish, in the cry of an open question. That the soul has the courage for this wish, for this question, for this cry, for this perfection of hidden trust in God, is the work of Revelation. But to fulfill the wish, to answer the question, to hush the cry no longer lies in its power. In its own right it possesses the present; it casts into the future only the wish, the question, the cry. For the future does not appear in the present other than through these three shapes, which are only one22. 21 22

Quoted in Ibid., 185. Ibid., 199.

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3. Éros without allegory It was important to elucidate the anthropo-theological and linguistic presuppositions summarised in the previous section in order to fully grasp all the implications of Rosenzweig's hermeneutical wager in his reading of the Song of Songs. In truth, this wager is very tightly enunciated. That is why the author of The Star is able to dispatch his particular philosophical midrash in barely six pages. But this does not mean he loses substance, but perhaps increases it. To say more with less is a high virtue rarely achieved, and even less so in texts of a philosophical nature, so averse to »metaphor«. In a way, the whole development of his commentary is contained in the sentence with which he begins: »The allegory [Gleichnis] of love, as allegory, goes through the whole Revelation. [...] But it is supposed to be more than an allegory«23. As a mere literary device, the tenacious insis­ tence with which the image of love accompanies the most varied registers of the biblical text (mythical, historical, prophetic, sapiential, liturgical, doxological, penitential, etc.) would be strange and inexplicable. Since it is an elementary axiom of all poetics that excessive repetition of any resource causes weariness, why then this clearly redundant biblical use of the image of love? And, above all, why does this use not tire us, but, on the contrary, it goes in crescendo until it reaches the Johannine identification of God himself with love (I John 4, 7)? Rosenzweig's answer is clear: because the image of love, although undeniably an image, is not just an image, it is not just a literary device, or, if it is, it is certainly not an »allegorical« one. In any case, the biblical use of the image of love could be qualified as metaphorical, if one understands by metaphor – beyond all semantic reductionism (x »means« y) – the profound tendency of discourse to contain more than it contains without, however, going beyond its signifying materiality; the tendency that takes discourse beyond itself without, however, leading to the transparent identification of some new univocal »meaning«. Understood in this way, metaphor is by no means monopolised by the poetic word, even if its intensification by the latter may in principle be greater. All discourse is metaphorical, for, in a somewhat risky equation, it could be said that metaphor is to language what love is to life: a going out of oneself Ibid., 213. I would translate Gleichnis by »image« rather than by »allegory« because of the overtly anti-allegorical tone of Rosenzweig’s reading of the Bible.

23

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without destroying oneself, an entry into the dynamic relationality that constitutes us as free and finite, that is, »incarnated« subjects. Let us see how Rosenzweig puts it, addressing that enigmatic document which is, as the Hebrew says, »the best of the Songs«: So it is not enough that the relationship of God to man is presented in the allegory of the lover and the beloved; God’s word must immediately hold the relationship of the lover to the beloved, without the signifier making any allusion at all to the signified. And so I find it in the Song of Songs. It is no longer possible to see in that allegory »only an allegory« [but it is necessary to recognize] that here, precisely in the purely sensuous meaning, the deeper significance is hidden, immediately and not »only« in the allegorical form. [In the Song of Songs, it becomes clear that] the I and You of the inter-human language are also quite simply the I and You between God and man, [that] in language the difference between »immanence« and »transcendence« is extinguished. It is not although, but because the Song of Songs was an »authentic« that is to say a »worldly« love song, that it was an authentic »spiritual« love song of God’s love for man. Man loves because, and as, God loves. Man’s human soul is the soul awakened and loved by God24.

Although Rosenzweig claims that it was only with the passage from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century that the temptation to dissociate the »worldly« and »spiritual« senses of the Song arose, the fact is that such a temptation was present (albeit not as »systematically« as is it was made possible by textual criticism) from the earliest times of both Jewish and Christian exegesis. I would say, to qualify the Rosenzweigian historical judgement somewhat, that traditional exegesis was the place where this temptation was fought against, while the exegesis of liberal theology has already completely yielded to it. When the midrash, which I have already quoted several times, the Song of Songs Rabbah, proposes the parallelism between the drama narrated in the Song and the story of God with his people (something, in principle, fully consistent with allegorical reductionism), it does so out of the conviction, not that the latter is better understood – that is, in a way that is more adequate to human cognitive limitations – by dressing it in a symbolism and a narrative that in principle are alien to it, but that it shares a certain affective tonality with the former, and that this tonality is the same in both cases. God and the people also love, also suffer and enjoy love; it is not a »way of speaking«. If it were a way of speaking, another way 24

Ibid., 213–214.

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of speaking could equally well be chosen, for the erotic symbolism would bear no internal relation to Revelation; and that is precisely what allegory presupposes: that such a relation can at most be external, and therefore replaceable by others who wish to emphasize other aspects that it leaves out. But, from the allegorical perspective, neither erotic symbolism nor any other can touch the inner core of Revelation; they would merely be instruments for accessing it. Thus, although the interpretative strategy of the midrashim is somewhat reminiscent of the allegorical approach of »x means y« (the Bridegroom is God, the Bride Israel, etc.), its intention differs markedly from it. While the allegorical interpretation understands the symbolism as a screen or a wrapping which can help us to get through to the true meaning, but which, once this has been trampled on, can be discarded without a trace, in the midrashic interpretation, on the contrary, as – with that deep popular wisdom which always comes through in the midrashim and the Talmud – it is said in Song of Songs Rabbah (I, 1, 1.8.2. et seq.), the symbols are more like »handles«, without which the container which they allow to be carried would be absolutely useless and which, therefore, can never be dispensed with. Solomon's greatness, the old sages of Israel affirmed, lies precisely in the fact that he »made handles for the Torah«25. Like a basket full of fruit, or an amphora full of wine, which are of no use to anyone if they cannot be moved from where they are, so the Torah needs to mobilise and disengage our affections in order to instruct us, and no one did this better than Solomon with his Song. Rabbi Akiba had gone even further in the Mishnah (Yadayim 3, 5) when he asserted that »all history is not worth the day on which Song of Songs was composed [...] [f ]or if all the Writings are holy, Song of Songs is most holy«26. What is so exceptional about the Song of Songs, then, and how could Rabbi Akiba have attributed to it such a singular holiness, if it were only an allegorical covering of a plot, that of God with his people, which would be the truly holy one? It should give us pause for thought that the texts where this plot reaches greater moral and affective intensity, namely the prophetic literature, also use the spousal metaphor with great liberality (cf., among many other passages, Hosea 3:1). The God-people relationship and the experience of love, therefore, illuminate each other: both are images of each other, always referring to each other but never being able to resolve into each other. 25 Cantar de los Cantares Rabbah, trans. by Luis-Fernando Girón Blanc, Verbo Divino, Estella 1991, 48. 26 Quoted in Ibid., 57.

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For Rosenzweig, there can be no doubt: this is so because the Song of Songs articulates the language of Revelation in an unsurpassed and definitive way, not merely hints at or even imperfectly suggests it. If I call Revelation the foundational interpellation of human language, the »call« to which all human language is an »answer« is all human language, it goes without saying that Revelation, though not exhausted in human language, must present certain common notes with it; or, said with the ancient Rabbis, that »the Torah speaks in the language of men« (Midrash Sifre on Numbers 15:31). And the essential point of all this is that the language of Revelation and the language of man would be irreparably impoverished if they were separated from each other, apart from their mutual interpenetration. This last point is eloquently illustrated by Rosenzweig when he draws attention to the fact that the objectifying reductionism that textual criticism operated on the Song of Songs (i.e., reducing it to a purely »worldly« song) implied the impossibility of continuing to perceive in it a truly human drama. By abolishing the living, interpersonal, dialogical dynamic of the poem (in a sense, as I have been saying, both horizontal and vertical), and thinking that this would only preterit its vertical dimension, it indirectly neutralised its horizontal dimension as well. To put it with Rosenzweig, reading the poem »in the third person« (as a rather epic exchange between the male and female voices, and not as an I-Thou encounter both human-divine and female-male), makes it impossible to read it also as the passionate and vibrant testimony of purely »human« love that it unquestionably is; which makes it quite clear that, as the author of The Star denounces in an undisguisedly polemical vein, »the denial of the word of God had still taken place in an exuberant joy for the word of man, now qualified by ›pure‹, but it lost no time in taking revenge on the word of man«27. Thus, without the breath of divine love, the supposedly human love was also disabled, and all that remained in the hands of the brainy liberal theologian was a sort of relic of a very remote Hebrew folklore, cadaverous and insignificant to the dissecting nineteenth-century gaze. Rosenzweig vehemently rebels against such dissociation, and describes the inner intertwining of the two loves – and concomitantly, for they are basically nothing but the front and back of the same question, that of love and language – with his customary brilliance:

27

Franz Rosenzweig, Op. cit., 215.

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Beyond Éros and Agápe. Reflections on Rosenzweig’s Phenomenology of Revelation

For it is not possible for love to be »purely human.« When it begins to speak—and this it must do, for there exists no other utterance spoken besides itself than the language of love—so when love speaks, it is already changed into something superhuman; for the sensuous character of the word is full to the brim with its divine suprasensuous meaning; like language itself love is at once sensible and supra-sensuous. To express it in another way: the allegory is not a decorative accessory for love, but essence. It may be that all ephemeral reality is only an allegory; yet love is not »only« but absolutely and essentially allegory. It is ephemeral only in appearance, but in truth it is eternal. That appearance is as necessary as this truth; as love, love could not be eternal if it did not seem to be transitory; but in the mirror of this appearance, truth reflects itself directly28.

With this affirmation of the essential superficiality and transience of love, I come to the point that I set out to elucidate with Rosenzweig's help: biblically understood, the éros pándemos reviled by Plato, far from being a viscous lure on behalf of which the soul adheres to pleasures of the lowest order, comes to be experienced as the door through which I enter the eternity (not the absence of time, but its ever-renewed concatenation) of truth (not the content of a proposition, but unshakable confidence in a testimony). Only in the rude school of »vulgar eros« do I learn the incarnate language of love, whose further vicissitudes I can never predict, but without whose pristine interpellation man will never know anything of the biblical modulation of those two »chords« – eternity and truth – which philosophy stubbornly endeavored to dislodge from our world. I will never know where erotic learning leads us, for conjugal love is by no means its inexorable destiny, but what I do know with full certainty is that I will never be able to circumvent the narrowness of the flesh: I do not know how or when, but I will have to pass through it. It cannot be said that Rosenzweig's erotic philosophy has had many continuators. With the exception of the psychoanalytic revolution, which rightly wanted to be an »anti-philosophy« (but therefore, unfortunately, incurred in many unjustified naturalisms), eros continued to be buried and ignored by the philosophical agenda of the 20th century and so far in the 21st century. Not even the supposed sexual liberation of the sixties and seventies changed this situation too much. An object of experimentation rather than the apex of experience, eros continued to be what it had been for centuries for philosophical thought: something that could be thematised. Whether with a view to grasping its »spiritual« meaning, or 28

Ibid., 216.

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to indulging in the most anodyne hedonism, we thought of ourselves as able of methodologically and existentially controlling eros, with the result that eros was irremissibly silenced as such. At most, we have had numerous discourses on eros, ranging from the most abstruse and subtle metaphysical speculations to the crassest pornographic divertissement. But few have dared, following Rosenzweig's path, to lend the word to eros itself.

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Othering Himself: On Rosenzweig’s SelfPositioning Towards Christianity

Abstract In one famous passage of the Star of Redemption Rosenzweig claims that – other than Christianity or any other worldly power – Judaism maintains itself by subtraction, by creating ever more remnants. This essay discusses how Rosenzweig conceived the concept of othering as an inner process in Judaism and as a strong position towards e.g. Christianity. With an internal split as a constituent element of his »system of philosophy«, Rosenzweig sets out to construct the other as necessary, albeit indispensable and indisposable to the self. His construction, being exemplified by his own person in life and writing as a Jewish man – who lives under permanent challenge by his Christian others – holds a precious position between Hermann Cohen’s indispensable other as someone with (contractually) limited rights on the one hand, and Levinas’s other with unlimited claims.

Preliminary Remarks In the aftermath of our conference in Coimbra, so carefully organized by the local initiators, we are facing a destructive war in Europe. Many of us who had the privilege of not knowing war during their lifetime woke up to a new reality. This cannot but affect our perspective on the Star, which will change together with our perception of the world. The brutal reality of war in Europe had set the stage for Rosenzweig’s perspective when he wrote his opus magnum more than hundred years from now. But »we«, his European readers of the post-war era, felt more or less securely exempted from this reality as the other to philosophical writing. In proximity to real war, the difference between those of us who live »on the margins« and those who are writing »from the inside« of academia

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seems to vanish. Yet, Rosenzweig’s writing did not only take place during the war. The Star’s publication after the war also marked the beginning of the end of his »academic career.« Somehow, he had allowed the events to affect the core of his philosophizing. He took the other to philosophy very seriously ever after. Are we living up to this move, are we really »understanding« or even »answering« it? Closely following the process of his writing in his letters, I have often wondered what »the real Franz« would have thought if he were to watch us, each of us, catching up time and again with the »Rosenzweig-Forschung« in the chain of conferences organized by or with the IRG: As we listen to paper after paper, as we prepare paper after paper on his work; as we engage his texts in Jewish-Christian dialogue; as we dedicate prizes in his name for special merits in the field; as we »Northern Europeans« try to reach out to Sephardic Judaism or answer to its call; as we postmoderns point with a multi-cultural finger to Rosenzweig’s thoughts on Islam and Far Eastern Religions; as we all discuss the transcendental, psychological, and real-life meaning of dialogues between the loving and the beloved soul; as we slowly get used to reading the personal letters to his beloved Gritli (edited for public perusal about 20 years ago), not as a matter of gossip but rather as an additional account of his life-long philosophical-theological struggle; as we experience and possibly reflect on our own timely restrictions and crises when getting together not in real life, but, due to a global pandemic, in the shape of a zoom conference. Alas, I can wonder what he would think – but I cannot know it. The question owes to one fact: Something in Rosenzweig’s spirit has remained so unpredictable that I would often like to turn to him and ask him. I am probably not the only curious one here. Yet, a conversation with Rosenzweig (which would definitely be his preferred mode of philosophizing, in a real dialogue) remains impossible.1 To me, to us, it was not he, the man, but rather it, the book, which has »remained standing on the shore« when the river of the world drove by and took In an interesting account of the inner difficulties of dialogue versus system, Martin Brasser copes with a notion of dialogue that appears pretty much oriented towards something like a result (cf. Brasser, Martin, »Dialogue and System in Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption«, in: Yearbook 7, Philosophy of Dialogue, Alber, Freiburg/München 2013, 27–41). But could Rosenzweig himself have had the idea of one »grasping the soul of« the other as the final »result« of dialoging? At the end of the day, Brasser will certainly agree that mutual respect and ongoing dialogue are with Rosenzweig something like »real life« and hence an »end in itself«. 1

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the man with it.2 We are left with his book and letters – and they do not offer us any other way of dialoging than that of speaking about him and his work.3 The Star begins with the fear of death, which disturbs the thinker in his philosophical work while also driving him to think on. But other than Rosenzweig’s philosophical work suggests, my philosophizing today, my dialoguing with you about him, does not begin with my fear of my own death, but with the regretful realization that he is dead and will not answer. It is the death of my possible other Franz Rosenzweig that starts our conversation (in and outside Coimbra), as we are alive. Another issue must be mentioned. Due to the global pandemic I was among those who could only virtually be in Coimbra. Of course it was great to be a part of it even in this form. And yet, I stuttered into the camera of an isolated screen in Berlin when it was my turn to speak. More than ever it appeared impossible to me to read a prepared paper in such a situation. I insisted upon »free speech« – and now I can hardly remember what I picked from my notes and actually spoke into the camera. Never have I felt so strongly the need for »settled publications« than after this conference. Never had I been so fond of books, which save every little cultural progress or, if you will, »progress of thoughts« from the abyss of warlike chaos and forgetfulness. I seemed to understand with more depth Maria Koch’s claim that it was the vivid memory of the real Lehrhaus in Frankfurt and the real book in her hands that spiritually and mentally helped her, her family, and her friends to survive the grand onslaught on European Jewry committed by Nazi Germany.4 There is living memory, The famous quotation from which the »river« is taken (SE 450) will be extensively dealt with in this paper. 3 In his much debated criticism of Islam, Rosenzweig argues that according to the Koran God does not lovingly invest himself with man but offers him »a book«! »Und wie zum Zeichen, dass die Offenbarung hier im Islam nicht ein lebendiges Ereignis zwischen Gott und Mensch ist, ein Geschehen, in das Gott selber eingeht bis zur völligen Selbstverneinung, göttliches Sichselberschenken, sondern eine frei hingesetzte Gabe, die Gott dem Menschen in die Hände legt, ist hier die Offenbarung von vornherein das, was sie im Glauben sogar für sein eigenes Bewusstsein erst allmählich und nie ganz wird: ein Buch. Das erste Wort der Offenbarung an Muhamed lautet: Lies! … Er thront in seinem höchsten Himmel und schenkt dem Menschen – ein Buch.« SE 186. 4 Koch, Maria, »Brief an Eva vom 22.2.1947«, in: Rosenzweig Yearbook 1, Franz Rosenzweig Today, Alber, Freiburg/München 2006, 257–266. Koch reads the Star much in light of the two world wars. As she notes: »R. hat uns damals mit seiner Härte und seiner Gewaltsamkeit, mit all seiner stacheligen Unverbindlichkeit und mit seinem Buche zu uns selbst, nein zu unserer Lehre und zu unserm Anteil, gebracht, so dass wir trotzdem die Hälfte des Volkes dem Angriff zum Opfer fiel, dem Ansturm widerstehen konnten, dass wir durch die Katastrophe mehr wurden, als wie wir vorher waren, nämlich wieder wir selbst, 2

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irreplaceable for sure, and especially honored in Judaism in the notion of »oral tradition«. But it is as clear as the redaction of the written Talmud in the fifth century that, in the end of the day, only material products of cultural work, like books, can stand at the shore for more than a few decades and wait for their readers to come along. So, with due respect and gratitude for personal exchange in time, I am as grateful to be able to contribute in writing to a written corpus of philosophy – and I do hope that our spiritual work will survive these times of serious challenges that are directed against the spirit of freedom and generosity.

1. The Subtraction Passage Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption has never failed to impress its readers as a severe criticism of the »completed system« left by Hegel. Many major interpretations of the Star circle around the question of what kind of »ide­ alism« it is that Rosenzweig criticizes. Another substantial tendency of interpretation, beginning already with Rosenzweig’s own essays written after the completion of the Star, deals with the question how Jewish his »system of philosophy« or his architecture for Jewish-Christian dia­ logue really is.5 Yet another, more recent tendency puts his book under the examination of post-colonial questions. And a comparatively thin strain of thought has been dealing with the author’s soul as an object of psychoanalytical examination, in part due to his not-too-happy personal life, in part to make sure that his turn to a »real Jewish life« was his very best move, in spite of the severe depression that followed his decision to marry Edith Hahn and to build a Jewish home. I have taken part in many of these discussions, and I always perceived it as a great gift that Rosenzweig’s work remained unexhausted by any of these attempts to put it to rest. It remained infinitely different. Franz Rosenzweig, »der Mensch und sein Werk«6, can rightly stand for everything that has been said in his name about the infinity of the other. Volk Gottes, Knechte Gottes. Er lehrte uns, ohne es auszusprechen, dass der Ansturm mehr als uns selber Gott galt.« (263). 5 »Er [the Star] ist überhaupt kein ›jüdisches Buch‹, wenigstens nicht das, was die Käufer, die mir so böse waren, unter einem jüdischen Buch vorstellen … er ist bloß ein System der Philosophie«. Rosenzweig, Franz, »Das neue Denken«, in: Palmer, Gesine (Ed.), Franz Rosenzweig, Zweistromland, Kleinere Schriften zur Religion und Philosophie, Eiropäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg, 2021, 210–234, 211.

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The one famous paragraph that made the Star step out into the world is precisely the one that poses the philosophizing Jew at a river bank, with the author seeking an answer to the Jewish situation in the face of an overwhelmingly strong Christian conquistador. With almost all the rest of his writings, Rosenzweig remained basically a »local hero« inside the small realm of »Jewish Philosophy« (whatever this may mean7) or »Jewish-Christian Dialogue«. But the subtraction passage has gained a certain amount of attention by philosophers who are to be iden­ tified neither as »Jewish thinkers« nor as the (time and again habitually apologetical) Christian counterpart of »Jewish-Christian dialogue«. One recent context is the new philosophical reading of St. Paul, initiated by scholars like Jacob Taubes and others, and connected by Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben with a more or less Heideggerian »philosophy of the event«. By this token the passage has also arrived in the post-colonial and anti-nationalist context. Hence, we see Rosenzweig’s work presented as an icon of diasporic thinking.8 The famous »subtraction« passage, handed down by Eric Santner to Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Giorgio Agamben and others, thereby entering the discourses of diaspora/exile and différance, reads as follows: »All secular history deals with expansion. Power is the basic concept of history because in Christianity revelation began to spread over the world, and thus every expansionist urge, even that which was consciously purely secular, became the unconscious servant of this expansionist movement. But Judaism, and it alone in all the world, maintains itself by subtraction, by contraction, by the formation of ever new remnants ... In Judaism, man The well-known title of his collected writings seems very wisely chosen from today’s perspective, putting an »and« between man and work. The IRG has taken care of the »and« in its conference in Rome, 2017, cf. Rosenzweig Yearbook 11, The »And« in Franz Rosenzweig’s Work, Alber, Freiburg/München 2018. Attention to the »and« has been paid much earlier, cf. the well edited conversation between Levinas and Hemmerle in: https:// www.klaus-hemmerle.de/de/werk/judentum-und-christentum-nach-franz-rosenzweig.h tml#/reader/0. 7 The question about what Jewish philosophy really is will never be laid to rest and not even be caught in the East, cf. Schwartz, Yossef, »Die Flucht nach Osten. Orientalismus in der jüdischen Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung«, in: Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 45, 2017, 189–210. 8 Cf. Butler, Judith, Parting Ways, Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, Columbia University Press, New York, 2012, 37: »Similarly, Franz Rosenzweig wrote in The Star of Redemption that Jewish life was, by definition, a life of wandering and waiting. To arrive at a land, and to make Jewishness a matter of property and state, was for him a misunderstanding of the diasporic basis of Jewish values.« 6

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is always somehow a remnant. He is always somehow a survivor, an inner something, whose exterior was seized by the current of the world and carried off while he himself, what is left of him, remains standing on the shore.«.9 Some quote also the following sentence: »Something within him is waiting.«10

Much has been said about this idea of the Jewish person always being a remnant, from Dana Hollander’s careful interpretation of Rosenzweig’s concept on the background of Cohen’s philosophy and Biblical origin, to Giorgio Agamben’s comparison with the ancient painter’s Appelles cut of the cut. Closer to Hollander than to Agamben, I believe that Rosenzweig had in mind Cohen’s interpretation of the Biblical source and his idea of the »holy remnant« as the »historical guarantor of morality«.11 Rosenzweig, however, adds a little »surplus«, a more passionate advocacy of the individual than Cohen dared: The scene by the riverbank evokes not only an ideal of moral self-sacrifice (in which particular frame whatsoever), but rather something very stubborn. In contradistinction Quoted from Hallo’s translation, and according to Reinhard, Kenneth, »Universalism and the Jewish Exception: Lacan, Badiou, Rosenzweig« in: Umbr(a), The Dark God, Nr. One (2005), 43–71, 67. In German the complete quotation goes: »Alle weltliche Geschichte handelt von Ausdehnung. Macht ist deswegen der Grundbegriff der Geschichte, weil im Christentum die Offenbarung begonnen hat, sich über die Welt zu verbreiten, und so aller, auch der bewusst nur rein weltliche Ausdehnungswille zum bewusstlosen Diener dieser großen Ausdehnungsbewegung geworden ist. Das Judentum und sonst nichts auf der Welt erhält sich durch Subtraktion, durch Verengung, durch Bildung immer neuer Reste. Das gilt ganz äußerlich schon gegenüber dem ständigen äußeren Abfall. Es gilt aber auch innerhalb des Judentums selbst. Es scheidet immer wieder Unjüdisches von sich ab, um immer wieder neue Reste von Urjüdischem in sich hervorzustellen. Es gleicht sich ständig äußerlich an, um sich nach innen immer wieder aussondern zu können. Es gibt keine Gruppe, keine Richtung, keinen Einzelnen im Judentum, der nicht seine Art, das Nebensächliche preiszugeben um den Rest festzuhalten, für die einzig wahre und sich also für den wahren ›Rest Israels‹ ansähe. Und er ists. Der Mensch im Judentum ist immer irgendwie Rest. Er ist immer irgendwie ein Übriggebliebener, ein Inneres, dessen Äußeres vom Strom der Welt gefasst und weggetrieben wurde während er selbst, das Übriggebliebene von ihm, am Ufer stehen bleibt. Es wartet etwas in ihm« (SE, 450). 10 Even if Butler in her Parting Ways from 2012 does not quote this passage in writing, she probably has it in mind when claiming repeatedly that, for Rosenzweig, »Jewish life was, by definition, a life of wandering and waiting« (Judith Butler, Parting Ways, Columbia University Press, New York 2012, 37, 120). 11 In her remarkable book Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy (Stanford University Press, Hawthorne CA, 2008) Hollander gives a great interpretation of Cohen’s explanation (in Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie, 1915) of election, using his infinitesimal theory to introduce »subtrac­ tion« versus »extension« as a signifier for quality rather than for quantity. 9

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to any Cohenian, let alone Hegelian victory of the »universal« over the »particular« etc., in Rosenzweig’s acclaimed gesture of subtraction there is nothing of amor fati or Freiheit als Einsicht in die Notwendig­ keit. Coming across it in times of trouble, I read this passage (close to Maria Koch) immediately together with the first pages of the Star, in which Rosenzweig supports the anxious individual in his struggle against the death threat in war.12 But how can subtraction of all »gestures« stand against the shallow comfort of idealistic philosophy with its affront against the individual desire to live? One aspect is certainly that Rosenzweig defends here in this passage not only the individual, but also »particularistic« Judaism against the allegedly »universalistic« Christianity: was it not Judaism that turned weakness into strength, while Christianity only claimed to do so when it in actual fact exerted physical and ideological power?13 Other than Cohen, Rosenzweig, therefore, does not have the election of the Jewish people (as the remnant of humankind) »rational­ ized« or »resolved« into some lofty moral ideal put into practice by some exceptional individual persons or nations. He rather has some opaque same-selfness stand by the river, waiting for his or her other perhaps. But why then is this reserved for »Jewish man«?

2. The Skipped Part of the Subtraction Passage Quotations always displace a piece of text. A quotation can emancipate itself from the work it is taken from and develop a kind of »afterlife« or life of its own.14 It can also lose some feathers on the way. In interpreting it, I shall not try to re-contextualize the quotation »properly«. I’ll rather treat it as it comes: a refugee from a larger system, having escaped the confinement to a narrow world, yearning to be accepted and to work in a better, »more accepted« or »more established« world. Therefore, I shall not try to relocate the subtraction passage in its systematic home. But at Koch in the letter quoted above, cf. ibid. (note 4 in this text), especially 258. Cf. Palmer, Gesine, “’Wir würden es jederzeit wieder tun’. Einige Überlegungen zu Rosenzweig’s Anti-Konversion im Kontext der neuen Paulusrezeption«, in: Rosenzweig Yearbook 4. Paul and Politics, Alber, Freiburg/München 2009, 25–58. An interesting new reading of the subject is Adam Y. Stern’s Survival. A Theological-Political Genealogy, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. 14 Cf. Bruckstein, Almút Sh., Freud, Talmud, Taswir, Taswir Publishing, Berlin, 2018, »Dinge aus dem Zusammenhang reißen«, 92ff. 12 13

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least I wish to read it in full length. The lost feather, that part which is usually skipped with a »…« in the chain of transmission of this quotation, is very interesting indeed. It deals with the inner-Jewish work, or, to be more precise, with that which makes ethical reasoning and real Jewish being one and the same matter: »This [the formation of ever new remnants] is already superficially true vis-à-vis the continuous decline. But it is also true within Judaism itself. Judaism continuously sheds un-Jewish elements from itself, in order to produce out of itself archetypically Jewish elements. There is no group, no direction, no single person in Judaism who would not consider his personal way of giving up on side aspects in order to stick to the rest, as the only true one, and himself as the only true remnant of Israel. And he is.«15

These (usually skipped) sentences arrive at their result by an astonishing move: Rosenzweig seems first to mock those Jews and Jewish groups who think they are the only righteous ones, the only holy remnants. Being well versed in the history of religious rivalry from antiquity through his own time, Rosenzweig allows for no exemption: There is no group, no tendency, no single person in Judaism which do not take their own way of dismissing things as marginal and sticking to the rest to be the only true way, and hence consider themselves to be the true »remnant of his flock« (Jeremiah 23,3). Those of us who are involved in interreligious dialogue are used to think about competing religions and, inside one religion, competing groups, who all claim to be the only true interpreters as of a mess: the conviction of »extremists« who consider themselves to be the only true believers is supposed to be the germ of horrible religious wars. Historical facts seem to confirm this assumption. We would, therefore, expect Rosenzweig to go on in the way of Maimonides or even Lessing, like in the famous example of the ring: there is only one original ring, but nobody knows which one it is etc. However, Rosenzweig does not attempt any relativist or otherwise soothing dissolution of the dire Jewish self-conception he exposes in this paragraph. To the contrary, he simply admits that all of these alleged »only« truly holy remnants of Israel are right: »Und er ists«! Each of them is the only true and »Das gilt ganz äußerlich schon gegenüber dem ständigen äußeren Abfall. Es gilt aber auch innerhalb des Judentums selbst. Es scheidet immer wieder Unjüdisches von sich ab, um immer wieder neue Reste von Urjüdischem in sich hervorzustellen. Es gleicht sich ständig äußerlich an, um sich nach innen immer wieder aussondern zu können. Es gibt keine Gruppe, keine Richtung, keinen Einzelnen im Judentum, der nicht seine Art, das Nebensächliche preiszugeben um den Rest festzuhalten, für die einzig wahre und sich also für den wahren ›Rest Israels‹ ansähe. Und er ists.« (SE 450). 15

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holy remnant of the Lord’s flock. How so? Is it because the Talmud displays exactly this pattern? In fact, the Talmud has been hailed in recent decades for displaying a wonderful polyphony of voices that make no attempt to smoothen their edges – and yet being the very body of texts that has managed to keep the Jewish people together over centuries of displacement, exile and persecution. But then, why do those who quote the subtraction passage in their more or less worldly systems of (often political) philosophy skip the »inner-Jewish« part? A certain fashionable political philosophy has fallen in love with the subtraction passage, taking its alleged gesture of fragmentation and self-exiling for the very essence of Jewish tradition. But are they serious? Is it Judaism’s (and in universalizing consequence: every other diasporic group’s) physical, political weakness that saves the matter? If, e.g., Judith Butler quotes the subtraction passage, she indeed seems to argue that Judaism was »good« as long as it identified as diasporic. She (and with her Jessica Dubow) claims another paragraph from the Star in support of this point: »For the earth nourishes, but it also binds; and when a people loves a soil of the homeland more than its own life, then the danger hangs over it and it hangs over all peoples of the world – that nine times that love may save the soil of the homeland against the enemy and also with the soil the life of the people; but a tenth time the soil remains as that which is loved more and the very life of the people pours out onto it [...]. In this way the earth betrays the people that entrusts to the permanence of the earth its own permanence; the earth itself persists, but the people on it perish [...]. For this reason, the tribal legend of the eternal people begins otherwise than with indigenousness.«16

There is a metaphoric dialogue between the two passages from the Star here: Life or history are represented as »liquid« with Jewish man standing erected at the banks, being split in one part that rolls by and another part that stands still. The peoples of the world persist as tough beings on a tough soil, however being dissolved at the end of their respective histories, when gentile men pour their liquid blood over the soil because they love their geographic homes wholeheartedly and more than their lives. Gentile man sacrifices himself to the earth, while Jewish man has a remnant standing aside and is, therefore, »ewig«, eternal? 16 Cf. Jessica Dubow, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Judaism%27s+other+geographies %3A+Franz+Rosenzweig+and+the+state+of+exile-a0456907299.

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When Hannah Arendt wrote to Karl Jaspers about the Zionists as those Jews who’ve had enough of their exemption from history, she was very clear at this point: as if in an argument with Rosenzweig, she said, Zionists prefer their people to be like others, like gentiles, as it were, and hence mortal17: Zionists, according to Arendt and Jaspers, preferred the life in a mortal state against that tragic eternal life as a people which is always the other: the other to the mortal peoples, and the other even in itself, the other to the mainstream of the river, the remnant, waiting on the shore. Anti-Zionists of today, who are understandably fed up with the blood-shed over the soil in the Middle East, would then, in this language, rather wish to return to the infinite morality of the remnant? Dubow, at least, goes on arguing: »Thus, while Rosenzweig does not – and could not – explicitly say so, is there not a contemporary imperative to his early 20th-century theology? This would mean thinking Judaic exile not as a geographic displacement from a homeland but rather what refuses and exceeds every place or what is unassumable in very spatial identification. Indeed, this would mean maintaining the pressure of being ›stateless in time‹ not only by quickening the memory of the Mosaic exodus but also by ›the formation of ever new remnants‹ (Rosenzweig, 2005: 404–405) even, and especially, within the boundaries of the geopolitical whether named Israel or Palestine.«18 It might be tempting to conceive of the anti-Zionist flock as a remnant of Jewish righteousness, a new holy remnant, which refuses to join in the theological-political discourse of the land. Taking into account Hollander’s argument of the remnant as a signifier for granted morals, could we not go further: Returning to »subtraction« as the way of keeping Judaism intact may be the only consistent way of maintaining a certain more or less metaphysical discourse of ethics: this ethics of holiness, in which we claim that the other has infinite demands over us, this ethics of ever more »TzimTzum« as the »ego«, this eternal villain, is realizing in a motion of repentance the unlimited right of the other? Give up on your own desire to live – and you will gain immortality: this is, 17 Köhler, Lotte, and Saner, Hans (Eds.), Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers Briefwechsel 1926–1969, Piper, München/Zürich, 1985, 134f. »Sie [die Zionisten] sind auch die einzigen, die nicht mehr an das auserwählte Volk glauben.…Wesentlich ist vor allem, dass große Teile des Volkes … Überleben als Ziel des gesamten Volkslebens ablehnen und zum Sterben bereit sind. Man könnte natürlich sagen, dies ist eine vorübergehende Volkshysterie. Ich weiß nicht.« This letter from Arendt to Jaspers from September 4th 1947 deserves intense discussion. 18 Dubow, ibid.

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however, a very Christian move: Mt 16,25/Lk 9,24 has Jesus claim: »For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.« Rosenzweig did not join in this sacrificial Christian logic. The skipped sentences of the subtraction-passage rather serve as a starting point to step back into another direction in interpreting Rose­ nzweig’s concept of the other. Leaving Emmanuel Levinas’s interpreta­ tion (which has largely and deservedly been appreciated by Rosenzweig scholars) as it stands, I suggest to have a look into Hermann Cohen’s contractual concept of the other. With Cohen, the other has a very important but limited claim.

3. Ethics and the Right to be Right For a dialogue to take place, there must be a separation between at least two partners. This separation poses a permanent problem to anything like »the total«. Ever since Hegel’s system, any »separation« and any product of this separation, any separate entity, should at last be »aufge­ hoben« in the general totality. It is this general unity that Rosenzweig comes to draw into question – however, other than some predecessors (he names Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), he intends to not give up on systematic philosophy altogether. Even the subtraction passage is still a part of his »System der Philosophie«, in which Judaism has the lead, with all those holy remnants which are, as he says, right in claiming that they are the only true holy remnants. In order to be right, however, they need others who are not right, so that in contradistinction to these others they can be right. To act like this in an immoral way is – in our contemporary debates – usually only blamed on others: They are committing acts of othering others to feel better as a more or less self-righteous group. Those who are being othered as people of color, women, LGBTQ people or others, blame others for their immoral and unethical behavior of otherings. While they obviously demand »sameness« instead, it is more complex than this. Rosenzweig, some hundred years ago, displayed a calm and proud gesture of othering himself for his people and beyond it, firstly in his work, and secondly in his life – or the other way round? In claiming that every Jew who considers herself to be the only holy remnant, he practically confirms, even »fleshes out« in this beautiful picture of the man standing at the riverside, what Hermann Cohen had developed in his Ethik des reinen Willens and later in his Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des

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Judentums: that the human individual in her very beginning emerged out of her correlation with ethical law and the other. I can only sketch out the argument here: Cohen’s Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism is not principally engaged in forming ethics, nor is it too much concerned with storytelling about the origins or the end of the world. Religion has its own function, its Eigenart, metaphorically speaking, in a border region: it offers a future to the human being who failed to live up to the indispensable demands of ethics – which basically everybody does. Where the law can only state the failure and design some measures (judgement, punishment) of repairing the damage done to the symbolic social order by the perpetrator, religion offers to the latter means to purify him- or herself and to regain hope for a better life. It does so, at least in one of its aspects, by revealing the other as »wie du« (like you) – holding the same legal status while remaining different. The creation of the I and Thou functions in Cohen’s Ethics in a play with the words Anspruch (claim/right) and Ansprache (address). It is the contract in which the right of one person becomes an address to the other person. »Der Vertrag macht nun aus dem Anspruch die Ansprache. Und daher verwandelt sich der Andere zum Ich und Du. Du ist nicht Er. Er wäre der Andere.« (EdrW 1904, 248). The partners in a contract are defined as similar by their taking part in a legal act. The Thou is addressed as part of humanity and part of the I. Cohen even speaks of the Dualis des Ich.19 But make no mistake: All this takes place in a highly abstract manner inside the self-consciousness, which is understood in the pure categorical form of the »ought«. It is, in other words, far from the describable »real«, which Cohen engages in his book on religion. Already in the introduction to the latter, he claims that ethics at this point is in need of completion from elsewhere. His considerations are idiosyncratic from today’s perspective. Cohen shares an anti-sensual gist in his reasoning on ethics. The greater goal of the ethics, which rules its universal rationalism, is a unifying law for a totality of mankind – »die Allheit«. Even if there is an I and a Thou, ethically the two are, as far as Cohen is concerned, to be united, even if in the inner differentiation of the contract. However, this 19 »Ich kann nicht Du sagen, ohne dich auf mich zu beziehen; ohne dich in dieser Beziehung mit dem Ich zu vereinigen. Aber es liegt darin zugleich die gesteigerte Forderung: dass ich auch nicht ich denken kann, ohne dich zu denken. So hat der Andere im Selbstbewusstsein sich gleichsam in den Dualis des Ich verwandelt. Wenn das Selbstbewusstsein die Einheit des Willens zu bedeuten hat, so muss sie die Vereinigung von ich und Du bilden. (Cohen, Hermann, Ethik des reinen Willens, Berlin, Cassirer, 2 1904, 248f ).

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entails a threat especially for the other, as Cohen observes: »Das Er ist mit einer Neutralität behaftet, die es nur schwer vom Es unterscheidet.« And now he turns his attention back to the I: »Und die Ethik scheint mir ja auch für mein Ich eine solche neutrale Objektivität zuzumuten, da sie mich all meiner sinnlichen Merkmale zu entheben sucht. Soll es dabei aber verbleiben? Bleibt der Organismus mit seinem Stoffwechsel schlechthin indifferent für das Ich?«20 In his next move he criticizes the Stoa and its proclaimed adiaphoron towards suffering. As he says, already for the I suffering makes a difference – may this be in doubt with the heroes of self-denial, there cannot be any ethics in the world worth this name that would preach indifference towards the suffering of another. In seeing the real other and being affected by his or her suffering, the thou emerges in the eye of the I. It is at this point that Cohen says, the Eigenart of religion »tritt in Kraft«, even if it belongs to the ethical method. On the one hand, we have here all elements at hand that will be developed to something like metaphysical grandezza with Rosenzweig and Levinas. I cannot but see in this small passage Rosenzweig’s concept of revelation in a nutshell. Moreover, I cannot but see in it the grand opening to Levinas’s infinite claim of the other. However, on the other hand, Cohen remains strictly within the limits of an ethics that he has deduced from Kant’s categorical imperative with all its universalist splendor, and he makes religion, religion of reason, the sensual arm of ethical thinking – the compassionate, hopeful, forgiving, playful missing link between the infinite demands of ethics and the always failing, stumbling, suffering or even cruel humans. (In Christian terms, one might feel tempted to call it a Marian concept of religion, in Rabbinic terms a Shechinah-like concept, but that is another essay). Still, Cohen’s belief in his system is strong. Ethics need to be validated, brought to life, and ideas need to be realized in historical reality. This is what religion is made to help with. The place and task of the Jewish people is strictly defined by God’s suffering servant as developed in the book of Isaiah. »Wie Israel im Bewusstsein jenes prophetischen Dichters für die Götzendiener leidet, so leidet Israel bis auf den heutigen Tag als Stellvertreter für die Mängel und Schäden, die noch immer die Durchführung des Monotheismus hemmen.«21 »Durchführung des Monotheismus«: already for Rosenzweig, Cohen’s language often was 20 Cohen, Hermann, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, Wiesbaden, Fourier, 2 1988, 18f. 21 RdV 313.

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offensive.22 The question remains: Did Cohen believe that a general application of his ethics of monotheism in the world was possible? Prob­ ably he himself was split about it. But with one holy remnant within himself he must have believed in such a project. And with this part in his soul, he scorned »tolerance« as a »Schlafmittel«, a narcotic.23 How not? And how can anyone of us imperfect humans in this imperfect world not be split about ethics, as soon as it is taken in such a strict, absolute way? The right to be right, the inclination to be right, has itself for long become a sin – and there is probably no human being in the world who would not time and again have to be forgiven this sin. In Rosenzweig’s skipped sentence of the subtraction passage, ending with »und er ist’s«, there is this kind of forgiveness: he allows each single Jewish group and person their conviction to be right, to be the only holy remnant in the world, to deserve a redemption more than any other. But is this still philosophy/science?24

4. My Other My Self: Splits, Subtractions and a Silent Unity Rosenzweig probably was not a versed Talmudist – but it seems obvious to me that he was aware of the silent wisdom in a polyphone tradition. Even if not, he was well versed in withstanding a majority philosophy and theology of Christian origin that had habitually marched through the world, confident that at the end of the day nobody would resist its overwhelming power. »Und doch, der Jude tuts«.25 Rosenzweig’s gesture of subtraction was, in fact, his ultimate triumph over his Christian rival Eugen. Or so it seems, given the letters. His decision to remain Jewish, 22 He writes in a letter to Gritli from March 25th 1921: »Gesprochen ists ja meist, als ob die deutsche Sprache noch nicht erfunden wäre; er hat da eine Horde von Wörtern ›vollziehen‹ ›Aufgabe‹ ›erzeugen‹ ›Problem‹ ›Kultur‹ ›in Gemässheit‹ ›Methodik‹ – ob ihn wohl je ein Mensch gefragt hat, was er sich dabei eigentlich gedacht hat? O welch einen edeln Geist habt ›ihr‹ da zerstört, ich meine: ihr Deutschen. Wo er jüdisch spricht, da (und nur da) spricht er plötzlich gutes Deutsch!« Rühle, Inken/ Mayer, Reinhold (Eds.), Franz Rosenzweig. Die »Gritli«-Briefe, Tübingen, Bilam, 2002, 742. 23 Cf. Palmer, Gesine, »Anmerkungen zu einer interreligiösen Ethik aus religionswissen­ schaftlicher Sicht. Toleranz und dergleichen Schlafmittel’“, in: Resch, Andreas (Ed.): Ethica, Wissenschaft und Verantwortung, Innsbruck 2004, 431–448. 24 SE 117, »…ist das noch Wissenschaft?«. 25 SE 459, »Wer möchte es! Und dennoch: der Jude tuts. … mit seinem Dasein, seinem schweigenden Dasein.«

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to not give in to the pressure of Eugen, was a self-revelation in the first place. There are many formulations in which he declares himself Eugen’s other in the letters. In the Star he often declares »the Jew« to do something utterly different, unexpected, and yet completely logical. In his »Ich-bleibe-also-Jude-Brief«, the letter in which he confesses to Rudolf Ehrenberg that he withdraws from his promise to convert, he confesses that he perceived Christianity merely in terms of power, and that he had always begrudged the church its triumph over the synagogue. Young Rosenzweig had much of a conquistador in him. He strongly engaged in strategic reasoning concerning the powers involved in the war, and he commented on his love affair with Eugen’s wife with a certain pride. He often seemed to exaggerate everything that has always been said by Christians about Jews, making it his own action and revealing himself to the Christian as a wicked rival and aggressive enemy: »… dass wir, wir allein auf der ganzen Welt, Jesus gekreuzigt haben und es, glauben Sie mir, jederzeit wieder tun würden«.26 As a Christian reaction to such a »boast« we could expect more than a gesture of othering of such a person (in the contemporary meaning of the word, which is excluding him from any »Wir«), couldn’t we? He himself has othered himself, hasn’t he? It is not that simple, of course. In his inspiring book on Anti-AntiSemitism, Elad Lapidot has more generally characterized a gesture like Rosenzweig’s »the Jew alone« and »the Jew does it« as follows: »The (anti-anti-Semitic) critique against (anti-Semitic) attempts to inscribe the Jews as an epistemic entity within theoretical or philosophical discourse must lead to the realization that the attribution of epistemic value and meaning to Jewish being has been an exercise carried out, more often than by anti-Semites, by self-identifying Jews themselves, precisely as the performance of what they perceive to be their Jewishness.«27

The complicated moves of human souls when they are under severe attack by prejudiced or otherwise scornful others deserve further atten­ tion. What struck me in our context is the function of Rosenzweig’s self-identification as a Jew in his philosophical architecture of revelation and dialogue. If Cohen used »my« compassion with »the other« to reveal 26 Cf. GS I, 252, and Palmer, Gesine, „›Wir würden es jederzeit wieder tun‹. Einige Überlegungen zu Rosenzweigs Anti-Konversion im Kontext der neuen Paulusrezeption«, in: Rosenzweig Yearbook 4. Paul and Politics, Alber, Freiburg/München 2009, 25–58. 27 Elad Lapidot, Jews out of the Question. A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism, SUNY, Albany, 2020, 10.

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the physical, individual human being as more than an exemplary case of the total of humankind, Rosenzweig designated the individual as an enemy, as an other, who is willing and possibly able to disturb and even destroy his others. In all his beautiful paragraphs on love and common striving, Rosenzweig more than most participants in Jewish-Christian dialogue stresses the division, the strangeness, even hostility of himself as the exemplary Jewish other to the Christians. Moreover, he no longer treats these qualities only as an obstacle to be tackled by the »realiza­ tion« (Durchführung) of ethical monotheism. His other is a citizen of the »metaethical« world. Cohen’s other, who emerged (or was generated, erzeugt) out of the »I’s« encounter with the other’s suffering – and by this move addressed the self as a person who can suffer too – is the beginning of the Mensch perceiving his other (and himself ) as the Mitmensch.28 (A line can be drawn from here to Levinas’s ethics of the suffering and exposed other with his infinite demand towards the self.) Rosenzweig’s other reveals himself as a full-grown soldier of his own – and sometimes of his particular Judaism’s – army. He can be angry with and dangerous for his others. He can even be willing to attack their entire symbolic order. The real Franz meant it. In one of his letters to Gritli, Rosenzweig is pretty outspoken as to the purpose of his aggression towards Eugen: He wants the latter to »believe in my reality«. He produces a lot of hostile opinions to be finally perceived as someone who is more than a cupboard full of opinions (mehr als ein Schrank voller Ansichten).29 This did not stop with the completion of the Star. In his own, all too short life, Rosenzweig was, in a way, defeated. Or should I even say, he defeated himself ? He lost Gritli as a lover, he lost his striving for wider recognition in the Christian or post-Christian academic world. Sure, he founded a Jewish home and the famous Jewish Lehrhaus, where he occupied himself and some colleagues with teaching his version of »real Judaism« and the revelation of the »real«. He fell ill, he found comfort in ongoing work in spite all and with incredible support by his wife and many friends. Nevertheless, he fought to his last breath against repeated attempts to have him baptized. Sometimes it appears somewhat uncanny how much of his personal fate he seems to have prefigured in his writings. Probably the most striking example is that he wrote in his booklet Understanding the Sick and the Healthy about a person who remains paralyzed by his speculations about questions of the real’s reality, 28 29

Cohen, RdV, 131ff passim. Letter to Gritli, 19.8.1919, Tübingen 2002, 390.

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when the germ of his paralytic disease was already in his body. More can be found in the Star itself. I restrict myself to one question relating to the »subtraction pas­ sage«. In terms of the man and his work: Would the man standing at the shore of his life be »the Jew«? Could he be »the real Franz«? The serious depression Rosenzweig suffered after the completion of the Star suggests another construction. To me, a Christian reader about 100 years later, it seems like Franz had expressed a kind of revelation that people who are separated by different symbolic orders can experience in the case of erotic love: that the other is totally like you and also totally different, and that both of these descriptions are true and good. Were the other only totally different, there would be no relation possible. Were the other only kamocha, this would not work out either. The erotic encounter (and also the caring encounter in compassion, and even the struggle in an aggressive rivalry) keeps both the difference and the similarity intact. It creates the self vis-à-vis the other and the other vis-à-vis the self. This proceeding generates life between Man and God and World, according to Rosenzweig, and it is exemplary both for inner-Jewish life and for dialogues between religions. In his script for a talk in Kassel about the past and future of religions, Rosenzweig wrote regarding Islam: »Die Gegensätze werden jetzt ausgekämpft und bleiben bestehen. Judentum und Christentum, Judentum und Islam, Kirche und Völker. Weltgeschichtlich äußerlich wird das kommende Jahrtausend der Kampf zwischen Abend- und Morgenland, Kirche und Islam, Germanen und Arabern. Innerlich bleibt die Welt eine.«30 The inner unity of the world is being conceived of pretty much in accord with the correlation of individuals or religions revealing themselves – even in conflict – to each other. But what if the other to the one experiencing revelation and revealing himself does not answer? What if the other does not appreciate the revelation of his other? There is some evidence that Rosenzweig liked his Lehrhaus as long as he could use it actively. There is also some evidence that, after the Star, he enjoyed his essay-writing and his family life. But especially during the first period of his self-chosen life in a smaller Jewish world he obviously suffered because he missed his Christian others, against whom he had designed his own Jewish way. It is the sorrow about that loss, I assume, which could be matched by the gesture of the Cf. Gesine Palmer/Yossef Schwartz (eds.) Franz Rosenzweig, »Innerlich bleibt die Welt eine«. Ausgewählte Schriften zum Islam, Wien/Berlin Philo 2003, 9.

30

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subtraction passage. »Jewish«, in that reading, is neither to step out in order to conquer the other who refuses to accept even the loveliest and kindest self-revelation, nor to give up on the own truth in order to be swallowed by the other. »Jewish«, in that reading, would be to stick to the truth of revelation, even if only a remnant of the remnant is left and the stubbornness of declaring this small remnant to be the »holy remnant« must appear ridiculous to outsiders. By performing ever more subtractions, Judaism would assert itself as a permanent obstacle and other to the world, thereby maintaining the necessary presupposition to all ethics: the No to a world in which humans allow for other humans to suffer. This No has to be granted. Unlike in almost all other religions and post-religious systems, it cannot be dissolved in amor fati or any sacrificial act which allegedly changes the world for a time or once and for all. It is being, according to Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, granted by the Jew, who constantly others himself to allow for all others to be others.

Epilogue on Anti-Zionist Perusal of the Subtraction Passage It should have become clear by now that neither Rosenzweig’s Star nor the one popular quotation that escaped its »narrower« context and made it in the world could be a valid argument against the founding of a Jewish State in Israel in 1948. Even if the Jewish people have the pride of staying alive as a discernable and in itself multiple unity for a time of many centuries in which they had no state of their own, their exposedness had become unbearable by the 1940s. And even if Cohen was more critical towards Zionism than Rosenzweig, both were well aware of the fact that in the earthly world all ethics has its limits in the physical human condition, which needs a physical space, nutrition and even a legal frame to protect basic needs of life. Be it Cohen’s description of the »Stoffwechsel« or the »tierische Gewebe« of humans, be it Rosenzweig’s panic stricken soldier who crumbles in the wrinkles of the earth in order not to be hit by »vorbeizischenden Geschossen« – no infinite demand of the other’s face could make them forget about the real life and concrete limitation of the human self. The theorem of subtraction, therefore, is not an advocacy of physical and mental Tzim-Tzum that would preach a physical life without the means to subsist. In my reading, at least, it rather teaches to give up on »superfluous« aspects of your own symbolic order, in order to save at least the truly holy remnants – and to accept that all

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your fellowmen will do the same, even if they consider other things indispensable than you do. As to my friends from the anti-Zionist faction, I would ask them to consider the three following remarks honestly: 1.

2.

3.

If it is valuable to criticize the concept of the nation-state in general, this debate has its own right. One should, however, at least when it comes to a political practice aimed at entirely dismissing this or that state, not begin with the Jewish state of all states – especially after all the horrors this people had to go through in history (but the same goes for the idea of a Kurdish, Palestinian, Ukrainian state or any other nation under permanent attack). There are other nation-states in the world that might be better candidates for abandoning the nation-state. I’d suggest to begin with real imperial states if one must try and do away with entire states at least in voto. Personally, rather than voting for »no states« and »no borders«, I would rather opt for more flexible borders and for a more or less confederative dialogical exchange between a multiplicity of peoples. It is a sad paradox that the State of Israel, which has been erected in the hope of ending the time of Jewish exile, has been, from its very beginnings, in actual reality a European state in Middle Eastern exile.31 This does not justify some sort of policies in our European eyes – but it should at least be considered. The concepts of exile, diaspora, and hospitality cannot be conceived of without a correlation with the »opposing« concepts of home, majority, and stronghold. If I want to be »the good one« in the face of a world in which evil persists, then someone must be »the bad one«, either as my evil enemy or as my protector who does the dirty job on my enemy. We have to consider the logic of othering even in this direction.

In any case, in a hugely problematic world state-like structures, including the ability to robust self-defence, will probably remain indispensable in the years ahead. However, there will be no development for the better as 31 »Der Zionismus ist das, was dir der Sozialismus ist. In 100 Jahren hat die Welt wieder eine Form und wir wieder ein Gesetz. Ich selbst werde noch eine der Grundschriften schreiben, aus denen es kodifiziert werden wird. Denn es wird wirklich wieder ein geschriebenes und doch wirklich gehaltenes Gesetz sein (– ein Wunder, ohne das die Welt nicht leben kann). Dass die Zionisten diesem neuen Gesetz zu leben können nur indem sie sich selbst, ihre eigene europäisch verflochtene Seele opfern, das wissen sie selbst.« (Letters to Gritli, printed version, 723).

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long as the ethical selves will not learn to perceive themselves as other to the others.

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Bien plus que de la « religion » Le projet spéculatif de Franz Rosenzweig

Abstract La «nouvelle pensée» de Franz Rosenzweig vise à établir une relation dynamique entre la culture grecque et les Écritures bibliques. Mais cette pensée même n’est pas du tout marquée par des connotations pieuses ou édifiantes. L’approche rosenzweigienne du « paganisme » grec et de la révélation biblique vise plutôt à en exploiter les potentialités philosophiques. Il veut souligner la valeur universellement humaine qui marque l’un et l’autre. On pourrait dire que cette approche même n’est pas proprement antireligieuse mais plutôt méta- ou trans-religieuse. Dans cette perspective, le projet spéculatif rosenzweigien semble pouvoir être inséré – mais d’une façon tout à fait originale – dans le climat culturel de la « sécularisation ». Le projet spéculatif de la « pensée nouvelle » de Franz Rosenzweig présente au premier abord une physionomie bien étrange, voire tout à fait paradoxale. Ce projet même semble trouver, en effet, son noyau essentiel dans une confrontation critique très attentive entre la vision du monde, de l’humain et du divin qui ressort de la culture grecque et celle qui nous est proposée par les Écritures bibliques. Le projet de penser philosophiquement la relation entre Athènes et Jérusalem, entre la pensée purement rationnelle et la révélation biblique, ne semble toutefois avoir rien de particulièrement inédit et original, au point de justifier l’expression de « pensée nouvelle ». On a tenté en effet de le réaliser maintes fois et sous les formes les plus différentes dans l’histoire de la réflexion philosophique et théologique depuis la fin de l’Antiquité, à travers tout le Moyen Âge et jusqu’à l’époque moderne. En quoi pourrait alors consister la nouveauté de la « pensée nouvelle » de Rosenzweig, une nouveauté que le penseur aurait néanmoins voulue tout à fait radicale?

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On peut répondre à la question que nous venons de poser en soulignant d’abord le fait que le penseur s’efforce de nous proposer une lecture fort inhabituelle, d’une part de la culture grecque, et d’autre part des Écritures bibliques. Tout aussi inhabituelle apparaît ensuite la com­ préhension que le penseur nous fournit de la relation qu’il s’agit d’établir entre elles. La Grèce à laquelle le penseur se rattache n’est pas en effet la Grèce philosophique de Socrate, de Platon et d’Aristote. Elle est plutôt – et bien plus! – la Grèce pré- et extra-philosophique d’Homère, de la tragédie attique et de la polis du Ve siècle avant Jésus-Christ. L’essentiel de l’héritage culturel grec – son noyau le plus vital et fécond – est donc ramené à ses sources mythologiques et poétiques. La tentative de Rosenzweig aboutit enfin à la proposition d’une véritable philosophie du « paganisme », un paganisme relu à l’aide d’une clé interprétative tout à fait positive, dans le sillage de la pensée du dernier Schelling1. Les Écritures bibliques elles aussi sont soumises dans l’entreprise philosophique de Rosenzweig à une relecture tout à fait originelle. Même en ce cas la tentative du penseur aboutit à une proposition philosophique particulière, c’est-à-dire à une véritable philosophie de la révélation, elle aussi marquée par des sugges­ tions schellingiennes, qui constitue une sorte de pendant de la philosophie de la mythologie dont nous venons de parler. La question de la relation qui subsiste entre la culture grecque et les Écritures bibliques peut donc se traduire dans la pensée rosenzweigienne, en la question fondamentale de la relation entre « paganisme » et révélation. Cette relation jouera un rôle soit architectonique, soit dynamique, particulièrement remarquable dans la « pensée nouvelle » de Rosenzweig.

1 L’importance de l’influence de Schelling sur la genèse du projet rosenzweigien de la « nouvelle pensée » a été soulignée pour la première fois par une élève du penseur, Else Freund, dans son volume : Die Existenzphilosophie Franz Rosenzweigs. Ein Beitrag zur Analyse seines Werkes « Der Stern der Erlösung », F. Meiner Verlag, Berlin/Leipzig 1933 (2e éd., F. Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1959). Sur le même sujet reviennent : Stéphane Mosès: Système et Révélation. La philosophie de Franz Rosenzweig, préface d’Emmanuel Lévinas, Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1982 (voir en particulier à ce propos 35–41); Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Franz Rosenzweig. Existentielles Denken und gelebte Bewährung, Alber Freiburg/München 1991 (51–90); Claudio Belloni: Filosofia e rivelazione. Rosenzweig nella scia dell’ultimo Schelling, Marsilio, Venezia 2003; Myriam Bienenstock, Auf Schellings Spuren im Stern der Erlösung, dans: Rosenzweig als Leser. Kontextuelle Kommentare zum »Stern der Erlösung«, Herausgegeben von Martin Brasser, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004 (273–290); Agata Bielik-Robson, ›The Story Continues...‹ Schelling and Rosenzweig on narrative philosophy, dans «International Journal of Philosophy and Theology», Volume 80, 2019 – Issue 1–2 (127–142).

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La pointe la plus innovante du projet rosenzweigien, que nous venons d’esquisser à traits très rapides, réside toutefois dans le fait qu’il est totalement dépourvu de toute connotation pieuse ou édifiante. On pourrait en arriver à affirmer que la « nouvelle pensée » de Rosenzweig n’est pas même animée par la moindre intentionalité « religieuse ». Le penseur n’aimait pas du tout d’ailleurs le terme et l’idée de « religion ». Son rapport à ce terme et à cette idée demeura, tout au long de son itiné­ raire, étonnamment négatif. Cette attitude l’amena à les exclure pour de bon des structures fondamentales de son projet philosophique. L’approche rosenzweigienne du « paganisme » grec et de la révéla­ tion biblique vise plutôt à en expliciter et à en exploiter les potentialités authentiquement philosophiques, qui sont, selon le penseur, immenses. Cette approche même est pourtant tout à fait exempte de tout réduc­ tionnisme laïciste. Le penseur ne veut nullement nier ni minimiser le formidable surcroît de sens face à la pure spéculation philosophique qui est contenu dans la mythologie païenne et dans la révélation biblique – et dans cette dernière bien plus que dans la première. Il veut souligner tout simplement, et tout aussi fermement, la valeur universellement humaine que possèdent l’une et l’autre. On pourrait dire peut-être, en dépassant la terminologie philosophique qui est à la lettre la sienne, que son approche de la mythologie païenne et de la révélation biblique n’est pas proprement antireligieuse mais plutôt méta- ou trans-religieuse. Dans cette perspec­ tive, le projet spéculatif rosenzweigien semble pouvoir être inséré, en des termes tout à fait particuliers qu’on devra préciser par la suite, à l’intérieur du climat culturel plus général défini par un ensemble de phénomènes socio-culturels qu’on dénomme d’ordinaire « sécularisation ».

1. « Sentiment de Dieu » versus « religion » La stratégie conceptuelle globale que le penseur pratiqua face à la question de la « religion » pourrait être ramenée à deux démarches spéculatives fondamentales. Il s’agit, naturellement, d’une schématisation extrême d’une tournure de pensée bien plus complexe. La première de ces démarches consiste en une critique particulièrement sévère – presque déconstructionniste avant la lettre – du terme et de l’idée de « religion ». La deuxième démarche consiste en la tentative de soustraire soit le « pagan­ isme » grec, soit la révélation biblique, au domaine du « religieux », afin de les relire en des termes tout à fait différents.

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La première démarche se dessine très précocement dans l’itinéraire du penseur. Il est possible, en effet, d’en repérer une trace significative dans un fragment de journal qu’il rédigea en 19062. Le futur philosophe avait alors à peine vingt ans et il était encore étudiant en médecine. Le fragment en question tourne autour d’une distinction et d’une confron­ tation entre deux notions fondamentales. Nous nous référons aux notions de « sentiment de Dieu [Gottesgefühl] » et de « religion [Religion] ». La première semble devoir appartenir à ce que l’on pourrait bien nommer le statut ontologique originel de l’être humain, ou bien, si l’on peut dire, à l’être humain en pleine santé. La seconde, au contraire, semble venir se superposer seulement après coup à ce statut ontologique même en en altérant artificiellement, ou d’une façon pour ainsi dire pathologique, le profil primitif. La relation entre le sens de Dieu et la religion est illustrée dans le texte à l’aide d’une singulière métaphore physico-chimique, qui devait être tout à fait dans les cordes du jeune étudiant en médecine. D’après cette métaphore, le sens de Dieu est comparé à un « gaz qui », à l’origine, « remplissait totalement tous les espaces à l’intérieur de l’homme ». C’est précisément à ce gaz que les religions, appelées par Rosenzweig « les fondatrices de la chimie synthétique de l’esprit », ou de la « chimie culturelle » (GS I/1, 57), appliqueraient ensuite une puis­ sante force de compression en en provoquant la liquéfaction totale. Les religions utiliseraient enfin le liquide qui résulte de l’opération comme un solvant qui dissout totalement le composé chimique humain originel. C’est à la suite de cette procédure artificielle que naîtrait l’homo religiosus. Les religions réussissent enfin à faire passer, selon le jeune Rosenzweig, cet homo religiosus tout à fait frauduleusement pour l’homme originel, pour l’homme tout court. À l’aide de la même métaphore, le jeune penseur reconstitue la singu­ lière vicissitude religieuse qui a été vécue par la pensée moderne, de Kant à Nietzsche. À cette vicissitude il se sent lié par une solidarité très large, bien que non totale. La pensée moderne en question aurait réussi, selon Rosenzweig, à séparer le soluté humain du solvant divin, à l’intérieur de la solution humano-divine qui avait été obtenue par les religions. Cette séparation aurait résulté, d’une part, en une récupération pleine de l’homme originel, et d’autre part, en la restitution du « sentiment de Dieu » à sa physionomie « gazéiforme » primitive. De cette façon, ce dernier aurait pu récupérer sa signification originelle en revenant occuper discrètement les espaces intérieurs de l’homme, ou bien se disperser 2

Voir à ce propos GS I/1, 57–58.

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totalement dans l’air, comme ce fut le cas dans les pensées athées des deux derniers siècles. La préoccupation fondamentale qui hante ce texte de jeunesse semble être la sauvegarde et la mise en valeur de l’identité originelle et intégrale de l’homme, d’un côté, et de Dieu, de l’autre. Le sentiment de Dieu semble être à même de la garantir, à la différence de ce que font les religions. Ces dernières, selon le penseur, utilisent le sentiment sain et naturel que l’homme a de Dieu, après l’avoir altéré profondément, pour détruire le profil ontologique originel de l’homme. Dans la solution humano-divine qui résulte de l’œuvre des religions, les nécessaires lignes de démarcation qui séparent l’humain et le divin se trouvent effacées. Or, l’humain et le divin ne peuvent entrer en une relation authentique qu’en préservant leur identité respective, dans leur irréductible différence réciproque. Identité et différence, distance et relation entre les identités différentes : il semble que ce soit là, selon Rosenzweig, les « ingré­ dients » incontournables d’un rapport authentique entre l’homme et Dieu. En approfondissant le sens global du fragment rosenzweigien au-delà de sa « lettre », on pourrait dire que seulement un homme intégralement laïque ou séculaire est à même de faire l’expérience d’une relation adéquate avec Dieu, avec le vrai Dieu. Dans cette perspective, la convergence de la sensibilité de Rosenzweig avec l’atmosphère socio-cul­ turelle de la sécularisation apparaît d’une façon très nette.

2. « Paganisme », ontologie intuitive de la différence Dans le chef-d’œuvre du penseur, L’Étoile de la Rédemption3, la première des deux démarches fondamentales qui marquent l’approche rosenzweig­ ienne de la religion – c’est-à-dire sa critique radicale – ne se dessine que d’une façon tout à fait indirecte. Il ne s’exprime en effet qu’à travers la figure rhétorique de la prétérition, c’est-à-dire, par un silence presque total sur le sujet, un silence qui est en soi très éloquent. Dans l’Étoile, donc, il n’est presque pas du tout question de « religion »4. La deuxième démarche, en revanche, c’est-à-dire la relecture en des Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, Kauffmann, Frankfurt am Main 1921; repris en 4e éd. dans GS II. Éd. fr. : L’Étoile de la Rédemption, trad. par Alexandre Derczanski et Jean-Louis Schlegel, préface de Stéphane Mosès, Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1982 (2e éd. 2003). 4 En relisant son chef-d’œuvre philosophique, L’Étoile de la Rédemption, quatre ans après sa publication, le penseur écrira : « D’après la sacro-sainte coutume, un système philosophique consiste en une logique, une éthique, une esthétique et une philoso­ 3

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termes non religieux de l’héritage grec – compris comme « paganisme » – et de la révélation biblique, est développée, dans l’œuvre, d’une façon particulièrement ample. Le « paganisme » grec constitue, en effet, l’objet fondamental de toute la Première Partie de l’œuvre (GS II, 1–99; éd. fr. 2003, 17–135). Elle se propose d’en donner une interprétation nouvelle, dans une clé de lecture authentiquement philosophique. Dans cette approche, le « paganisme » grec représente un véritable défi ainsi qu’une tâche pour la philosophie, qui souvent n’a pas su être à la hauteur ni de l’un ni de l’autre. En condensant en une formule extrêmement synthétique le sens global des riches et complexes analyses rosenzweigiennes, on pourrait dire que, pour le penseur, le « paganisme » élabore une sorte d’admirable compréhension intuitive des fondements élémentaires de la réalité tout entière, une compréhension dont il est très important, selon le penseur, de dégager les implications philosophiques. Ces fondements se concrétisent, selon l’auteur, dans les figures splendides, différemment réélaborées ensuite par la tradition philosophique – et souvent fâcheuse­ ment méconnues par elle –, du Dieu mythique, du cosmos plastique et de l’homme héroïque. De ces figures, la tradition pré- et extraphilosophique grecque, a su penser l’indépendance réciproque, l’autonomie, bref, la différence radicale de l’une à l’égard de l’autre. Le thème de la différence – ou des identités différentes – qui jouait un rôle absolument central dans le fragment de jeunesse que nous venons de citer, est toutefois considérablement élargi dans l’Étoile. La différence seulement bilatérale entre le divin et l’humain, qui tenait à cœur au jeune Rosenzweig, s’enrichit maintenant, en se transformant en la différence trilatérale entre Dieu, le monde et l’homme. L’introduction du monde – d’un monde saisi dans la plénitude de son être profane, ou de sa mondanité – dans le jeu de la différence – et des identités différentes –, un jeu qui avait déjà été instauré dans le fragment de jeunesse, approfondit d’une façon remarquable la participation du penseur à l’atmosphère culturelle de la sécularisation. En définitive, l’interprétation rosenzweigienne du « pagan­ isme » grec interprète celui-ci, en allant un peu au-delà de la « lettre » des formulations du penseur, comme une ontologie intuitive – voire mytholo­ phie de la religion […]. À l’exception d’une philosophie de la religion, mon ouvrage contient les trois autres ingrédients qui entrent dans la composition d’un vrai punch philosophique » (Franz Rosenzweig, Das neue Denken. Einige nachträgliche Bemerkungen zum « Stern der Erlösung » [1925], dans : GS III, 141; trad. fr. : La pensée nouvelle. Remarques additionnelles à L’Étoile de la Rédemption, par Marc B. de Launay, dans : Franz Rosenzweig, Les Cahiers de « La nuit surveillée », Paris 1982, 41).

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gique – de la différence ou des identités élémentaires réciproquement et irréductiblement différentes, comme une ontologie pluraliste ou « multi­ verselle », qui apparaît douée, encore aujourd’hui, d’une valeur et d’une force suggestive tout à fait extraordinaires. C’est dans le contexte de cette même interprétation que prend place une analyse très rapide – et certainement trop tranchante! – des grandes expériences philosophico-religieuses de la Chine et de l’Inde (ibid., 38–41, 62–65, 80–83; éd. fr. 2003, 62–65, 91–94, 112–116). Ces dernières sont interprétées par le penseur essentiellement comme une approximation inchoative et défective – comme une simple préparation – du « paganisme » grec. Le rapport de Rosenzweig à l’Orient ne saurait certes être considérée comme digne de foi aujourd’hui, au moins dans ses prétentions interprétatives. Il ne pourrait être utilisé productivement que pour éclaircir par contraste la signification globale de la vision rosenzweigienne du « paganisme » grec5.

3. « Révélation », intuition narrative des évènements relationnels La « philosophie du paganisme » que Rosenzweig détaille dans la Premi­ ère Partie de l’Étoile, cependant, ne représente que le premier aspect du projet de la « pensée nouvelle », une dimension qui est aussi nécessaire qu’en soi insuffisante. La deuxième dimension du projet en question, dans lequel le penseur s’engage dans la Deuxième Partie de l’œuvre (ibid., 101–291; éd. fr. 2003, 137–367), consiste alors en une tentative très complexe de réinterpréter, à nouveau dans une lecture rigoureusement philosophique, le message essentiel qui émane des Écritures bibliques. Afin de comprendre la signification profonde de la tentative rosenzweig­ ienne, il faut rappeler les limites intrinsèques qui, selon le penseur, marquent la perspective « païenne ». Le « paganisme », qui a réussi à saisir admirablement les fondements élémentaires de l’être – Dieu, le monde et l’homme –, mis en valeur dans leur précieuse différence réciproque, n’est toutefois pas à même de dépasser leur isolement, Voir à ce sujet : Hanoch Ben Pazi, Rosenzweig between East and West: Restoration of India and China in The Star of Redemption, dans «RUDN Journal of Philosophy», vol. 24, N. 3, 2020 (362–378); Gianfranco Bonola, »Fraintendimenti per sistema. Franz Rosenzweig sulle culture dell’Estremo Oriente nella Stella della redenzione«, in: Humanitas, LXXVII (3), 2022, 344-367. 5

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qui menace de les figer en des idoles stupides et muettes. L’intrigue vivante de l’expérience quotidienne, qui constitue pour Rosenzweig l’objet suprême de la recherche philosophique, révèle cependant que la condition humaine présente est en fait désormais bien au-delà du paganisme. Cette expérience laisse voir, sans possibilité d’équivoque, que l’événement, logiquement non déductible, de la relation réciproque entre les fondements élémentaires de l’être s’est déjà miraculeusement produit. Dans ce contexte, la révélation biblique peut alors être comprise par le penseur comme une sorte d’intuition, exprimée en des modalités narra­ tives, dialogales et chorales, des événements relationnels en question. À ces derniers Rosenzweig prête enfin les noms bibliques de la création (relation Dieu-monde), de la révélation (relation Dieu-homme) et de la rédemption (relation homme-monde). À la relecture rosenzweigienne de la révélation biblique d’après une singulière clé philosophique s’ajoute, dans l’Étoile, une prise de position à l’égard de l’Islam (ibid., 129–131, 135–137, 183–186, 191–193, 240–243, 251–254; éd. fr. 2003, 170–172, 177–180, 235–238, 244–246, 304–307, 317–320). Cette prise de position apparaît aujourd’hui au moins aussi réductrice que l’analyse rosenzweigienne des religions orientales. Elle s’alourdit en outre d’une charge polémique particulièrement sévère et véhémente. Pour le dire très rapidement, l’Islam apparaît, dans la lecture rosenzweigienne, comme une rechute en deçà de la révélation authen­ tique, c’est-à-dire comme une sorte de paganisation renouvelée de cette révélation même. D’une façon tout à fait analogue à ce que nous avons dit de l’interprétation rosenzweigienne de l’Orient, on pourrait noter ici que la lecture rosenzweigienne de l’Islam ne peut être utilisée productivement que pour éclaircir par contraste la complexité que le penseur prête à la révélation biblique et les risques qui, de l’avis du penseur même, la menacent lorsqu’elle perd son inspiration authentique6.

4. Judaïsme et Christianisme Dans la Troisième Partie de l’Étoile (ibid., 293–472; éd. fr. 2003, 369–589), le penseur élabore une interprétation originale du judaïsme et du chris­ tianisme. Ils sont compris essentiellement comme deux concrétisations 6 L’approche rosenzweighien de l’Islam est examinée par plusieurs spécialistes dans le cahier monographique de la revue « Rosenzweig Jahrbuch / Rosenzweig Yearbook », vol. 2, 2007, intitulé : Kritik am Islam / Criticism of Islam.

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historiques – différentes, mutuellement conflictuelles, mais finalement complémentaires – de la tension, universellement humaine, qui vise l’ac­ complissement de l’événement relationnel de la rédemption du monde. À l’intérieur de cette interprétation, le judaïsme – dénommé par Rosenzweig « vie éternelle » – reçoit la tâche d’accomplir, dans sa foi monothéiste, la possibilité d’une transfiguration rédemptrice du monde dans l’espace limité d’un seul peuple. Le christianisme – dénommé par le penseur « voie éternelle » – assume en revanche la tâche de diffuser dans le monde entier – en particulier chez les peuples païens – la rédemption que le judaïsme a incarnée dans un seul peuple. Cette diffusion missionnaire se produit au prix d’une atténuation et d’une adaptation du monothéisme, une atténuation et une adaptation qui sont tout à fait nécessaires pour les peuples païens, mais dont le peuple juif n’a pas du tout besoin et qui lui est même intolérable. La « vérité éternelle » – la vérité à part entière – n’est toutefois, pour Rosenzweig, ni juive, ni chrétienne, car elle dépasse les limites de l’une et de l’autre communauté, en se projetant dans la perspective d’un avenir messianique et eschatologique.

5. Au-delà de la « religion » Les deux démarches spéculatives fondamentales, auxquelles nous avons ramené, en schématisant à l’extrême, l’approche rosenzweigienne de la question de la « religion », sont reprises très rapidement, mais aussi approfondies, par le penseur, après la publication de l’Étoile, dans l’essai de 1925, intitulé Das neue Denken (La nouvelle pensée), que nous avons déjà eu l’occasion de citer. Le geste herméneutique du penseur est ici particulièrement intéressant. Il présente de précises analogies avec l’approche de la question qui a été pratiquée par certains secteurs de la réflexion philosophique et théologique du XXe siècle. L’essentiel de ce geste herméneutique consiste à refuser résolument une quelconque signification « religieuse » à la révélation juive et chrétienne. Le judaïsme et le christianisme étaient en effet, de l’avis du penseur, « à l’origine [ursprünglich] seulement quelque chose de totalement ›non religieux‹ [etwas ganz Unreligiöses] » (GS III, 154; trad. fr. cit., 56)7. Dans ce Le traducteur français rend la même phrase de la manière suivante : « ils [c’est-à-dire, le Judaïsme et le Christianisme] étaient à l’origine tout à fait ›profanes‹ ».

7

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contexte même, ils sont présentés, respectivement, l’un comme « une réalité factuelle [eine Tatsache] » et l’autre comme « un événement [ein Ereignis] » (ibidem). La « Tatsache » en laquelle consiste le judaïsme est identifiée, par le penseur, un peu plus loin dans le même texte, avec sa concrétisation et son incarnation dans un peuple qui existe historiquement8. Le judaïsme se présenterait alors comme une condition de vie bien déterminée, voire comme l’« être juif »9. L’« événement » qui constitue le christianisme, d’ailleurs, se confond totalement avec l’événe­ ment même qui fonde la communauté (gemeindegründendes Ereignis), une communauté qui n’existe pas avant l’événement mentionné (voir à ce propos ibid., 156; trad. fr. cit., 57). « De la religion, des religions », donc, continue le penseur, le judaïsme et le christianisme en voyaient seulement et exclusivement « autour d’eux, et ils se fussent profondément étonnés qu’on s’adressât à eux comme étant également des religions » (ibid., 154; trad. fr. cit., 56; l’italique est de nous). La conclusion est la suivante : « la présentation du judaïsme et du christianisme qu’il y a [dans l’Étoile] n’est pas alors commandée à l’origine par un intérêt philosophico-religieux, mais […] par un intérêt systématique général, en particulier par la question d’une éternité existante » (ibid., 156; trad. fr. cit., 57). La différence fondamentale qui sépare nettement le judaïsme et le christianisme face à toutes les religions existantes consiste, selon le penseur, dans le fait que « toute religion historique est dès l’origine spécialisée, elle est ›instituée‹ [gestiftet] » (ibid., 154; trad. fr. cit., 56). Le judaïsme et le christianisme au contraire ne furent jamais institués et, lorsqu’ils devinrent quelque chose de « spécialisé », ils devinrent tels « seulement après coup et jamais pour longtemps » (ibidem). La puissance et l’authenticité des deux monothéismes bibliques tiennent plutôt à leur capacité à briser les sédimentations « religieuses » que l’écoulement du temps a déposées et qu’il dépose incessamment sur eux. « La place spéciale du judaïsme et du christianisme », écrit en effet le penseur, « tient au fait que, même une fois devenus religion, ils ont su trouver en eux-mêmes les impulsions [Antriebe] à s’émanciper de leur caractère religieux [Religionshaftigkeit] pour retrouver la voie du retour de la spécialisation et des remparts [Ummauerungen] de cette dernière Dans GS III, 156 (trad. fr. cit., 57) on parle de « la réalité factuelle du peuple [Tatsache des Volks] ». 9 Dans une lettre très engagée au point de vue philosophique adressée à son ami et interlocuteur Rudolf Hallo, et datée 27 mars 1922, le penseur écrit : « Le judaïsme n’est pas la Loi. Il crée la Loi mais il ne l’est point. Il ›est‹ être juif [Judesein] » (GS I/2, 762; l’italique est de Rosenzweig). 8

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vers le champ ouvert de la réalité » (ibidem). Le texte que nous venons de citer oppose donc d’une façon très nette et polémique, d’une part, le domaine fermé, sectoriel, « spécialisé », délimité, d’après la métaphore, par un mur d’enceinte (Ummauerung) oppressif, à l’intérieur duquel se meuvent les religions, et, d’autre part, le « champ ouvert de la réalité », où se produisent les vicissitudes de la vie concrète de l’homme au monde. D’après cette opposition, le judaïsme et le christianisme, une fois relus dans une perspective radicalement non religieuse, semblent se configurer comme des modalités spéciales, particulièrement vitales et fécondes, à travers lesquelles on peut percevoir, vivre, aborder et penser le champ ouvert de la vie humaine quotidienne. D’après cette même opposition, peut s’éclairer d’une façon singulière la signification d’une affirmation lapidaire, qui tranche au centre de Das neue Denken. « Dieu », écrit en effet le penseur, « n’a pas créé la religion, mais bien le monde [Gott hat eben nicht die Religion, sondern die Welt geschaffen] » (ibid., 153; trad. fr. cit., 55). Dieu a donc bien créé selon Rosenzweig, le réseau relationnel, très complexe, dans lequel consiste la réalité tout entière. Il n’a pas créé toutefois l’optique régionale et réductionniste prise sur ce réseau même et dans laquelle, selon le penseur, se meut entièrement la religion. L’interprétation rosenzweigienne de la révélation biblique – du judaïsme et du christianisme – est soutenue par la conviction que cette révélation même n’est rien d’autre que la manifestation et la concrétisa­ tion – mieux, le « renouvellement » – d’un événement plus large et profond qui touche à l’humanité tout entière bien au-delà de toute barrière confessionnelle. Dans le même texte que nous venons de citer, le penseur peut parler en effet d’une « révélation à Adam (Offenbarung an Adam) », c’est-à-dire, d’une révélation adressée à l’homme en tant que tel, à l’homme tout court, car Adam, symbole de cet homme, « était tout aussi peu païen que juif ou chrétien » (ibid., 153; trad. fr. cit., 55)10. En revenant à notre thème on pourrait dire, peut-être, que la révélation, comprise au sens le plus large du terme – la révélation à Adam 10 Cette « révélation à Adam » coïncide totalement, selon le penseur, avec l’événe­ ment « miraculeux » du langage. Dans l’Étoile, le penseur écrit : « la langue est véritable­ ment le cadeau de noces que le Créateur offre à l’humanité, et pourtant, c’est en même temps le bien commun aux enfants des hommes, dont chacun a sa part spécifique, et enfin, c’est le sceau de l’humanité dans l’homme » (GS II, 122; éd. fr. 2003, 161). Mais il n’est pas possible d’approfondir ce thème rosenzweigien si remarquable et original dans les limites de cette contribution. Nous nous permettons de renvoyer à ce propos à notre essai : La pensée et l’événement. La critique rosenzweigienne de la pensée idéaliste, paru dans la revue « Les Études Philosophiques », vol. 129, no. 2, Avril 2019, 197–219.

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– précède, soutient, accompagne et dépasse infiniment toute religion. Cette révélation peut alors se dévoiler comme un développement et une complication, bien plus mûres, du « sentiment de Dieu » dont Rosenzweig parlait dans son journal de jeunesse11.

6. Une pensée « rythmique » à deux phases Les grandes expériences culturelles et spirituelles du « paganisme » grec et de la révélation biblique – juive et chrétienne – sont donc explorées et exploitées par Rosenzweig dans leurs formidables potentialités spécu­ latives, avant même leur possible compréhension en une lecture pure­ ment « religieuse » et aussi indépendamment d’elle. Elles représentent en effet pour l’humanité tout entière une intuition immédiate, certes pré-philosophique, mais aussi très lucide et incomparable, de deux dimensions fondamentales de la réalité, que la philosophie aurait pour tâche de mettre en valeur après coup, de repenser et d’approfondir avec ses instruments de travail et ses méthodes. La connexion dynamique et synergique entre « paganisme » et révélation, qui constitue le pilier du projet de la pensée nouvelle de Rosen­ zweig, s’articule, dans ce projet, en une sorte de singulière « division du travail » spéculatif. Le « paganisme » grec, comme nous l’avons déjà vu, une fois relu d’après une clé spéculative, reçoit la tâche d’ouvrir les horizons d’une ontologie de la différence – ou d’une ontologie des identités irréductiblement différentes – qui est à même de scruter et d’inspecter les tréfonds « élémentaires » de l’être. La révélation biblique, une fois relue elle-même d’après une clé spéculative, comme nous l’avons vu aussi, assume, en revanche, la tâche de dévoiler les horizons du réseau des événements relationnels qui se produisent, à l’intérieur de l’expérience 11 Au-delà des deux significations du mot révélation que nous venons d'évoquer, on en trouve une autre dans la pensée de Rosenzweig, qui est beaucoup plus large que l’une et l’autre. Parfois, en fait, le penseur utilise ce mot pour faire référence à l'ensemble du réseau d'événements relationnels – création, révélation, rédemption – qui est abordé dans la Deuxième Partie de l'Étoile. Cet usage linguistique se justifie par le fait que l'événement de la révélation joue un rôle absolument central dans la Deuxième Partie de l'Étoile et aussi dans l'ensemble de la pensée rosenzweigienne. C'est en effet seulement grâce à la médiation de la révélation qu'il est possible, selon le penseur, de reconstruire le passé de la création et d'anticiper le futur de la rédemption. Cet usage linguistique configurerait ainsi une sorte de synecdoque conceptuelle (la dénomination d'une partie est utilisée pour désigner le tout). L'apparente superposition des trois significations du mot révélation, qui se produit parfois dans l’Étoile, provient du fait qu'il existe un lien très étroit entre eux.

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concrète de l’homme dans le monde, entre les figures « élémentaires », qui ont été déjà identifiées et mises en lumière par l’ontologie de la dif­ férence d’inspiration païenne. Dans la perspective théorique que nous venons d’esquisser, l’onto­ logie païenne de la différence remplit la fonction de jeter les fondations indispensables de la narration spéculative des événements relationnels sur lesquels se base l’expérience humaine concrète et quotidienne. La narration spéculative des événements relationnels, d’inspiration biblique, à son tour, remplit la fonction d’accomplir et de couronner l’ontologie de la différence, d’inspiration « païenne ». Chacune des deux articulations de la « pensée nouvelle » de Rosenzweig a un besoin extrême et urgent du support de l’autre. Aucune d’entre elles ne peut se passer de l’autre sans entraîner la perte ruineuse et irrémédiable de la richesse et de la comple­ xité de leur sens global. La simple différence ne peut engendrer en effet, à partir d’elle-même, aucun événement relationnel. Ce dernier ne peut pas être déduit spéculativement des éléments différents. Les événements relationnels, d’autre part, ne peuvent se produire que sur la base de la position d’une différence authentique et irréductible. On pourrait alors dire que le projet rosenzweigien de la « pensée nouvelle » se réalise dans une pulsation rythmique à deux phases, qui présente la physionomie d’une respiration ou d’une dynamique de systole et de diastole. Ce que nous venons de dire, toutefois, ne doit pas susciter l’impres­ sion que Rosenzweig établirait une sorte d’équivalence entre les deux articulations dynamiques de sa perspective philosophique. Entre elles existe en effet une sorte de saut ou de luxation radicale, qui dépend très étroitement de la différence de niveau ontologique qui sépare les objets intentionnels – c’est-à-dire, la différence et la relation – auxquelles elles visent respectivement. La révélation biblique tranche infiniment sur le « paganisme ». Mais elle a un besoin absolu de l’ontologie de la différence – de l’affirmation de la différence entre Dieu, le monde et l’homme – qui ressortit du « paganisme » grec afin de pouvoir tisser la toile relationnelle de la création, de la révélation et de la rédemption qu’elle institue entre les trois figures « élémentaires ».

7. « Religatio » La reprise et la transfiguration radicales, par Rosenzweig, de l’événement pré-confessionnel de la révélation – et des concrétisations historiques

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juive et chrétienne de ce dernier – semblent donc assumer une démar­ che décidément méta-religieuse. Cette relecture méta-religieuse de la révélation, toutefois, semble être à même de conserver et de mettre en valeur – certes, d’une façon tout à fait paradoxale – l’un des principaux éléments de la compréhension traditionnelle de la « religion ». Selon une interprétation répandue à partir de l’Antiquité tardive, le mot « reli­ gion » découlerait en effet étymologiquement du verbe latin « religare », qui peut être traduit par le verbe français « relier »12. L’approche rosen­ zweigienne du « paganisme » grec et de la révélation biblique souligne la capacité de l’un et de l’autre à faire voir en toute netteté le jeu complexe de séparation-différenciation entre les structures « élémentaires » de l’être et de connexion relationnelle entre elles qui se produit dans l’expérience humaine concrète à l’intérieur du monde. Cette approche nous permet de relire les grandes expériences culturelles et spirituelles du « pagan­ isme » et de la révélation biblique, qu’on interprète d’habitude en des termes « religieux », comme une intuition très originale et inimitable de cette sorte de « religatio » ontologique et événementielle qui constitue, selon Rosenzweig, le centre et le cœur pulsant de la réalité tout entière. Mais la religatio ontologique et événementielle, qui est saisie, dans ses prémisses « élémentaires », par le « paganisme » grec, et, dans son accomplissement, par la révélation biblique, ne se confond pas tout simplement, comme le voudrait une certaine tradition philosophique et théologique que le penseur se propose de dépasser, avec la religatio qui se produit entre l’homme et Dieu à l’intérieur de la condition humaine. La connexion relationnelle qui se fait jour dans la dynamique établie par le penseur entre « paganisme » grec et révélation biblique élargit considérablement et universalise la compréhension traditionnelle de la religatio qui subsiste entre l’homme et Dieu. Cette connexion même arrive à se transfigurer en une sorte de macro-religatio trilatérale, qui embrasse tant les trois « éléments » Dieu-Monde-Homme que les trois événements relationnels de création-révélation-rédemption, qui se produisent entre les éléments en question. Le « paganisme » grec et la révélation biblique touchent alors, dans la perspective rosenzweigienne, l’un aux structures ontologiques ultimes et « élémentaires » de la réalité tout entière et l’autre au dynamisme profond qui articule la vie même de cette réalité. Voir à ce propos : Lactantius, Divinae institutiones, IV, 28. Nous n’allons pas nous interroger ici sur la crédibilité scientifique de l’étymologie que nous propose l’écrivain latin. Nous voulons seulement remarquer que dans cette étymologie est contenue une perception de la religion et du religieux qui est très répandue dans la culture philosophique et théologique occidentale. 12

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8. Pour une laïcité des différences en relation La participation de Rosenzweig au climat historique et socio-culturel de la sécularisation est tout à fait singulière, car elle est marquée de notes très personnelles et originales. La question de la sécularisation n’a pas été thématisée explicitement dans la pensée du philosophe, mais son adhésion à quelques catégories fondamentales qui émergent de son climat historique n’a pas été moins réelle ni moins engagée. Comme l’ont mis en relief plusieurs spécialistes de la question, l’ensemble des phénomènes qu’on recueille sous la dénomination de sécularisation trouve l’une de ses marques caractéristiques les plus importantes dans la revendication des catégories de la différenciation, de la séparation, de l’autonomie et de la souveraineté des domaines différenciés et séparés de l’expérience humaine personnelle et communautaire13. Nous nous référons ici aux domaines différents de la société, des institutions, de la culture ainsi qu’à la séparation entre les États modernes, laïques et non confessionnels, et les Églises. Nous avons déjà vu que la catégorie de la différenciation et de l’autonomie joue un rôle très important dans la pensée de Rosenzweig. Cette catégorie trouve sa consécration suprême dans l’ontologie de la différence dont nous venons de parler. Dans le fragment de jeunesse que nous avons analysé, la pointe de la question tient au fait que les religions ne sont pas à même de sauvegarder l’autonomie de l’humain face à Dieu, alors que le sentiment de Dieu y réussit. Mais à la différence de certaines déclinaisons laïcistes de la sécularisation, la version rosenzweigienne de cette dernière, après avoir soutenu la pleine autonomie du mondain et de l’humain, se bat aussi pour l’autonomie absolue du divin face au mondain et à l’humain. Le penseur conteste donc toute forme de réductionnisme humaniste et mondain du divin, comme il conteste toute forme de réductionnisme du monde ou de l’homme à Dieu. C’est seulement sur le fondement du respect absolu de la différenciation et de l’autonomie du divin, du mondain et de l’humain qu’est possible, selon Rosenzweig, l’instauration d’un réseau relationnel réciproque, sain et fécond, entre les trois dimensions de la réalité14. 13 Voir à ce propos : Stefano Martelli, La religione nella società post-moderna tra secolarizzazione e de-secolarizzazione, Edizioni Dehoniane, Bologna 1990. 14 L'approche de Rosenzweig à l’égard du judaïsme et du christianisme dans le Premier Livre et dans le Deuxième Livre de la Troisième Partie de l'Étoile semble apparemment contredire la thèse interprétative que nous venons de proposer. Il faut cependant souligner le caractère fort paradoxal de cette approche. Rosenzweig n'analyse en effet pas le

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La saine laïcité que soutient alors Rosenzweig ne vise pas seulement à préserver l’homme et le monde de l’ingérence du divin mais aussi à préserver le divin de l’ingérence du mondain et de l’humain. Mais il y a un autre côté de la perspective de Rosenzweig qui pourrait nous suggérer des réflexions productives au sein du débat sur la sécularisation. Dans la pensée de Rosenzweig, la sauvegarde de la différence a pour fin l’instauration d’un flux correct et respectueux des relations entre les différents. Le penseur semble alors, dans cette perspective, nous offrir un correctif tout à fait valide aux dérives, toujours possibles, de la laïcité, dans la direction de l’individualisme ou même du solipsisme. La laïcité que Rosenzweig nous propose pourrait être interprétée comme une laïcité qui ne s’arrête pas à la sauvegarde des différences, mais qui poursuit le discours jusqu’à la revendication de la relation, qui soustrait les identités différentes à l’isolement dans leur propre privacy15. Dans cette perspective, il nous semble que le message de Rosenzweig mérite sans doute l’attention la plus grande, car il est à même de donner une contribution importante à une relecture novatrice de la question de la sécularisation.

judaïsme et le christianisme à partir des édifices théologiques que chacun d'eux bâtit. Au contraire, il en propose une compréhension inhabituelle et presque provocante à partir d'une analyse de leurs liturgies respectives ou, plus précisément, du cycle annuel à travers lequel leur dimension liturgique se réalise. Rosenzweig propose, en substance, une sociologie historico-empirique de l'éternité sans précédent, c'est-à-dire une analyse des modalités concrètes, juives et chrétiennes, de réalisation des tensions respectives à l'égard de la dimension éternelle de la rédemption. Dans la mesure où son approche est caractérisée comme largement »phénoménologique«, son analyse de la liturgie juive et chrétienne est pleinement utilisable aussi dans une perspective rigoureusement laïque et non confessionnelle. 15 Nous n'avons pas du tout l'intention de proposer ici une identification immédiate et totale entre la notion de privacy, d’une part, et celles d'individualisme et de solipsisme, de l’autre. Nous souhaitons seulement mettre en garde contre la dérive individualiste et/ou solipsiste, toujours possible et menaçante, de la notion de privacy.

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« Erfahrende Philosophie » et « Sprachdenken » Philosopher après L’Étoile

Abstract En 1925, Rosenzweig appelle de ses vœux une « philosophie d’expéri­ ence » (erfahrende Philosophie), destinée à prendre la relève de la « pen­ sée ancienne » qui a trouvé dans les systèmes idéalistes son achèvement. Par là, Rosenzweig semble inviter la philosophie à devenir elle-même le sujet de l’expérience, au double sens où la pensée devrait désormais s’exposer à l’expérience et se comprendre à partir d’elle, geste indispen­ sable à la perpétuation du philosopher après la fin des grands systèmes. Cet article se propose de déterminer ce que signifie, pour Rosen­ zweig et pour nous, cette nouvelle orientation de la philosophie vers l’expérience. La philosophie d’expérience est-elle déjà à l’œuvre dans L’Étoile de la Rédemption, ou bien est-elle encore à venir au moment où Rosenzweig rédige ses « remarques rétrospectives » de 1925? Cette philosophie ancrée dans l’expérience et orientée vers elle n’est-elle que la continuation d’un empirisme déjà admis par l’histoire de la philosophie (et lequel?), ou bien peut-elle procurer à la pensée un principe véritable­ ment nouveau? Quelle valeur peut-on reconnaître à un tel programme au titre du renouveau de la philosophie? Pour comprendre en quoi consiste la philosophie d’expérience, la première partie de cet article fait retour à la description de la Révélation offerte par L’Étoile, où s’élabore le concept rosenzweigien de l’Erfahrung. Dans une seconde partie, on fait l’hypothèse d’après laquelle Rosenzweig, lorsqu’il invoque une philosophie d’expérience, a en vue moins le propos systématique de son grand œuvre que la réélaboration à laquelle il s’est livré dans son enseignement francfortois et dans le Büchlein vom gesun­ den und kranken Menschenverstand, où les problèmes philosophiques se voient retraduits dans la langue de l’expérience. Dans une troisième partie, on montre que la philosophie d’expérience ne saurait se déployer sans une entière confiance dans la langue; reste alors à déterminer en quel sens la langue est elle-même le milieu de l’expérience, à la fois lieu de

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son déploiement temporel et médiation qui donne l’expérience à penser au philosophe. En 1925, Rosenzweig appelle de ses vœux une « philosophie d’expéri­ ence1 » (erfahrende Philosophie), destinée à prendre la relève de la « pen­ sée ancienne » qui a trouvé dans les systèmes idéalistes son achèvement. La voie singulière ouverte par L’Étoile de la Rédemption serait donc celle d’une « confiance dans l’expérience2 », à laquelle le penseur pourrait encore s’en remettre pour continuer à philosopher « au-delà du livre3 », c’est-à-dire dans la vie4. Plus encore, l’expression de Rosenzweig semble inviter la philosophie à devenir elle-même le sujet de l’expérience, au double sens où la pensée devrait désormais s’exposer à l’expérience – cette ouverture étant la condition sans laquelle il n’est ni existence personnelle, ni savoir philosophique – et se comprendre à partir d’elle – le choix d’un tel retour à l’expérience faisant alors la différence de la « pensée nouvelle » d’avec toute autre méthode philosophique. L’exi­ gence qu’exprimait déjà la Urzelle de 1917, celle de donner à la pensée un centre (Mittelpunkt) et de situer celui-ci dans l’expérience vécue de la Révélation5, trouverait ainsi son accomplissement dans le programme d’une « philosophie d’expérience », indispensable à la perpétuation du philosopher après la fin des grands systèmes. On peut toutefois se demander ce que signifie, pour Rosenzweig et pour nous, cette orientation de la philosophie vers l’expérience. En premier lieu, la philosophie d’expérience est-elle déjà à l’œuvre dans L’Étoile, ou bien est-elle encore à venir au moment où Rosenzweig rédige ses « remarques rétrospectives » de 1925? Chercher dans le corpus rosenzweigien le « lieu » de la philosophie d’expérience, c’est demander si cette dernière peut encore prendre la forme du système – fût-ce la figure inédite que produit dans L’Étoile la rencontre du système et de la Révélation –, ou bien si elle doit à son tour s’en libérer, au risque 1 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, III, Zweistrom­ land: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, Reinhold Mayer, Annemarie Mayer (éd.), La Haye, M. Nijhoff 1982 [désormais abrégé en GS III], 144. 2 GS III, 161. 3 GS III, 160. 4 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, II, Briefe und Tagebücher, 2: 1918–1929, Rafael Rosenzweig, Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann (éd.), La Haye, M. Nijhoff 1979 [désormais abrégé en GS I.2], 735 (à Hans Ehrenberg, fin décembre 1921). 5 GS III, 133.

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que le nom de philosophie ne puisse alors plus convenir à la pensée naissante. La philosophie d’expérience doit donc être comprise au regard de la possibilité d’une « fin de la philosophie », que Rosenzweig discerne dans l’essai de 1925. Lui-même y reconnaît non pas la cessation de la philosophie ou la sortie hors de son domaine de pensée, mais le salutaire franchissement d’une frontière intérieure, celle qui séparait la pensée ancienne de la philosophie d’expérience6, empêchant la première de prendre en vue ce dont la seconde, au contraire, propose une vision complète et transparente7. Cette dé-limitation de la tradition philosophique, discrète mais décisive, impose alors une autre question : cette philosophie ancrée dans l’expérience et orientée vers elle n’est-elle que la continuation d’un empirisme déjà admis par l’histoire de la philosophie (et lequel?), ou bien peut-elle procurer à la pensée un principe véritablement nouveau, ce qui exigerait que le concept sur lequel elle repose parvînt à saisir dans l’expérience quelque chose que la philosophie n’y avait encore jamais vu? L’essai de 1925, plus soucieux de montrer l’élan de la philosophie contemporaine vers une pensée nouvelle que de reconnaître la dette de cette dernière envers la tradition, entretient un rapport ambigu avec l’idée d’une démarche empiriste et laisse dans l’ombre le concept même de l’expérience, dont L’Étoile proposait pourtant une élaboration rigoureuse. Cette indétermination entourant le concept d’Erfahrung invite enfin à demander ce que la philosophie d’expérience promet à la pensée au titre de son renouveau. Comment comprendre, en particulier, la proposition d’une nouvelle méthode philosophique, que Rosenzweig semble tantôt réduire à celle du « sens commun8 », tantôt élever jusqu’au programme schellingien d’une « philosophie narrative9 », tantôt promettre sous la figure d’une « méthode du langage10 »? À travers l’élucidation de la philosophie d’expérience, sont donc en jeu la cohérence de l’œuvre de Rosenzweig de 1919 à 1925, sa discussion sans trêve avec l’histoire de la philosophie et tout spécialement avec le concept idéaliste de l’expérience, mais aussi la teneur philosophique de cette tentative qu’est la « pensée nouvelle », c’est-à-dire sa valeur pour un nouveau commencement du philosopher. 6 7 8 9 10

GS III, 144. GS III, 153. GS III, 149. GS III, 148. GS III, 151.

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Si l’expérience retient l’attention du philosophe et s’avère propice à fonder une nouvelle méthode de pensée, c’est en raison du trait qui lui est le plus propre : la temporalité (Zeitlichkeit). Pour comprendre en quoi consiste la philosophie d’expérience, il nous faudra donc élucider l’ana­ lytique de la temporalité sur laquelle repose le concept rosenzweigien de l’expérience, en faisant retour à la description de la Révélation offerte par L’Étoile, où les relations qui constituent la temporalité apparaissent en pleine lumière (I). Constatant les limites que la forme du système impose toutefois à la description de l’expérience, nous ferons l’hypothèse d’après laquelle Rosenzweig, lorsqu’il invoque une philosophie d’expérience, a en vue moins le propos systématique de son grand œuvre que la rééla­ boration du même matériau à laquelle il s’est livré dans son enseignement francfortois et dans le Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschen­ verstand à partir de 1921 (II). Ce corpus, moins familier aux lecteurs en raison de la forme déconcertante qu’y adopte l’écriture philosophique, témoigne d’un effort pour penser sans quitter le sol de l’expérience, les problèmes philosophiques s’y voyant retraduits dans la langue de l’expé­ rience. Dès lors, il est manifeste que la philosophie d’expérience ne saurait se déployer sans une entière confiance dans la langue; mais en quel sens la langue est-elle elle-même le milieu de l’expérience, à la fois lieu de son déploiement temporel et médiation qui donne l’expérience à penser au philosophe? Nous tâcherons pour finir de faire la lumière sur ce lien entre l’expérience de la langue et le renouveau de la philosophie (III).

I. Le concept rosenzweigien de l’expérience. Dès L’Étoile, Rosenzweig propose un nouveau concept de l’expérience, lequel est tributaire à la fois d’une description de la Révélation comme expérience vécue (Erlebnis) et d’une discussion avec l’idéalisme allemand sur l’expérience comme source de connaissance (Erfahrung11). Alors que paraît la troisième édition de La Théorie kantienne de l’expérience d’Hermann Cohen (1918), c’est bien à l’égard du concept idéaliste que L’Étoile prend ses distances, puisque la connaissance n’y est plus condi­ 11 Voir Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, « Der Tod als Krisis geschichtlicher Synthese. Der Begriff der Erfahrung bei Hegel und Rosenzweig », in : G. Fuchs, H. H. Henrix (éd.), Zeitgewinn. Messianisches Denken nach Franz Rosenzweig, Francfort, Josef Knecht 1987, 91–126; Reiner Wiehl, « Experience in Rosenzweig’s New Thinking », in : Paul Mendes-Flohr (éd.), The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, Hanover, University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press 1988, 42–68.

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tionnée au rapport d’un sujet à un objet mais à l’existence d’une triple factualité originaire, celle de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme. « Je ne philosophe pas avec le sujet et l’objet, car ce sont des mots avec lesquels on ne peut rien faire d’autre que philosopher12. » La théorie idéaliste de la connaissance ne cesse en effet de refouler le sens de l’expérience en se l’appropriant à travers ces catégories déformantes que sont le sujet et l’objet. L’idéalisme ne les distingue d’ailleurs que pour mieux subordonner le second au premier au sein d’une relation d’ « engendrement » (Erzeugung), conçue comme un rapport rationnel entre deux termes entre lesquels doit exister une certaine ressemblance ou, du moins, une proportion, de telle sorte que le sujet connaissant puisse passer dans son autre pour le produire en tant qu’objet connu. Dans l’explication idéaliste de l’origine du monde, l’engendrement se sub­ stitue ainsi à la création comprise d’après sa source biblique13. Plus encore, l’idéalisme ne peut se satisfaire d’un principe engendreur qui demeurerait extérieur à la connaissance : Dieu lui-même doit être connu, c’est-à-dire reconduit au sujet de la connaissance. Le « Je » de l’idéalisme, « pur sujet14 » qui engendre le monde « en tant que Non-Moi15 », s’impose alors comme fondement de toute connaissance16. Or, si le philosophe pense avoir ainsi garanti l’objectivité du savoir, il a en vérité reconduit toute objectivité à la subjectivité abstraite de son « Je ». Dieu, le monde et l’homme, qui constituent pourtant le socle de toute expérience, se perdent alors dans des concepts-limites dépourvus d’effectivité17, images évanescentes que l’idéalisme, pareil à une lanterne magique, projette sur le réel18.

GS I.2, 893 (à Martin Buber, 14 février 1923). Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, Francfort, Suhrkamp 2015 [désormais abrégé en Stern], 150. 14 Stern, 152. 15 Stern, 153. 16 GS III, 143 : « Aujourd’hui encore, cette reconduction ou »fondation« de l’expérience du monde et de l’expérience de Dieu sur le »Je« qui en fait l’expérience va tellement de soi que quiconque n’adhère pas à ce dogme mais préfère reconduire au monde son expérience du monde et à Dieu son expérience de Dieu n’est tout simplement pas pris au sérieux. ». 17 Stern, 160 : « Le grand édifice de la réalité est détruit : Dieu et l’homme s’évanouissent dans le concept-limite d’un sujet de la connaissance; le monde et l’homme, dans le concept-limite d’un simple objet de ce sujet; le monde, dont l’idéalisme avait d’abord entrepris la connaissance, est devenu purement un pont entre ces deux concepts-limites. ». 18 Stern, 435. 12 13

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C’est pourquoi « La pensée nouvelle » défend le concept d’une expérience « effective, non-objective et non-substantielle19 », reposant sur l’existence factuelle (Tatsächlichkeit) des trois éléments. Dieu, le monde et l’homme ne sont pas des objets (Gegenstände) de l’expérience, mais des « faits originaires » (Urtatsachen20), ce qui signifie que nous ne faisons jamais l’expérience du Dieu élémentaire, du monde élémen­ taire et de l’homme élémentaire eux-mêmes, mais toujours seulement des « jonctions21 » qui se produisent entre eux. Reste que tout ce dont il y a expérience prend place dans ces réalités factuelles (an diesen Tatsächlichkeiten) : l’être factuel élémentaire de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme, sans se montrer lui-même dans l’expérience, constitue donc la condition de possibilité de toute expérience, le triple « présupposé caché » de toute effectivité22. L’erreur de la philosophie provient de ce qu’elle tend à considérer Dieu, le monde et l’homme comme des objets isolés, qu’elle a tôt fait de transformer en des « substances » dont elle recherche l’essence, plutôt que de se confier à la « vérité de l’expérience », qui sait bien que l’on ne peut découvrir « en l’homme que de l’humain, en le monde que du mondain, en Dieu que du divin23 ». Dans ce geste de réduction à l’essence, Rosenzweig dénonce un privilège indu de l’essence atemporelle sur la temporalité de l’expérience. La philosophie trahit ainsi son indifférence au temps : sa recherche de l’essence n’est qu’une impatience du concept, qui prétend annuler le temps pour connaître, au lieu de comprendre que la vérité ne vient jamais que dans le temps24. L’expérience (die Erfahrung) désigne donc chez Rosenzweig une modalité temporelle de la connaissance, que pratiquent au quotidien ceux qui ne font pas profession de philosopher. La structure de la temporalité ne peut toutefois être élucidée qu’en référence à la Révélation, conçue comme le passage à l’effectivité des trois « faits originaires » que sont Dieu, le monde et l’homme. S’il y a temporalité de l’expérience, c’est en effet parce que les trois éléments se temporalisent en entrant en relation les uns avec les autres. Alors que le Dieu élémentaire, le monde élémentaire et l’homme élémentaire ne pouvaient faire l’objet d’aucune expérience, mais seulement d’une construction abstraite qu’illustre la première partie 19 20 21 22 23 24

GS III, 147. GS III, 159. GS III, 150. GS III, 156. GS III, 144. GS III, 149.

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de L’Étoile, tous trois deviennent effectifs en s’ouvrant les uns aux autres, la relation ayant le sens d’une « médiation entre les faits de l’être25 » qui instaure l’effectivité. Nul temps ne préexiste à ces trois événements que sont la fondation du passé (Création), l’ouverture du présent (Révélation) et la futurition de l’avenir (Rédemption); il ne faut donc pas affirmer que ces rencontres se produisent dans le temps, mais que le temps lui-même se produit comme temporalisation des trois éléments26. Connaître par expérience, c’est donc connaître des relations effectives dans le temps27, et accéder par là à la triple articulation de la Révélation comme sens de la temporalité – ce dont la philosophie est incapable aussi longtemps qu’elle se confie aux essences pour penser. Dès lors, la tâche de la philosophie n’est plus d’assurer l’objectivité de la connaissance au prix de sa réduction aux objets de l’intuition empiri­ que28, mais de fonder la validité du savoir que nous tirons de la Révélation, laquelle est d’abord une expérience de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme, vécue en première personne. En quel sens apprenons-nous (erfahren) de ce que nous vivons (erleben)? Penser ensemble ces deux dimensions que la langue allemande distingue exige d’unir la philosophie et la théologie dans une collaboration fraternelle. À la théologie, il appartient en effet d’accueillir la Révélation non comme un objet déterminé de la pensée, mais comme un événement; non comme une vie déjà objectivée, mais comme une expérience qui advient au sujet que je suis29. À la philosophie en tant que « savoir du monde dans sa totalité systématique30 », il revient de dégager les conditions de possibilité d’une telle expérience, qui Stern, 94. GS III, 148 : « Die Zeit nämlich wird ihm [d. h. dem Erzähler] ganz wirklich. Nicht in ihr geschieht, was geschieht, sondern sie selber geschieht. ». 27 GS III, 150 : « Connaître Dieu, le monde, l’homme signifie connaître ce qu’ils font dans ces temps de la réalité, ou bien ce qui leur arrive. Ce qu’ils se font les uns aux autres, ce qui leur arrive les uns des autres. ». 28 À une interrogation dont la forme demeure kantienne, Rosenzweig apporte une réponse qui va résolument au-delà de Kant et se tourne même contre lui. À l’interdit kantien de toute connaissance transcendant l’ordre phénoménal, il oppose l’idée que c’est aussi par expérience que nous connaissons ce qui se trouve au ciel, « quand bien même la philosophie voudrait dénigrer ce savoir comme se trouvant »par-delà« toute expérience »possible« »; à la distinction inaugurale entre le commencement chronologique de toute connaissance dans l’expérience et son fondement dans ce qui est indépendant de l’expérience, Rosenzweig rétorque que toute prétention à une connaissance a priori doit être récusée, « quand bien même la philosophie voudrait louer ce savoir comme se trouvant »avant« toute expérience »possible« » (GS III, 161). 29 Stern, 119. 30 Stern, 113. 25

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résident non seulement dans l’être élémentaire de Dieu, de l’homme et du monde, mais dans ce commencement de l’effectivité qu’est la Création. La rencontre orchestrée dans L’Étoile entre philosophie et théologie n’a donc pas d’autre but que de permettre une nouvelle fidélité à l’expérience, terme sous lequel il faut entendre notre rapport à l’effectivité dans ses trois dimensions constitutives que sont la connaissance objective d’un monde créé, l’appartenance vivante à un réseau de relations intersubjectives, et l’anticipation liturgique d’une vérité à venir. Cette rencontre n’est toutefois possible qu’en un lieu précis, source pensante et pourtant « jaillie par-delà la pensée31 ». Les trois événements qui constituent la temporalité de l’expérience, en effet, ont d’abord été recueillis dans la Bible, de sorte que leur sens ne se dévoile qu’à celui qui prête attention à la langue de cette Bible. C’est à elle que s’en remettent les trois livres de la partie centrale de L’Étoile pour déployer un véritable système de l’expérience vécue dans la langue et dans le temps. Loin d’être de simples ajouts exégétiques au propos systématique, les « analyses grammaticales » qui viennent clore chacun de ces livres démontrent en quel sens la lecture philosophique du texte biblique est la condition d’une pensée fidèle à l’expérience32. Les propos de 1925 quant au lien entre la temporalité de la pensée nouvelle et sa « méthode du langage33 » pren­ nent ainsi toute leur profondeur. La philosophie d’expérience (erfahrende Philosophie) tend à se réaliser sous la forme d’une philosophie narrative (erzählende Philosophie34), dans la mesure où la forme du récit est la seule à même de montrer le temps devenant effectif dans l’événement de la rencontre de l’autre. Plus encore, la médiation du texte biblique s’avère indispensable à la connaissance philosophique de l’expérience : parce qu’elle effectue dans la langue la temporalisation des trois éléments, transformant par là même la facticité en expérience effective, la Bible, sans

Stern, 6. Sur le commentaire biblique et sa fonction dans l’économie de L’Étoile, voir Inken Rühle, Gott spricht die Sprache des Menschen. Franz Rosenzweig als jüdischer Theologe – eine Einführung, Tübingen, Bilam Verlag 2004; Mara H. Benjamin, Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity, New York, Cambridge University Press 2009; Emeline Durand, « La Parole et sa grammaire. Exégèse et philosophie dans les »analyses grammaticales« de L’Étoile de la Rédemption », in : Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques, vol. 104, n°1, 2020, 53–74. 33 GS III, 151. 34 GS III, 148. 31

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cesser d’être la Parole de Dieu mais justement en vertu de son origine révélée, apparaît comme « le texte original de l’expérience humaine35 ».

II. La philosophie au risque de l’expérience. Faut-il en conclure que la philosophie d’expérience est déjà accomplie dans L’Étoile, les explications de « La pensée nouvelle » n’étant guère que des « remarques rétrospectives » quant au grand œuvre? D’après cette hypothèse, dont Bernhard Casper a exploré les conséquences, les deux critères définis en 1925 pour la philosophie d’expérience – la prise en considération du « besoin de l’autre » et le « sérieux » reconnu au temps36 – viendraient éclairer les descriptions de la Création, de la Révélation et de la Rédemption proposées dans L’Étoile. En retour, le texte du grand œuvre nous permettrait de comprendre que la « pensée d’expérience » a pour conditions la reconnaissance de la finitude du sujet pensant et la compréhension de la temporalité comme historicité. Loin de s’accomplir dialectiquement jusqu’à l’absolu du savoir, l’expérience rosenzweigienne demeure en effet celle d’un sujet mortel et muable, pour qui la Révélation signifie métamorphose et déprise du Soi37. S’il est vrai que l’importance reconnue en 1925 à la temporalité de l’expérience s’éclaire à la lumière du concept de Révélation de L’Étoile, la différence d’accent entre les deux textes est manifeste. Délaissant la construction systématique des relations entre les trois éléments aussi bien que le rôle du commentaire biblique dans la connaissance de l’expérience, Rosenzweig paraît vouloir s’en remettre au concept courant de l’expéri­ ence. Si l’on en croit l’essai de 1925, le « complet renouvellement de la pensée38 » pourrait même consister en un retour à la sagesse du « sens commun » (der gesunde Menschenverstand). Ces propos ne relèvent pas seulement d’une clarification forcée de ce qui fut mal compris par les premiers lecteurs de L’Étoile, non plus que d’une polémique à l’encontre de la « pensée ancienne ». Il s’agit bien plutôt d’indiquer les limites L’expression (« Urtext der menschlichen Erfahrung ») est empruntée à Stéphane Mosès, Spuren der Schrift. Von Goethe bis Celan, Francfort, Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenäum 1987, 103. 36 GS III, 151–152. 37 Voir Bernhard Casper, « Was kann erfahrendes Denken heißen? », in : Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (éd.), Franz Rosenzweigs « neues Denken », Bd. II : Erfahrene Offen­ barung – in theologos, Karl Alber, Freiburg/München 2006, 737–753. 38 GS III, 140. 35

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auxquelles se heurte une approche systématique de l’expérience, capable de dégager, en référence à la Révélation, la structure universelle de toute expérience et les conditions philosophiques d’une connaissance fondée sur elle, mais non de nous « rendre attentifs39 » à l’expérience qui est chaque fois la nôtre, donc à la manière singulière dont Dieu, le monde et l’homme apparaissent dans notre vie. Or, si la philosophie d’expérience ne signifie pas seulement que la philosophie prend l’expérience pour objet, mais surtout qu’elle-même se fait sujet de l’expérience, c’est en dehors du système qu’elle devra être pratiquée. L’écart entre la démarche de L’Étoile et les propos de 1925 pourrait alors s’expliquer par l’expérimentation à laquelle Rosenzweig s’est livré en 1920–1921, dans son enseignement au Lehrhaus de Francfort, en vue d’une autre manière de philosopher. Ces travaux nous sont connus par les notes issues des leçons sur les « trois sciences » (Die Wissenschaft von Gott, Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen, Die Wissenschaft von der Welt40). Dans ces textes fragmentaires s’amorce le tournant vers une véritable philosophie d’expérience, puisqu’il ne s’agit plus de comprendre en quoi la Révélation est la source d’un savoir susceptible de renouveler la philosophie après la fin de l’idéalisme, mais de faire de l’expérience le critère de toute connaissance philosophique – aussi bien sa condition de possibilité que la pierre de touche à laquelle elle sera éprouvée41. Rosenzweig y fait l’essai d’une science de l’expérience, destinée à affronter les problèmes que l’existence de Dieu, la réalité du monde et la liberté de l’homme posent à toute connaissance philosophique. À l’en croire, il n’existe pas d’expérience spécifique de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme, où chacun des éléments se donnerait directement; mais « de même que l’on ne peut pas voir sans voir la nature, de même que l’on ne peut pas connaître sans connaître l’esprit, de même on ne peut vivre sans faire l’expérience vécue de Dieu42 ». Il n’est donc nullement nécessaire, pour penser Dieu, le monde et l’homme, de s’échapper hors de la quotidienneté de la vie. Bien au contraire, Rosenzweig a à cœur d’invoquer, même et surtout en ce qui concerne la connaissance empirique de Dieu, « l’expérience vécue tout à fait ordinaire, tout à fait triviale, que l’on éprouve sans le vouloir particulièrement, sans en faire toute une histoire, sans y mettre le moindre pathos43 ». 39 40 41 42

GS III, 641. GS III, 619–664. GS III, 634. GS III, 620.

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Pour qu’une telle expérience soit le fondement d’une connaissance, ce que cette expérience contient doit pourtant se montrer en elle : la vérité recherchée n’exige pas tant la preuve par la raison (Beweis) que l’ « avération » par l’expérience (Bewährung44), concept déjà central dans la théorie de la vérité à la fin de L’Étoile. Dans cette démarche, le sujet de l’expérience devient lui-même l’instrument d’optique permettant de faire apparaître ce qui ne se montre pas immédiatement45, ce qui signifie que c’est chaque fois notre expérience qu’il s’agit de décrire. La méthode de Rosenzweig consiste alors à pousser l’expérience à son intensité suprême, jusqu’au point où apparaît la contradiction entre une pensée et un fait, c’est-à-dire entre l’éternité d’une vérité pensée et la temporalité d’une vérité factuelle. Ainsi l’existence de Dieu n’est-elle confirmée que par la contradiction entre le Dieu éternel, infiniment distant de nous, et notre Dieu, qui s’est offert à notre perception en devenant « le Dieu de la temporalité46 » et dont nous percevons le gouvernement au cœur de notre existence finie; mais cette contradiction n’est elle-même visible que dans les instants où notre existence, déchirée par les puissances démoniques de la souffrance ou de la joie, se voit forcée d’entrer en crise. De même, la liberté de l’homme ne devient certaine que dans la rigueur de la prière, c’est-à-dire dans l’épreuve d’une solitude avec Dieu, où de l’immensité de mon obligation envers Dieu découle la force de mon libre choix envers autrui47. La racine de la liberté, qui est aussi le fondement de l’éthique, est cette contradiction entre un devoir qui impose le choix de toute éternité et le pouvoir de se déterminer au présent. Porter l’expérience à sa pointe, c’est donc laisser se montrer en elle les contradictions qui l’habitent, non pour les surmonter dans une figure plus avancée de la conscience, mais pour rendre possible, à même ces contradictions, la vision attentive de celui qui cherche à (se) connaître. Sous la bannière d’une philosophie d’expérience, il ne s’agit pas tant de revenir à l’ordinaire de l’expérience quotidienne que de concentrer l’attention sur l’extraordinaire que contient cette expérience, dans la mesure où elle fait jouer la contradiction entre l’éternité et le temps dans GS III, 640. GS III, 621–622. Parce qu’il ne s’agit pas simplement de « confirmer » la vérité, moins encore de la « vérifier », nous traduisons le terme de Bewährung par le néologisme d’ « avération », qui rappelle que « la vérité cesse d’être ce qui »est« vrai et devient ce qui veut être avéré en tant que vrai » (GS III, 158). 45 GS III, 620–621. 46 GS III, 626. 47 GS III, 649–653. 43

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les phénomènes. Ces leçons illustrent ainsi l’interdépendance entre les trois dimensions de la facticité : l’existence de Dieu s’avère pour l’homme par le fait de son intervention dans le monde; l’effectivité du monde pour l’homme réside dans son être-créé par Dieu; la liberté humaine s’effectue dans la relation au monde sous la garantie de Dieu. L’expérience est donc trois fois une ouverture de la subjectivité à ce qui n’est pas elle : transcendance divine, extériorité mondaine, altérité de l’autre homme. La « philosophie d’expérience », tout en demeurant fidèle aux catégories déployées dans L’Étoile, se libère de la forme du système et ouvre la voie de ce que l’on pourrait appeler une philosophie rosenzweigienne de l’existence48. Toute philosophie n’est pourtant pas capable de supporter ces contradictions vécues et pensées, et c’est pourquoi Rosenzweig s’attache aussi à dénoncer la tendance du philosophe à l’abstraction métaphysi­ que, signe d’un recul devant les enseignements de l’expérience. Tel est l’objet du Livret sur l’entendement sain et malsain, un texte rédigé par Rosenzweig en juillet 1921 dans le but d’offrir une présentation plus accessible des idées de L’Étoile. Rosenzweig devait finalement en refuser la publication, pour lui préférer les « remarques rétrospectives » de « La pensée nouvelle49 ». C’est toutefois en référence au Livret que doivent se comprendre les propos de 1925 sur la confiance du sens commun dans le passage du temps. Dans les deux textes, en effet, la vocation du philosophe à l’étonnement se mue en une redoutable rigidité. Incapable de se fier à ce qu’il sait par expérience de Dieu, de l’homme et du monde, le philosophe se raidit face aux contradictions de l’expérience, auxquelles il n’a à opposer que l’immuabilité de l’essence, laquelle jette le discrédit sur la temporalité et sur la confiance spontanée dans la langue. L’unique remède à cette paralysie morbide de l’esprit consiste donc à « désapprendre la question »qu’est-ce que50?« » et à se laisser enseigner la sagesse du sens commun, qui se confie au temps et à la langue pour s’orienter dans la pensée. Voir Else-Rahel Freund, Die Existenzphilosophie Franz Rosenzweigs, Hambourg, Felix Meiner 1933; Martin Buber, « Rosenzweig und die Existenz » (1956), in : Werkaus­ gabe 12, Ashraf Noor (éd.), Gütersloh, Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2017, 464–466; Peter E. Gordon, « Franz Rosenzweig and the Philosophy of Jewish Existence », in : Michael L. Morgan, Peter E. Gordon (éd.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2007, 122–146. 49 Voir Nahum Norbert Glatzer, « Einleitung », in : Franz Rosenzweig, Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand, Francfort, Jüdischer Verlag 2018 [désormais abrégé en Büchlein], 9–23. 50 Büchlein, 86. 48

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La lecture du Livret laisse toutefois perplexe, dans la mesure où la critique de la tradition, le congé donné à toute spéculation métaphysique et le caractère délibérément trivial des exemples choisis semblent engager la « philosophie d’expérience » dans l’impasse d’une antiphilosophie, voire dans le danger d’une « trivialisation de la philosophie51 ». Est-il vrai, comme Rosenzweig l’écrit encore en 1925, que l’innovation singulière de la « pensée nouvelle » consiste à « ériger la »méthode« du sens commun en méthode de la pensée scientifique52 »? Et si tel est le cas, peut-on se satisfaire d’un tel programme au titre du renouveau de la philosophie? La forme ludique du Livret ne doit pas nous égarer, non plus que les explications volontiers provocatrices de Rosenzweig : en dépit d’une stratégie de communication indirecte qui n’est pas sans évoquer l’œuvre pseudonyme de Kierkegaard, l’ouvrage conserve tout le sérieux d’une méditation sur la structure du réel et sur notre capacité à nous réconcilier, dans le temps, avec les faits originaires qui constituent le fond de toute expérience. Il s’agit donc moins d’un rejet du philosopher que d’un travail sur le discours philosophique, destiné à inviter le lecteur à recommencer la philosophie à partir de la langue qui lui est la plus familière. Parce qu’elle dit et effectue les relations entre Dieu, le monde et l’être humain, la langue est en effet la voie que nous devons suivre pour saisir notre expérience dans sa plénitude et sa vérité. La langue est elle-même le « pont » qui unit Dieu, le monde et l’homme, de sorte que parler de l’un, c’est toujours en même temps invoquer les deux autres, et donc laisser transparaître dans notre parole la structure même de l’expérience53. C’est pourquoi le Büchlein invoque notre quotidien linguistique (die Sprache des Alltags), c’est-à-dire notre expérience des noms, comme seul remède à l’ « apoplexia philosophica54 ». Parce qu’il désigne son porteur, l’appelle à l’existence effective et permet de s’adresser à lui, le nom assure la continuité de la référence et de l’identité personnelle par-delà les contradictions du devenir. L’usage de la langue rend donc vaine la passion philosophique de l’essence abstraite, et invite au contraire à se tourner vers ce qui donne aux concepts leur existence concrète : les trois formes du nom que sont le nom de chose (Dingwort), le nom propre (Eigenname) et le nom de Dieu (Name Gottes). La philosophie d’expérience prend ici la forme d’une description de l’expérience de la Gérard Bensussan, « Franz Rosenzweig, métaphysique et politique », in : Les Études philosophiques, vol. 89, n°2, 2009, 192. 52 GS III, 149. 53 Büchlein, 73. 54 Büchlein, 57. 51

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langue, laquelle ne fait plus appel au texte biblique ni aux spéculations grammaticales de L’Étoile, mais s’épure en une philosophie des noms. Reste toutefois à demander où les noms nous sont donnés, c’est-àdire où transparaît, dans notre parole, la réalité factuelle des trois éléments nommés Dieu, le monde et l’homme. Si la Bible demeure le trésor qui recueille tous les noms de la langue55, c’est dans la liturgie que ces noms redeviennent chaque fois vivants pour nous. Notre quotidien linguistique ne doit donc sa vertu thérapeutique qu’au fait qu’il est rythmé par le retour des fêtes, qui ne viennent pas interrompre la quotidienneté mais la rendre effective : c’est dans la liturgie que Dieu, le monde et l’homme deviennent directement le contenu de notre expérience. Par la liturgie, le mouvement spontané de la vie – soit le flux des relations unissant les trois « éléments » – accède « en totalité, immédiatement et expressément à la langue56 ». Comme dans la troisième partie de L’Étoile, la liturgie est bien une langue, composée de signes sociaux et d’actes de parole – de gestes et de prières – qui viennent vivifier les noms. La connaissance par expérience, condition d’un savoir équilibré, n’est donc possible qu’à la lumière d’une expérience liturgique de la langue biblique.

III. L’expérience de la langue. Les explications de « La pensée nouvelle » sur la philosophie d’expérience mettent donc en lumière, plus que le propos de L’Étoile, sa réélaboration dans les textes de 1921, qui s’est opérée au plan conceptuel comme au plan méthodologique. Rosenzweig demeure fidèle au geste inaugural par lequel il avait retourné l’idéalisme contre lui-même en montrant que la philosophie, loin d’être à elle-même sa source purement pensée, est toujours en dette envers la langue57. La langue, toutefois, renvoie ici moins à la parole biblique et à son commentaire, donc à la collaboration de la philosophie et de la théologie dans un système inédit, qu’à la manière dont la liturgie informe la temporalité et la parole du quotidien, donc au retour de la pensée dans la vie. Les concepts de L’Étoile, éminemment la description des relations entre les trois « éléments », y sont mis à l’épreuve de l’expérience vécue, laquelle s’élève en retour à la clarté de Büchlein, 76. Büchlein, 108. 57 Voir Emmanuel Cattin, « L’idéalisme tourné contre lui-même », in : Les Études philosophiques, vol. 192, 2019, n°2, 221–233. 55

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la vision attentive et peut espérer atteindre la sérénité dont témoignent les dernières pages du Livret – la vie réconciliée par le temps de la liturgie pouvant rencontrer, au jour fixé, sa sœur la mort58. De 1919 à 1921, Rosenzweig a donc mis en œuvre ce qu’il devait appeler en 1925 la traduction des catégories pensées dans l’expérience vécue, et retour59. À cette démarche, le recueil des Hymnes et poèmes de Juda Halévi apporte en 1923 un ultime complément. Rosenzweig s’y libère entière­ ment de la forme du système pour penser désormais en dialogue avec le texte qu’il traduit et commente : il s’avance ainsi au plus loin dans la confiance en la langue comme source de la pensée. Le choix des poèmes traduits révèle que c’est encore à la langue liturgique que Rosenzweig prête l’oreille, la poésie de Halévi représentant pour lui l’autre côté de ce dialogue qu’est la Révélation, la parole de l’homme en réponse à Dieu et dans la nostalgie de sa présence – parole qui s’énonce « à gorge déployée » dans la communauté liturgique60. Au fil de ses « Anmerkungen », lesquelles visent moins à commenter les poèmes ou à justifier les choix de traduction qu’à développer un propos autonome, Rosenzweig reprend inlassablement la confrontation des concepts de L’Étoile avec notre expérience, telle que la poésie de Halévi la réfléchit. S’y précisent également les contours d’une pensée rosenzweigienne de l’existence, hantée par la dialectique de la finitude et de l’éternité, et menée en discussion avec la théologie et la philosophie de son temps. Si le Halevibuch contient « des exemples instructifs de l’application pratique de la pensée nouvelle61 », c’est donc au sens où l’ouvrage fait la démonstration d’un retour de la pensée aux conditions expérientielles dans lesquelles les problèmes philosophiques et théologiques peuvent être posés à nouveaux frais. Ces conditions sont elles-mêmes découvertes au contact des textes et dans la rencontre des langues. La philosophie d’expérience apparaît dès lors comme le programme, ambitieux mais inachevé, d’une refondation de la philosophie à partir de l’expérience telle que la langue nous la donne. Parce que la langue est le Büchlein, 116. GS III, 153 : « Les problèmes théologiques veulent être traduits dans l’humain et les problèmes humains veulent s’avancer jusqu’au théologique. ». 60 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, IV, Sprachden­ ken, 1: Jehuda Halevi. Fünfundneunzig Hymnen und Gedichte. Deutsch und Hebräisch, Rafael Rosenzweig (éd.), La Haye, M. Nijhoff 1983 [désormais abrégé en GS IV/1], 15–16. 61 GS III, 152. Voir Barbara E. Galli, Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi. Translating, Translations, and Translators, Montréal, McGill-Queen’s University Press 1995; Michael Oppenheim, « The Halevi Book », in : Modern Judaism 19, 1999, 83–93. 58 59

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milieu même de l’expérience, philosopher à partir de l’expérience signifie découvrir une pensée dans la langue, un penser-langue (Sprachdenken). Cette langue elle-même, toutefois, ne peut jamais être déchiffrée que dans une parole singulière, et c’est pourquoi le renouveau de la philosophie exige la médiation d’un « texte », qu’il s’agisse de la consignation écrite d’une Révélation dite, d’un ensemble de signes sociaux fondant la com­ préhension partagée de la liturgie, ou du discours que le poète adresse à Dieu et à l’autre homme. La méthode du Sprachdenken consiste donc à décrire l’expérience telle qu’elle se donne dans une parole qui se fonde dans la Bible, se redit dans la liturgie, s’approfondit dans le poème. C’est ce double principe dont il nous faut pour finir méditer les conséquences. Qu’implique l’ancrage de la pensée dans une langue chaque fois donnée? Et que révèle le choix de voir dans la langue le milieu de l’expérience? Dans « La pensée nouvelle », Rosenzweig reconnaît qu’une langue en particulier – celle des « mots juifs », reçus dans la lecture individuelle de la Bible et dans le partage de la liturgie – a soutenu tout son développement philosophique, et que nulle autre n’aurait pu lui servir de guide62. Ce choix d’une langue propre, qui apparaît ici comme la condition de tout philosopher, nous rappelle que la philosophie d’expérience, même alors qu’elle entreprend de dégager les conditions universelles de l’expérience, demeure tributaire de l’expérience particulière du penseur. Si toute analytique de l’expérience a pour condition une facticité originaire, celle-ci renvoie nécessairement à l’existence de fait du penseur et aux catégories dans lesquelles lui-même reçoit et interprète l’expérience de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme. Cette facticité apparaît donc comme le fond indéductible et indémontrable de la philosophie rosenzweigienne, ce qui constitue à la fois sa limite – puisque la philosophie, incapable de justifier son propre principe, doit renoncer à se fonder elle-même – et la condition de sa perpétuation – puisque c’est justement dans le renoncement à l’auto-fondation que la philosophie pourra trouver un nouveau commencement après l’achèvement des grands systèmes. En admettant pour finir une pluralité des langues de la pensée nouvelle – d’autres penseurs ayant vocation à se tourner vers la langue du Nouveau Testament, voire vers une langue qui n’est plus celle d’un texte sacré63 –, Rosenzweig nous invite toutefois à nous demander quelle priorité la langue de la Bible hébraïque possède à l’égard de l’expérience. À quel titre les « mots juifs » sont-ils la langue devant guider le renouveau 62 63

GS III, 155. GS III, 155.

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de la philosophie? S’ils « ont part à l’éternelle jeunesse de la parole » et sont capables de « renouveler le monde », est-ce seulement parce qu’ils sont plus anciens que ceux de la nouvelle alliance et plus mûrs que ceux de toute poésie païenne64? Mais si cette priorité ne peut être justifiée plus avant, comme Rosenzweig semble le reconnaître ici, faut-il en conclure que la fidélité aux principes du Sprachdenken pourra impliquer l’infidélité à la langue qui en guida chez lui la constitution, et que le renouveau de la philosophie pourra se choisir une tout autre langue? Pour répondre à ces questions, il faut revenir au principe le plus fon­ damental de cette pensée, d’après lequel la langue est elle-même le milieu de l’expérience. Si tel est le cas, c’est parce que la langue est parlée par Dieu, le monde et l’homme, et constitue même le « pont » qui conduit de l’un à l’autre, donc l’ouverture d’un espace commun pour leur rencontre. En ce sens, la langue est elle-même « le premier élément de l’expérience » (das Erste der Erfahrung), la facticité même (die Tatsächlichkeit) dont nous faisons l’expérience « avant tous les faits de l’expérience effective65 ». Or, alors même qu’il se voit élevé au rang de condition première de l’expérience, le concept rosenzweigien de la langue demeure tributaire d’une triple détermination théologique – la langue est la manifestation de Dieu, l’organe de sa Révélation et l’objet de son don à la créature –, anthropologique – la langue est le signe de reconnaissance de l’humain, le milieu qui rassemble et sépare à la fois les peuples –, et mondaine – la langue est ouverture d’une socialité et promesse d’une communauté universelle66. Si le philosophe peut s’en remettre à la langue pour penser l’expérience, c’est donc parce que la langue est elle-même comprise d’après les « éléments » qui structurent cette expérience; et s’il cherche dans la Bible, la liturgie et le poème la langue singulière qui lui donne à penser, c’est parce que tels sont les textes où s’atteste cette structuration, qui n’est autre que la Révélation. Mais d’où vient que Dieu, le monde et l’homme parlent la langue? Si la langue est le milieu qui les rassemble et le pont qui les relie, ne faut-il pas y voir le signe d’une facticité plus originaire Si Rosenzweig reconnaît avec Hamann et Herder que la poésie est bien la « langue maternelle du genre humain », c’est pour mieux la distinguer de la prose biblique, langue de la Révélation, donc « langue de l’humanité en l’homme » (Franz Rosenzweig, « Die Schrift und das Wort », in : GS III, 782). 65 GS III, 158. Ces expressions s’appliquent en 1925 au « petit mot »Et« », qui symbolise les « jonctions » entre les trois éléments (« Gott und die Welt und der Mensch ») – lesquelles ne se déroulent nulle part ailleurs que dans la langue, comme l’a montré plus nettement le Büchlein. 66 Stern, 122–123. 64

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qui interdit de la soumettre à toute détermination théologique, mondaine ou anthropologique? Dans une telle hypothèse, ceux que Rosenzweig appelle les trois éléments seraient en vérité des figures déjà dérivées, et c’est de leur appartenance à la langue qu’ils recevraient leur être, et non seulement leur effectivité. En faisant de la langue le concept central de sa philosophie, Rosen­ zweig a pressenti cette originarité qui élève la langue au-dessus des phé­ nomènes linguistiques et la rend indépendante de ses locuteurs – lesquels sont d’ailleurs « engendrés » par elle, comme il l’écrit énigmatiquement dans la postface à Jehuda Halevi67. En abordant toujours la langue comme l’organe de la relation entre Dieu, le monde et l’homme, et en cherchant dans les textes religieux et liturgiques l’attestation d’une méthode de pensée fondée sur l’expression de ces relations dans la parole, il s’arrête toutefois au seuil de cette facticité originaire, comme si la reconnaissance du « besoin de l’autre » et la « prise au sérieux du temps » l’obligeaient à refuser que la langue fût plus et autre chose que le milieu des relations temporelles où l’élémentaire passe à l’effectivité sous le triple nom de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme. Il y va, au fond, d’une décision quant au type de rapport ou de relation (Verhältnis) auquel nous donne accès l’expérience de la langue. Montrer comment Dieu, le monde et l’homme parlent la langue, c’est nous rendre d’abord ou de nouveau attentifs à notre propre vie, dont la pensée s’est détournée; c’est voir ensuite dans la langue le fait premier de la relation; c’est donner enfin aux éléments le « rapport immuable [unverrückbares Verhältnis68] » qui doit être le leur pour que nous puis­ sions cheminer en toute confiance en cette vie. La percée hors de la pensée ancienne, opérée grâce à la langue par la philosophie d’expérience, a alors le sens assumé d’un retour à la quotidienneté et à la tradition, milieux où les relations dont se nourrit la pensée se perpétuent dans la parole. Que la langue soit elle-même le « rapport de tous les rapports », qui, plus originairement que toute relation intramondaine, rassemble, laisse apparaître et tient ensemble les contrées du monde69 – voilà ce qu’une autre expérience de ou avec la langue, qui s’est voulue libre de Dieu, du monde et de l’homme, aura pu découvrir, engageant le renouveau de la philosophie dans la direction d’un tout autre commencement. GS IV/1, 3. Stern, 466. 69 Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, GA 12, Francfort, Klostermann 1985, 203; Acheminement vers la parole, trad. Jean Beaufret, Wolfgang Brokmeier, François Fédier, Paris, Gallimard 1976, 201. 67

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Au terme du parcours, il apparaît que, si L’Étoile avait déjà proposé un concept singulier de l’Erfahrung, prenant le contrepied de sa définition idéaliste et de l’écho que celle-ci pouvait trouver dans le néo-kantisme, c’est dans les textes postérieurs au grand œuvre que Rosenzweig a véritablement fait l’essai d’une philosophie d’expérience. Celle-ci n’est encore, en 1925, qu’un programme qui donne à la « pensée nouvelle » son horizon philosophique, comme pour confirmer qu’en dépit du congé donné aux catégories de la « pensée ancienne » (éminemment l’essence atemporelle et le faux dualisme du sujet et de l’objet), il s’agit bien de continuer à philosopher, ce qui n’est désormais possible qu’à partir de l’expérience du temps et des relations effectives auxquelles la langue nous donne accès. La philosophie d’expérience, loin de rabattre les prétentions de la connaissance aux évidences du sens commun, s’avère étroitement liée à la méditation que le penseur mène à partir de l’expérience biblique, liturgique et poétique de la langue. Dès lors, la fidélité aux principes du Sprachdenken implique de prêter l’oreille aux autres langues que la pensée a pu se donner pour source – et donc de conduire les langues de la philosophie dans un dialogue renouvelé.

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Dialogical education and the Importance of time (of the moment) in Franz Rosenzweig’s educational writings and dialogical education after Shoa

Abstract In the 21 century, we are permanently confronted with the unforeseen and unexpected; with the current pandemic, the effects of climate change, the barbarism of war and terrorism, waves of refugees, and with the suffering of people. These situations are cases like that of the pandemic, situations where the state of knowledge and science are unable to support humanity in a critical situation and faced with ethical questions. Chronological time seems to stop when city streets are abandoned in a so-called »lockdown«. At these times, hospitals fight to save each human life, every moment counts; there is no time for in-depth analytical contemplation of individual cases and systematizing them within the framework of specific knowledge. Immediate action is called for. Just as in a war, when every moment counts to save lives, there is no time for planning. This raises the question of whether any accomplishment or adjust­ ment through a systematic and knowledge-oriented mode of thinking will be sufficient to address these challenges. Keeping this question in mind, I would like to present a few reflections on modes of thinking about the importance of time and the living moment in a dialogical and educational context. My particular focus will be on time (events) in Judaism and Jewish dialogical education (as explained in Rosenzweig’s essay »Of Bildung there is no End«1 and The Star of Redemption2. Franz Rosenzweig, »Of Bildung there is no end. (Eccl.12.12.). Wishes concerning the Bildungsproblem of the moment, especially concerning the question of adult education«, transl. Michael Zank, in: Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End 1

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I also intend to include some comments on the method of interpre­ tation in the Jewish tradition by Rozenzweig's contemporary, the Jewish philosopher, rabbi and educator Eliezer (Eli) Berkovits. These comments are taken from a unique book published in 1938 in German, »Was ist der Talmud?« I will then proceed to a brief discussion of the French-Jewish philosopher E. Levinas' polemic (in continuation of Franz Rosenzweig's polemic) addressing the systematic method of knowledge acquisition through science and finally turn briefly to the modern conception of the dialogical method as formulated by Ephraim Meir.

A basic category in Rosenzweig’s educational thoughts; Openness or the State of Readiness To Franz Rosenzweig, openness or a state of being ready for the unexpec­ ted, for that which is alive, is of great importance. Above all, being ready also means holding back on plans and planning. In his essay »Of Bildung there is no End«, Rosenzweig makes his case for the openness that each moment/instant of learning entails and for the place of the living (speaking) word in Jewish education. He tried to escape the academic approach and, above all, the university practice of »churning out books« because the written word represents a closed mental process and is, therefore, merely an object of consideration. According to Rosenzweig, such a mental process is not oriented toward developing questions but only toward finding answers. Rosenzweig's pedagogical thought can be used to briefly summarize the main ideas encompassing his pedagogical concept of studying Biblical texts. He mainly focused on the study of Biblical texts in the context of both dialogical and individual learning, thinking, and acquiring know­ ledge: Jewish scholarship (Wissenschaft). The concept itself already indica­ tes the relevance of a non-dogmatic and individual learning process and its significance for grounding this implicit contrast between academic cultures and lived (informal) learning experience. To ensure this method of the Twentieth Century, Peter Ochs and Nancy Levine (Eds.), William B. Eerdmans, Cambridge 2002. 2 Franz Rosenzweig, The star of Redemption, transl. Barbara E. Galli, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2005.

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was applied, lecturers – the group of teachers coming from a variety of religious traditions and predominantly chosen because they possessed particular personal qualities – were expected to have little expert know­ ledge about a given topic.

Teachings (Lehre) and hermeneutical tradition in Judaism by Eliezer Berkovits The hermeneutical practice of Judaism, which can be characterized as an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, is described by Eliezer Berkovits (1908–1992) in his book »Was ist Talmud« (What is Talmud? M.D.K)?3 It was first published in 1938 and burned by German Nazis immediately the­ reafter. The book was intended by Berkovits to provide a basis to engage the academic approach to Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums) and the Christian interpretation of Biblical texts before World War II. Berkovits changed his philosophical views after the Shoa and generally rejected dialogue with Christians because of the role played by Christianity during the Second World War. Yet despite his stance toward Christianity, he also stressed the importance of a common human basis – in dialogue.4 In 1938 Berkovits referred to the hermeneutical practice of Judaism as a ›teachings‹ (German: Lehre). According to Berkovits, a Jewish person reads the ›book of teachings‹, Sefer Torah, from a dual perspective, both as a book and as a teachings. This means that he/she seeks answers to two questions. First, what does the book, the word, and the text mean? Second: What does the teachings want, what does it demand from me as a human?

Eli (Eliezer) Berkovits: Was ist der Talmud?, Berlin 1938. »Human beings ought to treat each other with respect and hold each other dear independently of theological dialogues, Biblical studies, and independently of what they believe about each other's religion. I am free to reject any religion as humbug if that is what I think of it; but I am duty-bound to respect the dignity of every human being no matter what I may think of his religion. It is not inter-religious understanding that mankind needs but inter-human understanding – an understanding based on our common humanity and wholly independent of any need for common religious beliefs and theological principles.« Eliezer Berkovits, »Judaism in the Post-Christian Era«, Judaism 15:1, Winter 1966, 82. 3

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Thus Jewish men/women are not satisfied with the understanding of the text, they want, above all, to understand the consequences that follow from the teachings for their life – in the moment.5 The close relationship that exists between Talmud and life, Berko­ vits continued, also determines the relationship between Talmud and academy. The question of the Talmud is not theoretical and academic, but practical: The Talmud stands in the midst of the people’s life, of the community who beset it with innumerable questions to which they seek the answer, drawing their consequences from the teachings. Talmudic studies are therefore not a theoretical sophistic, a distinction without difference, but actively shape life under the perspective of the eternal teaching. Whoever approaches teaching with scientific projects (intention) will not find these Jewish teachings (Lehre)6. Accordingly, the attitude of the Talmudic student allows an explora­ tion of the world, which – we can conclude. In line with this, the attitude of the Talmudic learner enables an exploration of the world which, so to speak, excludes, on the one hand, the knowledge-oriented academic conclusion and, on the other hand, encourages an open attitude of learning in dialogue.

What could the significance of dialogical teaching and learning for Western European philosophy of dialog after the Second World War be? After the Second World War, and above all after the Shoa, Martin Buber (a former friend and collaborator of Rosenzweig and an acknowledged philosopher of dialogue) famously continued his creative work on the pedagogy of dialogue in Judaism. We must also mention Abraham J. Heschel (1907–1972) at this point who, like Eliezer Berkowits, lived and worked in Germany (Berlin) and was even briefly the head of the Jewish Study House (Das Jüdische Lehrhaus), which was founded and initiated by Franz Rosenzweig in 1920. After his emigration and escape from the 5 Eliezer (Eli L.) Berkovits, Was ist der Talmud?, Ner-Talmid-Verlag. Frankfurt am Main 1962 [1938], 13. 6 Eliezer (Eli L.) Berkovits, Was ist der Talmud?, Ner-Talmid-Verlag. Frankfurt am Main 1962 [1938], 20.

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Shoah, in the USA, Heschel took up the topic of dialogue and education in Judaism in his philosophical writings7. I think, however, that a polemic which the Jewish French philoso­ pher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) undertook against the knowledgeoriented attitude of science and ontological philosophy is particularly worthy of interest. Particularly if one considers Franz Rosenzweig's earlier thoughts on the subject. Like Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas challenged the primacy of the epistemological approach and analytical conceptual thinking in the Western European tradition. In his writings (after the Shoah), Levinas opposed purely cognitive thinking which allowed people to be viewed as objects of knowledge: »It may be possible, however, to oppose to knowledge preceding engagement something other than innocent doing, childlike and beautiful like generosity itself, something other than in the sense of pure praxis. For the latter cuts through Gordian knots (nots) instead of untying them and is contemptuous of the information with which the European tempted by temptation, simultaneously an adventurer and man living in supreme security, wants to surround himself. This European is certain at least of his retreat (reflection) as a subject into his extraterritorial subjectivity, certain of his separation with respect to any other, and thus assured of kind of irresponsibility toward the All.«8 Levinas, therefore, attempted to supplement Western European philosophical concepts and their a priori philosophical thinking with wisdom, namely that of the Talmudic teaching tradition, by contrasting Othering relationships (the face-to-face relation) that always elude the philosophical concept, the idea of the penetrating scientific approach to the world and to interpretation. The dialogical learning process and the process of teaching (in the sense of »relation to the Other«) hold special importance in Judaism and could serve to complete the education of both Jewish and non-Jewish youth in Western Europe and World. In this dialogical relationship, humans are obligated to listen and to respond. There is no time to plan or to contemplate this, it happens – here and now. Such an obligation has an ethical dimension, which Cf. Abraham J. Heschel: »Jewish education«, in: The insecurity of freedom. Essays on Human Existence, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1966, 223–241. 8 Emmanuel Levinas. Nine Talmudic Readings, transl. Annette Aronowicz, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1990, 36. 7

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according to Levinas takes on special significance in the light of the Shoa (the Holocaust): it is about the human obligation to respond to the Other and to strangers; about human responsibility in relation to the Other9. Levinas tells us that the relationship with the Other requires us to open and revaluate our perceptions because the Other is absolutely different and cannot be comprehended. Such an interpretation of difference is never interested in the purpose, the perception, or the meaning of a response; on the contrary, it can be said to exemplify a thinking geared towards the question, an attitude of questioning reflection. This open »questioning “ not oriented towards a certain response is an activity that is not interested in the object but primarily in the human being who is asking and speaking. Thus, an attitude of openness could be described as a readiness to receive the infinity of the Other as a question to me from outside. The questioning attitude does not aim at a specific state of know­ ledge, but at the concept that refuses conceptuality. To that extent, basic educational mindsets are an opportunity to disengage from egoism, from selfish interest, by »escape from the self« “ (Lévinas)10. The principal concern is to refrain of harming other humans. For Levinas, the relationship with the »Other« is, first and foremost, one’s connection with a face, with another human being. We gain access to the Other in an ethical relationship via its face that is indefinite and infinite, not through analytically conceptual perception. Levinas describes the dialogical relation to the Other as a kind of contradiction to the majestic method of Socratic dialogue11 that could presuppose the integration of the Other, of that what is infinitely different to me. »The idea of infinity in me, implying content overflowing the container, breaks with the prejudice of maieutic without breaking with rationalism, since the idea of infinity, far from violating the mind, conditions nonvio­ lence itself, that is, establishes ethic. The other is not for reason a scandal that puts it in dialectical movement, but the first teaching.«12

Cf. Emmanuel Levinas, Vom Sein zum Seienden, Karl Alber, Freiburg/München 1997. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, Duquesne University Press Pittsburgh, Penn­ sylvania 2014, 60. 11 Cf. Theaetetus, in: Plato, Complete Works, John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Eds.), Hackett, Indiana 1997. 12 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague/Boston/Lon­ don 1979, 204. 9

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In the light of Levinas's arguments which bring together and develop the views of Franz Rosenzweig, it could be concluded that teaching and learning in a relationship of open dialogue mean, above all, an ethical relationship with the Other. It is about the relationship with the other person who in their infinite Otherness escapes any integration or assimilation that occurs in the process of acquiring knowledge. Related thoughts on the subject of open dialogue in the teaching process were developed especially by the aforementioned A. J. Heschel, but also, among others, by the Jewish Talmudic commentator and teacher Nechama Leibowitz (1905–1997) and her brother Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903 -1994) who also lived and studied in Germany before the Second World War13. However, I would like to conclude with what is, from my point of view, an interesting polemic by Levinas against the ontological priority of the process of knowledge acquisition to open dialogue and teaching. I would like to end this short description of the open dialogue from the perspective of Emmanuel Levinas with a reflection on his views on religion which also bring him close to Franz Rosenzweig and Eliezer Berkovits. It is about a critical approach to the Scientology of Judaism (in the context of the knowledge of religion as an assemblage of literary narratives): »Religion in fact is not identical to philosophy, which does not necessarily bring the consolations which religion is able to give. Prophecy and ethics in no way exclude the consolations of religion; but […] a humanity which can do without these consolations perhaps may not be worthy of them«14

The relationship with the Other, who is absolutely and infinitely different (in the Levinasian sense), was developed by Ephraim Meir in his concept of otherness as Trans-Difference, recognizing the necessity of dialogue in the current social situation – the close coexistence of people belonging to different world religions.

13 Cf. Nechama Leibowitz, Active Learning in the Teaching of History, transl. from the Hebrew by Moshe Sokolow, in: Abramowitz Leah, Tales of Nehama. Impressions of the life and teaching of Nechama Leibowitz, Gefen Publishing, Jerusalem 2003, 260–274. 14 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo, transl. Richard A. Cohen Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh 2014 [1985], 118.

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Monika D. Kaminska

Difference and Trans-difference by Ephraim Meir In his philosophical writings, Ephraim Meir describes a different con­ ception of a dialogical attitude of openness15. His approach is that of »trans-difference« in the context of interreligious dialogue (dialogue between world religions). Meir argued that »with all our similarities, we are different and the Differences between us are the condition itself for interreligious Encounters and cooperation. If we were all the same, dialogue would be meaningless. There are major differences, which make a »trans-different« attitude possible. With respect for differences, cooperating and bridging between worlds become possible.«16 Meir suggested that »in my concept of the self, I modify Levinas's other-centered position in which the self is constituted by the other. The self has indeed difference in himself. However, I add to Levinas's position that I am also different to the other. ›Trans-difference‹ means, therefore, that the other is different from me, just as I am different for him, and that, notwithstanding these differences, ›passing‹ to the other or ›bridging‹ between the differences is a sublime human possibility. The I is therefore the one who builds his identity; this identity is, however, additionally and predominantly constructed by the call of the other. I am both constructing myself and constructed by the other.«17 Meir thus focuses on the interpretation of the subject »as being visited by otherness« and states, »or better: approach the self as elected to relate and care.« According to Meir, attention to the specificity of the Other and living the otherness of the other in the self is the kernel of one's subjectivity or higher identity. »The diversity of human beings as well as one’s own self-understanding demand that we leave behind a narrow confessionalism that does not contribute to an intercultural and interreligious dialogue concerning what touches the depth of our human existence.«18

Ephraim Meir, Dialogical Thought and Identity. Berlin/Boston, 2013, 12. Ephraim Meir, Old-New Jewish Humanism. Idra Publishing. Tel Aviv 2018, 61. 17 Ephraim Meir, Dialogical Thought and Identity.Berlin/Boston 2013, 18. 18 Ephraim Meir, Interreligious Theology. Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2015, 81–82. 15

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Dialogical education and the Importance of time

Moreover, Meir shares inter alia (such as Hanoch Ben Pazi19) the views of Rosenzweig and Levinas on dialogical teaching and learning. In his book »The Rosenzweig Lehrhaus« Meir expresses a polemical position on analytical and knowledge-oriented teaching and learning: »Jewish teaching is lived and experienced; it is not a matter of cognitive contents. The message of the Star is that truth has to be made true. Experience of revelation as love takes priority over knowledge. Objective knowledge is on a lesser plan than subjective acknowledging, in which knowledge finds its proper context«.20 Thus, it appears that Meir's arguments about diversity – the other­ ness of people's thoughts and beliefs – harmonize with the views of Rosenzweig and Levinas on open dialogue. On the other hand, he transforms and develops the Dialogue with the Other in the context of the dialogue between world religions, refraining from voicing criticism of other religions (as Rosenzweig did with regard to Islam and Buddhism). This willingness to accept the Other as infinitely different from myself allows me to develop a position of teaching and learning from other people, from people who think and believe differently from me. Such dialogue allows us to learn from each other and, what is most important in crisis situations, to act swiftly and together, in spite of, or perhaps because of, differences and differing ethical, philosophical and, last but not least, – religious views.

Final remarks To sum up and revisit the introductory sentences on the subject of this paper, it can be said that the encounter with the unexpected or an unexpected event, the encounter of another that occurs now, at a certain moment of the present, prevents in-depth analysis and contemplation of the essence of things or events. In a situation of dialogue, of conversation with another person, we do not have time to analyze in depth what they say because we have to respond, whether we want to or not. Cf. Hanoch Ben Pazi, »Ethics responsibility Dialogue the meaning of Dialogue in Levinas’ Philosophy«, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol 50. no 4, 2016, 619‑639. 20 Ephraim Meir, The Rosenzweig Lehrhaus: Proposal for a Jewish House of Study in Kassel inspired by Franz Rosenzweig’s Frankfurt Lehrhaus. Bar Ilan University, Faculty of Jewish Studies. The Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research and Strengthening Jewish Vitality, Ramat Gan 2005, 37. 19

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The significance of every moment of human existence can also be transferred to the situation of humans learning and teaching every day. It is important to emphasize the importance of the moment in the life of the pupil and the student, of each student as a unique and special individual, as the OTHER. The goal is above all to enable learning to live and coexist in a pluralistic world community in an open dialogue. Such learning precedes learning to acquire knowledge. I am convinced the pandemic situation made it possible to experi­ ence an open dialogue conducted by scientists, doctors, politicians and representatives of various communities. The dialogue preceded, as it were, the time-consuming analytical work of science. Every moment of life in a critical situation counts.

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Messianism and the Direction of Education

Abstract The study aims to examine Rosenzweig’s theories on the connection between Messianism and education. It is well known that Rosenzweig’s aim at the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus was to restore the Jewish identity that was on the verge of disappearing following Emancipation(Brenner, 4., Mosés, 19). He says »May you return to your most unique being and life and return home!,« at the end of his opening speech at the Lehrhaus(GS Ⅲ, 510). However, given his reversal of the traditional learning process, that is, »new learning,« and considering also his transition from academia to life, education is not restricted to only studying Jewish culture. Further­ more, as stated by Rosenzweig in »Bildung und kein Ende,« »what we need more than ever [...] are human beings — Jewish human beings,« and that these Jewish human beings do not imply »a line drawn to separate us from other kinds of humanity«(GS Ⅲ, 492). If so, his educational goal was to teach students to be accepting of others while simultaneously understanding that Jews had an ›eternal life‹ with God. Therefore, this article tackles the three questions below to under­ stand what Rosenzweig meant when he described the »Jewish human beings«: 1. What does God mean to the Jews? 2. Why should the Jews strive toward the world, and not remain under God? 3. How must one take on the future when it is shrouded with uncertainty? While answering these questions, this article also explores the distinct model for Jewish education in light of the mission of the chosen people: the uniqueness of the wandering settlement, where tradition is preserved by constantly renewing the particular contact with the eternal. In addition to that, the assumptions of the »eternal people,« a self-legitimizing narrative based on the Torah, is critically examined. The study concludes that if the constant renewal of eternity is at the core of »Jewish human being« or being Jewish, and if this renewal

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of eternity is carried out by Jews individually or collectively through the Torah, as well as through the dialogue not only with Jews but with others, then the Jewish people is not simply »the community of the same blood,« but also the community that needs cooperation with others, centered on the belief in an absent Other, that is one God. And the direction of the dialogue towards actual life would include creating a society that coexists with others, is centered on the belief in an absent Other. These explorations would contribute to a deeper investigation of the unique characteristics of Jewish education and its crucial articulation with other languages and faith.

Introduction The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between Messia­ nism and education according to Rosenzweig’s thought. It has been established that Rosenzweig’s aim at the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus was to recreate the Jewish identity that was at the brink of being lost after the Emancipation1. Indeed, at the end of his opening speech at the Lehrhaus, he said, »May you return to your most unique being and life and return home!«2. In fact, the curriculum of the institution is centered around the Hebrew language — through Prayers and the Bible — as well as the classical Jewish tradition. From this, Rosenzweig’s aim to return to the Jewish world becomes apparent, not to assimilate into the German culture but rather to »dissimilate« from it. However, can Jewish identity be acquired simply by learning Heb­ rew, reading the Bible, and living according to the cycle of the Jewish calendar? If so, it then becomes no different than the way of life of other people, such as the Japanese people speaking Japanese, reading The Kojiki or The Nihon Shoki, and living by the Japanese calendar. It will only differ in cultural content, but the true embodiment of the sole distinguishable Jewish identity remains unguaranteed. 1 Cf. Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, Yale University Press: Rev. ed., 1998, 4. Stéphane Mosés, The Angel of History: Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem, Translated by Barbara Harshav, Stamford University Press, Stam­ ford/California 2009, 19. 2 Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, in Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. III. Martinus Nijhoff, 1984(hereafter: GS III), 510.

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Rosenzweig posits that the Jewish people live an »eternal life«. This eternal life »signifies a strangeness throughout the course of history, a rootedness within oneself«3; such eternal life is promised by God. Since they do not have their own language or land like other nations, they can only characterize themselves by their connections to their ancestors and descendants. Therefore, these people feel more in touch with their roots by listening to the voice of God behind the Bible in a »holy language« that is not a ›daily language‹. Eternal life is, in a sense, to be with God. But is Rosenzweig’s goal in education only to make Jews aware that they live with God? Certainly, we could say that the learning in the Lehrhaus, which Rosenzweig practiced under the name of »new learning«, was such a thing. Because »new learning« »no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way round: from life, from a world that knows nothing of the Law, or pretends to know nothing, back to the Torah«4. This shift in learning is probably related to his own move away from academia and toward life5, and moreover to his decision to stay being a Jew, not through academia, but his synagogue experience6. Furthermore, he criticizes the academy which is not based in our life, especially in his essay: Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand. Considering such an inversion of the way of learning and his existential background, the range of education is free from being limited to merely learning so-called Jewish culture. In »Bildung und kein Ende« — written to prepare the Lehrhaus — when Rosenzweig states that »what we need more than ever […] are human beings―Jewish human beings«, and that these Jewish human beings do not mean »a line drawn to separate

3 Emmanuel Levinas, »Between Two Worlds« in: Sean Hand(Trans.) Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1990, 181–201, here 194. 4 GS III, 507. 5 As we know, the Star of Redemption ends with the words »INTO LIFE«(GS II, 472/ Star, 447). »[H]e was ready to let go of his former fixation on science and pave the way to life itself. Instead of theory of knowledge, in which reality is thinking and thinking is reality, he conceived of an epistemology in which one does not verify abstract truth, but rather makes truth true in life itself.« Ephraim Meir, Dialogical Thought and Identity: Trans-Different Religiosity in Present Day Societies, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston & Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2013, 70. 6 See below for his synagogue experience. Nahum N.Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig His Life and Thought, Schocken Books, 1961, esp. ⅩVI-ⅩVIII. Nahum N.Glatzer, »Franz Rosenzweig«, in Great Jewish Thinkers of the 20th Century, edited by Simon Novek, B’nai B’rith International, 1985, 162–163.

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us from other kinds of humanity«7, but to be connected with them. If so, his educational goal was not only realizing that Jews are with God, but also being open to the other. Therefore, in this article, we will clarify what Rosenzweig meant by the kind of people the »Jewish human beings« are by answering the following three questions before reconsidering the direction of education: 1. What does God mean to the Jews?; 2. Why should the Jews strive toward the world, and not remain under God?; 3. How must one take on the future when it is shrouded with uncertainty?

1 What does God mean to the Jews? According to Rosenzweig, »As God’s well-beloved, as Israel, he [Jewish human being] knows he is chosen by God«8. It is well-known to many that Judaism encompasses the idea of a »chosen people«; however, we may wonder, why or how Jewish people know that they were chosen by God.

1.1. The God who promised the eternal life to Jewish people Rosenzweig, in a letter to Hermann Cohen (»Zeit ists…: Gedanken über das jüdische Bildungsproblem des Augenblicks an Hermann Cohen«), complained that the »Jewish world« must be established through educa­ tion. In pursuit of »making the Jewish world come true«, people must go beyond reading literature for such is an endless task and such needs to be accompanied with concrete actions that allow the Jews to internalize the spirit of Hebrew. Whereas Germans, for example, can possess, in the form of translation, different cultures, such as Greek and Latin, Jews are not allowed to experience the innate Jewish world as a preliminary stage or element of another world around them. So, it is important to start from reality through religious events, rather than reading old literature, in GS III, 492. »Der jüdische Mensch« will be translated as »Jewish human being« in this paper, because Rosenzweig seems to emphasize the duality of Jews and human beings, which will be briefly discussed in this paper. Therefore, I will use »Jewish human being«, even if some English translations apply »Jewish man« to »Der jüdische Mensch«. 8 Der Stern der Erlösung, 1921, in Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.II. Martinus Nijhoff, 1976(hereafter: GS II), 341, The Star of Redemption, transl. Barbara E. Galli, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005(hereafter: Star), 326. 7

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order to establish a Jewish world. Therefore, in education, the relationship between religious rites and the individual must be restored.9. The Bibles and prayer books used during religious activities or events are written in Hebrew and must be read in the original text, not in translation, as this is the primary and most authentic source of the Jewish world. In fact, Rosenzweig seems to have envisioned the curriculum of the Lehrhaus based on the principle of »No day without a line in the Hebrew (Nulle dies sine linea hebraica)«10. Moreover, the realization of this ›Jewish world‹ must not be like what Germans think: ›Jews are not so an »obstacle« for us‹. »The community itself must work effectively inward and visibly outward, while maintaining an impressive unity«11. Nevertheless, according to Rosenzweig, the Jewish world cannot be realized by giving Jews their own land. Who could imagine that it would be possible to build it up without human being? [we need] Jewish human being! And [what] will become of Jewish man if, no matter where he lives, he is not surrounded by [a Jewish atmosphere…and] to some degree, by a Jewish world? (For even on land, just because its border pillar are painted blue and white, does not mean that it is already Jewish land)12.

The fact that the Jewish world must be an environment that surrounds Jews no matter where they are implies that Jews can stay anywhere in this world and implies the requirement that Jews must exist in some nation from the beginning. For example, just as Germans can be German people based on their residence in the country of Germany, other people get their nationalities based on the »nation in humans«13. But »the reason the nation did not live with the Jews (unlike all other nations) was because another and higher being lived among them«14. They maintain their GS III, 463. Briefe und Tagebücher, in Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.I-2. Martinus Nijhoff, 1979(hereaf­ ter: GS I/2), 675. An Rudolf Hallo, 4.7.1920. For a review of the curriculum, cf. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Intellektuellendämmerung: Zur Lage der Frankfurter Intelligenz in den zwanziger Jahren, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag 1985, 46. 11 GS III, 480. 12 GS III, 509. The original English translation is »Who could imagine that it would be possible to build it up without man, Jewish man« (»On Jewish Learning« translated by Nahum N. Glatzer, in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, 3rd. ed. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1998, 233–234). 13 Ibid., 554. 14 Ibidem. 9

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identity by linking with »higher being«, that is, with God, rather than their ties to the lands of the nation. The Jews must exist in the nation, but the nation cannot exist in the Jews. Consequently, this may also be observed as the biggest reason why political Zionism is impossible15.

Rosenzweig criticizes Zionism because he doesn’t think that Jews should have their own land but, instead, exist among other nations as foreigners. Zionism acknowledges the same problem as cited by Rosenzweig: »the current Jewish world is lacking in Jews«, but building an isolated nation is considered to be the solution. In short, »Zionism posits that the Jews should be isolated«16. Instead of having no land, the Jewish people are promised »eternal life« by God. They are chosen by God, like Rosenzweig, in the lecture ›die Wissensschaft vom Menschen‹, »We are chosen, […] the human [who knows that God is behind him] can say [… and he] doesn't have to stop saying that«17. It means, Jews don’t have to think otherwise. Praised be he who has planted eternal life in our midst. The fire burns in the heart of the Star. […] The fire must beget its own time. It must beget itself eternally. It must make its life eternal in the succession of generations, each of which begets the following one, as it itself again will bear witness to the preceding one. […] Above the darkness of the future there burns the starry heaven of the promise: so shall be your seed18.

Taking Japan as an example, in Japanese national mythology, the gods Izanagi and Izanami created the islands that make up the Japanese archipelago, and the people who live there are Japanese. It is not only gods, but also the country itself that bind the Japanese. However, for the Jewish people who live an »eternal life« by connecting themselves to their ancestors and descendants, God is their bond, not the land. For them, God created the world, not the country, and »the world is―a new feature―composed of imponderables and ponderable, heaven and earth«19. Furthermore, it is human beings, not just Jewish people, that God Ibidem. GS III, 498. 17 GS III, 652. »Science of Man«, translated by Barbara E. Galli, in God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, 78. 18 GS II, 331/Star, 317. 19 GS III, 660. »Science of the World«, translated by Barbara E. Galli, in God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, 90. 15

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created. God created the world and created human beings in the world20. Here is already a glimpse of what Jewish human beings mean by having no boundaries to other humans21, but how does it relate to being »chosen« by God?

1.2. The God who initiates the Dialogue The Bible, which Rosenzweig considers important to teach the spirit of Hebrew, is unlike any other book. According to him, while other books can only be learned by reading them, there are two ways to learn what is written in the Bible; by »listening to what the Bible says« and »listening to your heart«22. He further says, »The Bible is a ›revelation‹ because the Bible and the heart say the same thing«23. This means that because the words in the Bible are the word of God, God not only speaks to the Jewish people through the Bible, but also directly to the Jewish people. The learning of the Bible is not to see nor read God’s word, but to hear God speaks to them. If so, God’s call to Adam is also a call to us. However, it was Abraham, not Adam, who responded to God’s call, »Here I am«24. Therefore, it can be said that Rosenzweig finds the peculiarity of the Jewish people in this response. The dialogue between God and human beings in The Star, that is, the way in which the silent and closed self becomes a living soul by being spoken to by God, is different from the »Self« of Idealism. The Self of Idealism indicates »pure subject, it can assume the role of the origin of knowledge in the fact of all objectivity: it is the »I« of idealism«25. I, as a soul, »do not lose my independence even if I know that I am loved. [...] Rosenzweig draws here a proud partner rather than a dependent and little important person«26. Nevertheless, this proud I don’t put my partner under my control. Because it was God who started this dialogue, and the call was a revelation. GS III, 618. GS III, 492. »On Being a Jewish Person« translated by Nahum N. Glatzer, in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, 3rd. ed. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1998, 214. 22 GS I/2, 708. 23 Ibid., 708–709. 24 GS II, 440/Star, 418. 25 Ibid., 152/Star, 149. 26 Isabell Schulz-Grave, Lernen im Freien Jüdischen Lehrhaus, Oldenburg, Bibliotheksund Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg, 1998, 40. 20

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[H]e goes back into the past and is authenticated as the originator and initiator of all dialogue between him and the soul: »I called you by your name. You are mine« [Isaiah 43:1]27.

Revelation can be understood as the appearance of God in hiding, remembering that God spoke directly to the human heart or through the Bible. We can hear the voice of God, but we cannot see the image of God. I can exist as I myself only if I acknowledge the origin of God’s call, even if I don’t know what God himself is. Therefore, Rosenzweig discusses this world with the concept of the world symbolized as B = A. The object of the predicate is a particular one (B), and the universal one is the predicate (A). In this scheme in which the particular goes inductively to the universal, we would see »how the chaotic plenitude of the particular in Creation is the first created thing, and how the universal constitutes the »given« receptacles set out by the Creator: it is for them that the plenitude of the particular in Creation freely flows forth«28. The fact that the universal thing is only a container means that the container does not change no matter what goes into it, and that the container of God is universal and its contents cannot be known in advance. In other words, there is a gap between the individual and the universal, and a room remains there even if the particular tries to guess right the universal. On the other hand, there is a theory of Idealism about Self ―the »I,« the »subject,« the »transcendental apperception,« the »spirit,« and the »idea«. »[F]or these theories demand a concept of the world according to the symbol A=B, a concept of the world which posits the particular as assertion, and the universal as object of the assertion. In all cases, the proposition that asserts can be apprehended only if the assertion is known »for longer time« than its object«29. The idealist believes that it is possible to develop the All of knowledge by presenting the »origin«30. When he says that God (A) is particular one (B), it does not show the individuality of God, but that God is reduced to him, the individual. The universal thing of which idealism thinks is, after all, the self, not the God31. While idealism reduces God to the »self« and makes them the same, Rosenzweig’s thought regards the God who created us as the God GS II, 203–204/Star, 197. Ibid., 153 /Star, 150. 29 Ibidem. 30 Ibidem. /Star, 151. Here, Rosenzweig discussed that it is not theology but »philosophy […] will not stop until it can imagine that it has »grasped« everything in this domain« (GS II, 155/Star, 151). 31 Ibid., 160/Star, 156. 27

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who started the dialogue in the form of revelation. So, individuals will inductively seek out the contents of the container of God. Therefore, for the Jewish people, God is certainly the same source that connects them, but nevertheless God is the Other and the Other who continues to recog­ nize me as a different person from God.

2 Why should the Jews strive toward the world, and not remain under God? The Jewish people, who were promised eternal life, heard the call from God directly and through the Bible realized that ›I‹ and ›God‹ were different. However, God’s call, or revelation, is a love for humans and a command of love for neighbors. Therefore, the response to God’s call will be done in love for neighbors. »Since God commands love toward man, love is immediately led back to love toward God, because love cannot be commanded except by the lover himself. Love for God must be exter­ nalized in love for the neighbor«32. But why does love for the neighbor respond to God’s call? Moreover, while the relationship between God and human remains ever the same, the relationship between human to human is not static as »the role of the one giving love and the one receiving love go back and forth«33. In hindsight, these two seem to relate to a meaningful contradiction.

2.1. The God who needs to be the renewal of existence The reason why the relationship with God and humans would be a relationship between human beings is that we must verify(bewähren) the existence of God who called the individual in the real world. This verification would be the answer of God’s call. The existence of God must be verified in this world because »[a] thought alone can be wrong«34. Therefore, the fact of experiencing of God’s rule is also needed. The experience of God’s rule is the experience of »something that cannot be explained from life itself and which precisely is that which is the most alive Ibid., 239/Star, 230. Ibid., 189/Star, 183. 34 GS III, 633. »Science of God«, translated by Barbara E. Galli, in God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, 60. 32 33

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in life,« such as great suffering, great joy35. Experience beyond intentional human action and understanding can be said to be the experience of God’s rule. This experience of divine rule may be a fact, but since »[a] fact alone can be a deception«36, both thought and fact are necessary. As Rosenzweig exemplifies the thought as engagement and the fact as marriage, whereby the engagement verified is by married life37. In this way, thoughts and facts have »the necessarily insoluble connection between the two«. Therefore, even if someone thinks that »God exists« in his head, that alone does not make God a reality. He must experience the rule of God. On the contrary, the thought of the existence of God is necessary because it cannot be said that the experience of God’s rule is in fact the experience of God’s rule. But the experience of God’s rule may not be the same as marriage, because the experience of God’s rule is not an objective proof like a wedding or marriage certificate. Therefore, Rosenzweig says that there is no such thing as proof of God’s existence. »There is no proof of God [’s existence]. But not because God is God, rather because a proof is just proof. Proofs prove nothing except what one has already known previously«38. Even in the case of marriage mentioned above, marriage is verified by the marriage life, and no objective proof is considered. Then what is the difference between verification and proof ? The former requires both time and the other, while the latter needs none of the two aforementioned. »Proofs prove nothing except what one has already known previously«39. Verification, on the other hand, »brings something to the thing being verified, that is to say, its own self, the verification«40. This sounds like a tautology, but, in essence, verification means that what is being verified require others to verify. If what is to be verified is the existence of God, He needs others to experience God’s rule. Verification cannot exclude passivity and activity: »the happening« of God’s rule as well as »the making-happen« through experience41. Even God, who seems to exist forever, needs others to verify Himself, and He cannot exist unless his existence is »renewed«.

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., 632/ Ibid., 59. Ibid., 633/ Ibid., 60. Ibidem. Ibidem. Ibidem. Ibidem. / Ibid., 61. Ibidem.

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However, since the existence of God is a thought, and human beings cannot truly know the substance of God, the response from human beings could be seen as a verification to God as an absent Other and God »as a person who causes time«. This is because such passive-active relationship is perceived as a dialogical relationship.

2.2. The God who is an absent Other causing time Rosenzweig sees the law, which is one of God’s rules, as »His mark«42 and understands it not as a thing to blindly follow, but a genuine call from God43. In his letter to Buber, die Bauleute, he writes that it is not only the duty of those from the past, but also the Jews who are alive now to hear the Torah or the law that is the voice of God. It has been said that Israel has long protected this law — the Torah — for one very »fact« that 600,000 people heard »The Voice« on Mount Sinai. Sure, it may be largely due to this fact, but no less is the contribution of another fact that was mentioned earlier in this text. It is the fact that [the Torah allows God’s call to transcend beyond ancestry to the Jews of today, that is,] »the souls of their descendants also stood on Mount Sinai with those 600,000 people and listened to what they heard«. For the Jewish consciousness, which is not questioned or doubted, the latter fact is just as true as the former, and the former is no better than the latter44.

Since the law, which is God’s rule, is a call to humans, human beings must receive the call »passively« and respond »actively«. But it is important to clarify that what I verify is not the substance of God, for God himself is »hidden« from humans. Nevertheless, in order to save this thought of God, Jewish people must verify the God who is absent in this world by using the clues of »His mark« as represented by the law.

Ibid., 628 / Ibid., 53. Sato discusses Strauss's criticism of Rosenzweig's understanding. »... For him [Strauss], after all, Rosenzweig's revelation theory looked for the connection between God and man in the experience and existence of current believers, without taking the law seriously.« (Takashi, Sato. »Fall to barbarity? Criticism of Existentialism of J. Goodman and L. Strauss [Yaban e no Tenraku? Goodman to Strauss ni okeru Jitsuzonshugi Hihan]," in Hokkai Gakuen University Humanities Collection, No. 49, 2011, p35–67, here p.54 – 55.(Jap)). 44 GS III, 703–704. 42

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The Law is the road on which the world, hurled out in the Creation, finds its way back, and God can be united again with Himself45.

As can be seen here, the law as a call to human beings is also regarded as the signpost of saving only one God at the same time. The reason why we can anticipate the one and only God, the God itself, even if we have yet to experience God, is that the Jewish people can recall the past when God called them. Additionally, they believed that the God who called them will also respond to their response in the future. Therefore, it can be said that the verification of renewing the existence of God in this world is present and happening — a node between the past and the future. It is the moment when the absent (God) and the existing (human) meet in this world. Then what kind of situation is this verification? In other words, what does it mean to respond to a call from God? Love for neighbors could be answered in The Star. The interpretation of the revelation may be that »love between human beings and love between God and the human being are not separated«46. As Rosenzweig states, »If you testify to me, then I shall be God, and otherwise not―these are the words that the Master of Kabbalah puts into the mouth of the God of love«47. Consequently, »[o]ne could say that the one [(human beings)] testifies to the other [(God)]. Real human love contains, paradoxically, more than it can contain«48. That is, the love for neighbor would contain love for God as the absent Other. But why does love for neighbors verify God? As it is stated in the lecture »Anleitung zum Jüdischen Denken«, all perceptions happen in the following three times: »I was called my name. I speak. I will receive a response«49. In other words, in this interactive dialogue, the absent God can appear, and at the same time, humans can bring the absent One to be alive. We trust the following times in our daily dialogue, whether we are unconscious or conscious. Those trusts are: (1) the trust in the tradition that one has found before, (2) the trust in what one is allowed to speak, and (3) the trust in the future, which could be the very next moment, or trust that you will get response50. 45 GS III, 627. »Science of God«, translated by Barbara E. Galli, in God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, 51–52. 46 Meir, 60. 47 GS II, 191/Star,185. 48 Meir, 60. 49 GS III, 603. 50 Ibidem.

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What would be verified in this dialogue between humans? Perhaps it is the partner in such dialogue. However, it could not be the other person itself, for there is also »the other« who has yet to exist. To explain further, it is because I am uncertain of how the other person will respond and because the response is not necessarily representative of the other person itself in their totality. The response of others would exceed one’s expec­ tations; if one had already known the content of the response in advance, it would only be a monologue then that excludes the supposed partner in the dialogue. So, what is verified at the moment of my response is the absent other, even if we are talking face-to-face. In a dialogue between human beings, the past, that the other had called, and the future, that the same other will respond to both, appear at the very moment when one speaks. From this, it can be affirmed that neighborly love verifies the absent Other or God by taking on the time of the past and the future now. This absent Other is eternal, and God appears to mankind as the God of Time, but unless humanity verifies Him, He exists forever merely in someone’s thought. Therefore, the appearance of the absent Other means the appearance of eternity, which is the intersection of the past and the future. In sum, »love your neighbor« is not just »respect your neighbor« in front of you51, but to also find the ›absent God‹. What is verified in love for neighbors is God as an absent Other — God as a person who makes time present52. Given that such is an intersection of the past and the future, it is also a time that suddenly comes to continuously stream from the past to the present and the future. Rosenzweig discusses these two kinds of time with the expressions »today, which will be nothing more than a bridge to tomorrow,« and »another today, a springboard to eternity«53.

GS III, 608. Cf. Bernhard Casper, Das dialogische Denken : Franz Rosenzweig, Ferdinand Ebner und Martin Buber, Verlag Karl Alber, 2002, 127. 53 Briefe und Tagebücher, in Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.I-1. Martinus Nijhoff, 1979(hereaf­ ter: GS I/1), 345.

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3 How must one take on the future when it is shrouded with uncertainty? Rosenzweig has already claimed in »Reichsschule und Volksschule« that »living classes, ideally, presuppose the constant interaction between the teacher and all the present students«54. And like he said at the opening ceremony of the Lehrhaus, that teachers and students listened to regarding what the book should say and gather together, ask each other what to believe in as well as how to live55. Dialogue was of utmost importance at the Lehrhaus56. Based on the above considerations, with the background to the importance of dialogue in the Lehrhaus, there would be an intention to let them notice that I have to get out of self-centeredness and realize that I am existing when the other exists, or I and the absent Other are a pair. »Transcendence of life as an educational aim requires the subjectively student’s effort, overcoming pure self-centeredness, and directing towards others for himself«57. But in verification of the absent God, if we only look at the aspect of dialogical time which goes in a kind of straight line: because God called us in the past, the same God will respond in the future, we may not know if the God who will respond in the future will be the same God who called us in the past. In the case of dialogue between human beings, it is clear that the person who called me is the same person who will respond to me because it is him whom I can see and can directly converse with. However, in the case of a dialogue with God, He cannot be seen nor touched, and His voice can only be heard through the Bible or through one’s heart. Nevertheless, why is it believed that it is God who responds to one’s speech? To answer this question, we have to focus on the aspect of future, which means redemption of God himself. Assuming God’s own redemption in which he will be reunited in the future could broaden our perspective on education, we will finally consider God’s own redemption and the Messiah.

GS III, 470. GS III, 515. 56 He argues that the teaching (Lehre) is an interaction in »die Bauleute«(GS III, 700). 57 Robert E. Maier, Pädagogik des Dialogs: Ein historisch-systematischer Beitrag zur Klärung des pädagogischen Verhältnisses bei Nohl, Buber, Rosenzweig und Grisebach, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang,1992, 193–4. 54 55

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3.1. The God who will come in the future As we have already seen, Rosenzweig saw the law (Torah) as a call from God. This is because »if the Law now absolutizes itself in an earthly way […] then He is being retired«58. In other words, the law which is the word of God would be simply a law made by humans. Because of this, Rosenzweig uses the concept of »promise« to rescue this law from this worldly rigidity. Then come the Prophets and break through the fixity of the Law by promises (die Verheißungen). Promises save the Law from the fate of becoming a low of humans, a human statute. The future is there clearly for this, to liberate from the power of the present. Promises do not »help«, but rather it makes up again―»helpless«59.

For example, today I promised to meet my friend at 6 pm tomorrow. At that time, I was confident that my friend will come to the meeting place at 6 pm the following day because the other person who made the promise is a friend who I have met at least once, and we’ve exchanged words and know where and what time to meet. However, in the case of a promise to God, I have not met God himself yet, so I did not directly exchange words with Him. If you try to meet someone you haven’t met, you won't be able to meet that person without having a clue of who or what he is. In order to meet a person whom I have never seen before, it is necessary to follow the traces of that person. For God, the law is the trace. Therefore, from the beginning, I cannot say that I promised with God directly, but the prophets can say that God promised. Because the prophets believe that the law is a trace of God, and they believe in the fulfillment of His promise―the future. If we understand the traces as the words of God, we can believe in the future that the person may come. Therefore, when I hear the words, I can say that God has promised me, but what we believe is only the trace of God and not something with substance nor absolute. But even if »[t]he promise […] sets up a goal, it allows hope [for the future], and gives direction [to the future]«60, will God really come? Because I didn't make a direct promise with Him, I'm not sure when I'll meet Him. Nevertheless, I can wait for a God who may come someday. If 58 GS III, 629. »Science of God«, translated by Barbara E. Galli, in God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, p.54. 59 Ibidem. 60 Ibid., 629–630/ Ibid., 55.

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He comes, even if we don’t know when he will come, it will be at the end of time. What does the future mean for time? The opposite of rigidity, the opposite of being past. The Law had clamped together the fragments of time, the promise unclamps, but gathers them all into one pot. You don’t have the end until you have the complete conquest of time and with it the restoration of eternity. The end therefore solves the why-question of temporality by setting an end to temporality61.

The end of time is eternal. As we have already seen, when God reveals himself in this world, He needed another being to verify it. This God is »the God of the human, of the world, of time«62. But God redeems Him­ self as the only one God, otherwise, He would not exist as God himself63. We do not know when God will complete himself. However, by assuming such a future and aiming at this future, human beings may relate to each other as We, because in the presence of only one God, people are not divided64. The promise will put an end to the division ［Havdoloh］. The messianic promises connect the divided world and human beings65.

3.2. The God who sojourns in this world From the time when Rosenzweig was alive up until now, our world has been divided in various ways. We live in a world that is divided in various ways, such as nation-states, religions, races and so on. However, only the Jewish people, who continue to be diasporas rather than creating a nation-state, are not involved in this division. This is because they don’t have their own land nor their own language, and they are under only one God. Since the Jewish people also believe in the religion of Judaism, it may be a concern that they are part of this divided world, but they believe in the redemption of the only one God and the redemption of all human beings. In other words, it was a redemption for humankind, not limited to the Jewish people alone. Of course, the Jewish people cannot know whether God will be united or not, and the divide between us still remains, but they Ibid., 630/ Ibidem. Ibid., 626 / Ibid., 50. 63 Cf, GS II, 266/Star, 256. 64 In the Star, »that final state of the world, which Rosenzweig called the Kingdom, is always conceived as an ultimate limit of what is to be attained« (Mosés, op. cit., p.49). 65 GS III, 631 / Ibid., 57. 61

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must continue verifying God, assuming the unity of God. It’s Jews who are demanded to accumulate the dialogue, believing the unity of God, and to share the We as humankind between people, because they can hear God’s call better than other people. Although the Jewish people are already living with God in this world66, as we have already seen, thought alone does not verify that God exists. They must verify in dialogue with others that the absent Other simply exists, not as substance. In other words, we cannot verify God without being involved with others. Therefore, Rosenzweig says: Not that Jews hope for the Messiah, rather that they wait for him (i.e., lead a life of hope) that makes their »Messianism« into more than an ism, that makes it into a faith, a life67.

Daily life becomes faith because the Jewish people awaken God as an absent Other by facing others. The waited Messiah here is not a concrete person, but an absent other, a time that may arrive now, although we do not know when to come68. Believing that such a time that we cannot anticipate may appear in a continuous time from yesterday to tomorrow, Jews have to endure waiting when it will happen69. It is completely foreign and new to us that we do not know when, how and in what concrete form the absent Other will occur. The Jewish people, who are eternal

66 Rosenzweig explains in The Star that the Jewish people live with God based on the mysticism’s Shekhina. Shekhina means that »God’s coming down to men and His dwelling among them […]. God himself separates from himself, He gives himself away to his people, He suffers with its suffering, He migrates with it into the misery of foreign lands, He wanders with its wanderings«(GS II, 455/Star, 432). 67 GS III, 589. »Faith and Knowledge«, translated by Barbara E. Galli, in God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, 110. 68 Rosenzweig states in »New Thinking« that dialogue begins with others, and that unpredictable time and needing others are the same. »To require time means that we cannot anticipate, that we must wait for everything, that what is ours depends on what is another’s. […] The difference between the old and new, the »logical« and the »grammatical« thinking, does not lie in the fact that one is silent while the other is audible, but in the fact that the latter needs another person, and takes time seriously―actually, these two things are identical«(GS III, 151–15. »The New Thinking« translated by Nahum N. Glatzer, in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, 3rd. ed. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1998, 199–200). 69 The waiting in such enduring is a waiting that knows that the object I am waiting for cannot be measure of thought or meaning that I can fully possess. (Gérard Bensussan, Le Temps Messianique: Temps Historique Et Temps Vécu, Librairie Philosophique J Vrin, 2001, 96).

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people, must live to bring about the arrival of this newness together with the nations. The Messiah is secretly wandering among the nations, and he will only come to our Redemption when he has wandered through all the nations70.

Therefore, as Levinas states, Rosenzweig’s Messianism suggests that time, human effort, and the training of verification are essential for each human in order to verify the unity of God71. Although the forthcoming God does not come as a substance in reality, the Jewish people are called into question how to act in the process of creating »We« as a pair with the only one God.

4 Conclusion If the reason why Jewish people love their neighbors would be that other people receive the same love from God, then the rift between them and other people wouldn’t exist. But the fact of love of neighbors is that Jewish people must verify the existence of God as an absent Other through a dialogue with a concrete other. The accumulation of these moments, the constant renewal of contact with eternity, can be said to be a characteristic of Jewish education, distinguished from Christianity, which »accompanies the peoples in their march through history«72. If the constant renewal of eternity is at the heart of Jewishness or Jewish human being, and in the case that this renewal of eternity is not only carried out by Jews individually or collectively through the Torah, but also through the dialogue with others, then it is clear that the Jewish people is not merely »the community of the same blood«73 but also the GSI/1, 251. Emmanuel Levinas, Franz Rosenzweig: une pensée juive moderne. Peru dans la Revue de théologie et de philosophie, Lausanne,1965, p.219. 72 Stéphane Mosès, System and Revelation: The philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, translated by Cathrine Tihanyi, Wayne State University Press, 1992, 170. See especially page 170–173 for a discussion of the differences between Judaism and Christianity's involvement in history. But the differences in temporality between Judaism and Christianity are the subject of another article. 73 GS II, 332/Star, 317. As is well known, this is not a literal the community of blood. I have already discussed about the »Blutgemeinschaft« in another article. See, Naomi Tanaka, »Die Bedeutung von »Erlösung« in sozialer Dimension :Zur Akzeptanz des Rosenzweig-Gedankens in nichtjüdischen Kulturbereiche«, in Rosenzweig Jahrbuch 12, 2021, 145–147. 70 71

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community that requires cooperation with others — furthermore with other languages, like Rosenzweig started to devote himself to translation at about the same time as his practice at the Lehrhaus — centering on the belief in an absent Other74. Therefore, to verify God while continuing to have a dialogue with others in the world means faith for the Jewish people. And faith is life itself. So, the Jewish educational goal would be finding the absent Other continuing to have a dialogue not only among Jews, like at the Lehrhaus, the »speak space and speak time«75 where we can encounter the absent Other, are prepared for both teachers and students, but also with other nations. Thus, the dialogue, centering on the belief in an absent Other, would be the core of Jewish education, especially for the Jewish people who are losing their identity. The direction of the dialogue, that is, the direction towards actual life, would include creating a society that coexists with others. Because of the need of coexistence, the Jewish people must continue their political and spiritual task of cooperating with other nations.

74 In translation, »only one language«(GS IV/1, 3) is the centerpiece. English translation: Barbara E. Galli, Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi: translating, translations, and translators, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995, 171. 75 GS III, 500.

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Globus: Studies on the World-Historical Doctrine of Space Translated by Malcolm Goldman

Introduction The first person who demarcated a piece of the earth as the property of himself and his heirs began world history. For as he declared what was Mine, he not only made it his own, but also left those who remained with what was Theirs: with the Mine, he created the Yours and the His. By drawing the first border, humanity seized possession of the earth. All of world history is merely the forward motion of this border, merely the tumultuous collision of the Mine, Yours, and His; the constantly grappling formation of »Me and You« relationships out of the undifferentiated chaos of the It. Just as the bounded First I and his equally-bounded expansion into the First We define the first moment of history, the unbounded Final We and their equally-unbounded passage into the Final I define its final moment. Borders move across the ground between the former’s morning and the latter’s evening, giving answers to those who question the sun’s position in the sky of history. Therefore, since its birth, the earth has been predetermined to be overrun by borders for all of time. Its nature is to be bound, and to be unbound is only the end goal — although just as the end goals of history always have their firm and visible foundation within nature’s objects, so do the goals of the earth. The boundlessness which remains the earth’s end goal is already property of the primordial sea. The sea is the image of unity nature gifts to humanity as an example to be followed when shaping the land during the daily toil of creating history. It is merely an image — for the unity of the barren sea is not like the animated unity of humankind’s dwellings. Yet it is still an image, and as long as the shimmer of this image continues to gleam, it will forever be impossible for man to peacefully dedicate himself to the once-bound everlasting soil and reduce it to the

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Mine; a light constantly radiates from the sea conjuring the unknown external before his weary soul. Eternally awakened from the here to the there, he always remains, despite his possessions, mindful of that which he does not possess and does not forget his yearning. In both, therefore, at sea and on land, the unity of the earth is the driving force of historical events. It is visible in the sea from the beginning, remains hidden on the land, and, even when anticipated, is never overcome by the qualms of disbelief. The contemplation of that first unity surfaces within the earliest memories of humankind; it leads from worldview to worldview, and the world-discovering deeds only exist in the transitions. The perception of the latter unity can only be applied at the point where prophets’ intuitions are bound to the empire’s reality, thus for the first time allowing those of good will to see the world open itself to them in their fulfillment of that will. In this case, the contemplation leads from world-shaping deed to world-shaping deed while the world-imagining thoughts lie only at the turning points. Both considerations must cease today, at the point where the sundial’s shadow falls. Telling the time remains the last thing one could attempt to do, just as — I must admit — the longing to do so was the first thing that drove us forth.

ECUMENE WORLD-STATE AND WORLD OF STATES World I do not know if our descendents will label the current war with the same term with which its contemporaries defined it immediately as it broke out: a world war. There are still wide swaths of the earth which remain outside of its fire zone; America is only participating indirectly, the East Asian world only fleetingly. As such, the forces which determine the war find that their roots lie exclusively in old Europe. Yet overall, the objectives being fought over are spread out further than ever before; the current war earns its name through its end goals, if not through its participating forces. So it seems that it serves as a world-historical transition from a bygone European epoch to an impending planetary one. And such does the formation of the staging of events we are currently witnessing seem justified in hindsight. For in the internal individual and external collective lives of the state, the first and most important condition

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of all happenings must be their borders, the world stage. What we call world history is nothing but the becoming of the earth into an enclosed historical space, a »world.« Every time period has its own term for world, for »ecumene« — although this particular term may at times cover only a small, clearly-defined space, and may also have held out only until the reign of Caesar Augustus, until he — with this very word, »ecumene« — awoke to his historical self-awareness.

Origins This empire of Caesar Augustus, permeated and conquered by Christia­ nity in its first centuries, would not become the setting of the coming events in its entirety; the current world does not descend from it directly. The ring of the ecumene, which from the beginning enclosed two separate worlds — the Hellenistic world of Alexander, heir of the world empires and of the ancient Near East’s claims to power; and the Roman world of the Scipiones and Caesars, heir of the Carthaginian powers — this ring collapsed. The Germanic wave crashed against both halves of the empire, but only the western half was flooded by it; the wave battered itself against the Justinian throne. This is the great foundational truth of all history to come: the fertile marriage of the christianized Cesarean empire with the tribal kingdoms of Germania only happened in the territory of the world empire. In the east, Constantine’s creation remained untouched for a full millennium, although it was without any parturient potency; the state maxim was »the Franks make better friends than neighbors.« In the West, the spiritual power which had succeeded the Caesars' abandoned throne now became Charlemagne's closest neighbor: pope and emperor, Christianity and Germania, henceforth shared the name »Romanum.«

The Empire, the Church, and the Nations The Scottish wall, the Elbe, and the Adriatic Sea formed the next enduring borders of this world. In the Southwest, the border was preliminarily secured behind the empire in Constantinople which, by defending its own existence against the rising cultures of Asia, also served as a protective wall for the Roman-German world which lay behind it. When the new Asiatic wave then seemed to find minimal resistance at the southwestern corner bastion of this world, the Frankish imperial power

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interceded and created the Spanish March against the onslaught. The empire thus also expanded its border protection slowly and tenaciously along the Danube at its open eastern flank and at the Baltic rear: it formed the Margraviate of Austria with the westernized Slavic and Magyar dominions before it, and formed the Margraviates in Upper Saxony and Brandenburg with the outlying land of Prussia. This was all the doing of the empire Charlemagne had founded. But while Charlemagne’s crown passed over Germany and the power of the Germanic tribes was consumed partially through the expansion of Europe's open borders, partially by their struggles over the title of Empire with the historical co-heirs of this title, room was made for a third power in Europe between emperor and pope. The internal forces of the nations, formerly silenced by the violent reality of the Roman Empire, then absorbed by the shadow of said empire, took the spotlight. They found their stage in the western European sphere, which was given shelter by the empire’s masses in front of them. As such, the western nations, to some extent under the aegis of the emperor and pope, could develop in their struggle over French soil. As England was forced to withdraw from France in the mid-fifteenth century, two conditions were set for the subsequent period: an insular, »isolated« English nation and a French nation »connected« to the continent. Both of them were the first cultures in the Roman-Germanic world whose ambitions were not in line with or weighed down by purely supranational aspirations. England on its island was initially pushed to the edge of events, while the French reign stood in the center of the European stage; the empire’s destiny was to set itself apart from this first pure kingdom in Europe. And it was the Church’s destiny for a new rival to rise up against the empire, for it is a law of historical events that interwoven oppositions sort themselves into a simple antagonistic battle. To want to be the third is to step back from the historical moment; here only directly participating factions are relevant. It is telling that caesaropapism could only emerge at this point in the Roman-Germanic world; Charles V was able to think about what no Staufer had conceived of in their most intense periods of conflict: setting the triple crown upon his own head. This twofold destiny now inherited by 1500 Europe — the withdrawal of spiritual power and the entrance of nationality into history — came simultaneously with two external conditions. Firstly, with the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the southeastern border of the European world was exposed to a heavy pressure; the brunt of the blow previously borne by the Byzantine reign fell on the southeastern powers of the Holy Roman

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Empire for the first time. And Europe’s gaze was simultaneously directed overseas toward lands of an unforeseeable future.

Emperor and King All of these destinies and conditions came together under Charles V’s reign. He took over the Atlantic prospects via Spain, used Austria and Hungary to defend against the Turks, and with Flanders and his claim to Italy through both Spain and the Empire, he defended against the French opposition. The great European double movement of the Renaissance and the Reformation is stretched across the same frame of conditions. Charles V became the »man of destiny« for both movements. Due to his resistance against its original direction of generally renewing the Church as a whole, the Reformation was pushed first toward a regional and later to an almost fully personalized individual faith. The Renaissance, meanwhile, expanded from an originally individualistic movement as a »Counter-Reformation« to become the fundamental power behind the new public education system, the creator of the modern state. Charles V’s empire itself represents the first promising, to some extent politically realist attempt to achieve the medieval ideal of Europe’s spiritual-statal community: it united all of Europe’s »marches« against Islam in the south and east, therefore opening up the new opportunities for expansion overseas in a single front. And instead of the Church as its spiritual rival, its significant »rebels« were to be found in the (French) kingdom; no other medieval emperor had as much control over the pope in this regard as Charles V, who had claim to the »German best« Martin Luther. In contrast, no policy to this point had so fundamentally and emphatically rejected the occidental-Christian community as that of Francis I of France as he formed an alliance with the Sultan in 1535. In its opposition to the final empire to label itself with the medieval concept of world, the first empire now emerged in a new era in which the concept of the state was destined to be extensively realized.

France, Spain, England Purely through the world-historical web of antagonism in which it was placed, Francis I’s France is — very much against its will — readily connected to all of the powers of the future. Its geographical location

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helps Germany establish itself against the overwhelming power of the Spanish-Austrian Empire; it preserves the teachings of Martin Luther even as it burns its heretics at the stake domestically; it cannot prevent the new German doctrine from pushing itself into its borders. The new secular education in Italy and its vast, gleaming potential is met with willing acceptance compared to the restrictive relations between the small states of the homeland; the Renaissance first proves its potency to become a national style here, detached from its motherland; it is here that the Gothic period first unconditionally makes way for the Renaissance. Machiavelli illustrated the prime example of this new concept of state by comparing the Renaissance’s reckless, resource-hoarding power to Maximilian I’s empire, which was constricted by countless internal conditions; the Renaissance was the indirect cause of the fragmentation of Maximilian’s successor’s empire. The division of the world empire into Ferdinand’s Austria and Philip’s Spain was finally decided as the German domestic principality, with France’s support, successfully rose up against Charles V. Of the two powers to cause the fall of the first and last world empire of the Middle Ages, Austria inherited the remaining universal responsibilities of the imperial crown — admittedly without any prospects of following through with them — while Spain inherited the de facto power and the will to conquer the world via its traditional connections with the Church. Austria was thrown back onto the German stage, as Spain — basing itself on a strong national foundation and now linking itself to the universal power of the Catholic Church — became the second modern state to enter the new political stage upon which France had stood as protagonist up to this point. While France was poorly prepared to live up to the modern concept of state, Spain, simultaneously strengthened and weighed down by its connection to the spiritual power of the Middle Ages, took on the mantle. And just as this was happening, France was drowning in a century-long flood of inner turmoil out of which its new idea — total state control over the sanctioned and duty-bound powers of intellectual-religious life — emerged only two short-lived times: once in the state of Henry IV and then again under Cardinal Richelieu. These are the earliest instances of the modern non-denominational centralized state that eventually experienced its classical epoch in the first generation of absolutism under Louis XIV. The battles fought in France’s lap by the newly released forces of the changing times, before the state’s victory over both parties (and therefore over the new way of political thought) was decided, gave the Spanish forces — which were internally unified under the spiritual guidance of

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the singular established source of power — a significant opportunity to intervene. This immediately made space for a third power to arise, as Spain’s principal rival, France, was lamed before the fight could even begin: Elizabethan England, which chose Protestantism in opposition to Spain, entered for the first time into the new world history. For that is how we must describe it when a power which had up to that point only been tangentially connected, and had at most only just tipped the scales of history, took on the whole weight of the opposition onto itself as a major player. For when the protagonist temporarily stepped offstage, it allowed the tritagonist to enter: yet again the pure, two-party dialogue proves itself to be the essential structure of the world-historical drama.

Austria Yet the register of persons begins to expand: three young, vibrant powers are on the page, outside of the shadow of the empire’s old power. The stage of history has almost entirely shifted to Europe’s Atlantic coast, while the beginning of the new century brings another revival to the old head of the occidental world in Germany. The Austrian Habsburg monarchy, until this point almost completely absorbed in its task of defending against Turkey in the East, turns its gaze back to the empire as Turkey retreats into the background for the next century under the rule of Suleiman’s descendent. And now, fitting to its role and of its own accord, the monarchy reaches back to the old theologically universal foundation of its power. It becomes Germany’s downfall that Protestantism had never established itself as a great power in the old European world; the only powers who were truly internally Protestant, the Scandinavians, could only be thought of as medium-sized states and stood outside of the stage of history, which had yet to significantly expand beyond its West Roman borders. Yet England leaned toward its Protestant stance more externally, separating itself from the static of political rivalries, and at the same time that the Habsburgs began to put the existence of Lutheranism into question, England began its internal debates around the Protestant future of its national identity. This allowed Austria to move on with next to no rivals as it began to establish its national ideas in this moment; it still possessed a natural connection with Spain, especially in this context, and France, though still an opponent, was preoccupied in the moment by its

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own inner turmoil. Once again, even if admittedly in a limited theater and with limited goals, the old universalist thoughts reared their heads.

Sweden The untimely death of Henry IV was to blame for the power dynamics which failed to immediately revert back to early sixteenth-century posi­ tions, as it seemed like they might in 1610. War spread from Germany only gradually, in small steps, to encompass greater Europe. This very hesitancy is another cause of the forthcoming expansion of the European border in the Northeast. The Habsburgs’ counterpart (their faith in English support soon to be betrayed) was taken over by the subsequently invaded German-Protestant principality, and then defeated this same principality, and the adjacent power to the north adopted the task of defending Protestantism equally unsuccessfully. Afterward, Sweden intervened and reversed the fortunes of war and Germany’s fate while simultaneously delivering the decisive blow to breach the previously established borders of Europe. For Sweden’s appearance on the European stage signaled the arrival of a new power whose interests had up to that point lain elsewhere. Gustavus Adolphus turned his naval sights away from an intentional Polish campaign toward his south; the com­ mandments of the new belief system and the mysterious shimmer of old Europe’s grandeur jointly pulled him away from Sweden’s natural political theater, the Baltic coast, and into the heart of the old world. On that day, indirectly, the future expansion of the region we call »Europe« today was decided.

Brandenburg Sweden’s intervention in European matters was immediately brilliant and significant, but — at least in the role of deuteragonist — short-lived. For in that very decade, the inheritor of the rivalry against the Habsburgs gained some elbow room for their foreign affairs as Cardinal Richelieu arbitrated the newly inflamed internal conflict after the death of Henry IV. In its second half, the Thirty Years’ War began to appear as a reiteration of Charles V’s wars, except that henceforth not only the German Protestants but also Sweden fought as allies to the French. Additionally, just as in the sixteenth century, a Spanish-French war continued after the

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conclusion of the Middle European war. But the new development was the induction of the Electorate of Brandenburg back into the poles of greater politics, made successful through Sweden’s intervention, after Saxony’s apprehensive withdrawal from being the most significant power in the German Northeast. And it was namely a policy that was no longer aligned with imperial politics, but rather shifted at least its primary focus to its relations with Sweden in the extra-European Baltic Northeast. This double-poled nature of its national existence, demonstrated by the struggles for the Polish crown and the inner conflict over the rule of East Prussia, was considered a weakness by its enemies. Yet this characteristic proved itself to be the new state’s strength after the Battle of Fehrbellin; the successor of the Great Elector established his title of »King in Prussia« on the non-German »side« [sic] of his rule. A gate linking Europe and the Northeast was broken.

Absolute State Nothing else. For in that very decade, France rose to the height of its power and brought the West back to the center of European politics. As has already been implied, France in principle aligned itself with its medieval heritage: the national kingdom established as a state in its revolt against the all-encompassing imperial ideology. The decline of the new era, welcomed by the world-historical cock’s crow of Machiavelli’s book The Prince, was therefore France’s dawn. Yet it took another century and a half, after multiple preludes to what was to come, before the forces only just released by the new era settled into a new, more permanent state. Under Louis XIV, not only France but the modern state as we know it experienced its classical age in the decades following 1660. What happened internally here would immediately become a model for the whole collection of states that formed Europe at that time. This very concept is the great political impact of the Renaissance, which paved the way for the nations to form their own classical ideals: instead of a single medieval ideology, a diversity of national classicisms was able to develop by reaching back into pre-Christian antiquity. Considering that the forthcoming classicism of Spain under Philip II still carried medieval, chivalrous-romantic undertones, France was the first nation to elevate itself to this level — which, like any classicism, could only be temporary in history’s reality. While the empire definitively renounced the implementation of imperial violence against the federal princes’

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autonomy in the Peace of Westphalia, and these princes themselves were not yet strong enough to become independent carriers of European politics; while England, after the outline of its future was briefly and pro­ phetically illuminated under Cromwell, was tangled in internal rivalries during the Restoration and therefore was reduced back to a second-tier power; France was faced with only one opponent out of the old powers: Spain. And at the very moment when the young Louis took the reins of government from Mazarin’s hands, this final opponent finally and permanently exited the circle of the great powers in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. With that, and by playing the concurrent trump cards of its alliance with the temporarily strengthened Sweden along with Turkey’s equally temporary rise in power under a series of significant ministers, France was able to almost effortlessly round itself out internationally — all while enriching itself internally and reaching out overseas politically and commercially in the following decades. The individual state seemed to triumph over the idea of Europe that the Habsburg Empire so carefully defended. Yet then emerged an unexpected ally.

1688 France’s internal and external affairs during the materialization of Euro­ pe’s approaching great transition explain why shortly before the great change, France gave up on the idea upon which it had established itself and which it alone had realized in Europe at that time: the idea of the modern, religiously tolerant state. The revocation of this state’s Magna Carta, the Edict of Nantes, meant the beginning of the end for the »Century of Louis XIV.« Protestant Northern Germany, which to this point had stood with France under the circumstances, was entangled in the knot of European enterprises through which Louis’ reign established the policy of »this far, and no farther.« As William III of England boarded the ship that was to carry him to the English throne, he had the power of the Empire and of Holland behind him, along with the force of the new political idea which had developed through the journalism in this small state with lofty ambitions: the idea of a »European balance of power.«

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Balance This idea was fought over for nearly a quarter century under the leader­ ship of England, which now found itself permanently on the political stage from which it would no longer leave. As the wars ended — Louis was still alive to witness their conclusion — a new Europe was formed. The philosophy of a »balance of power« is just a euphemism for what happened. The medieval concept of organic cooperation among the Corpus Christianum was permanently shattered, but it was still necessary for the new »Machiavellian« philosophy of unconditional state autonomy to be able to be recklessly imposed in opposition to it. This medieval concept collapsed not due to the recent concept of the comprehensively intellectually-anchored society, but due to the mechanical system of equal forces, so to some extent by its own fault. The balance of power was, in its mechanical determination, a decidedly modern concept, one could argue a decidedly Western European concept, that led to dominance; it was necessary to break through the borders of old Europe which had still undesirably traced over the realm of Latin Catholicism. This happened in two directions: first in the expansion of European politics overseas, and then in the expansion of the circle which had to that point composed the European Areopagus.

England, France, and America Up to this point, colonial expansion was still not considered a part of greater politics. It was generally considered an appendage; one didn’t fight over colonial questions of power, but rather European ones. But now that began to change. The world-historical meaning of the work of the great Renaissance seafarers and explorers is first revealed at the beginning of the eighteenth century. With the fall of old Latin Europe’s walls, the lands overseas, previously merely the realm of merchants and Jesuit missiona­ ries, became battlefields and desired prizes in European diplomacy. Of the established powers, England dominated in the foreground, as has been discussed. It laid the foundation for its position in the world during the fight against Louis XIV, while at the same time experiencing its classical period internally; the England of the eighteenth century exemplified the English spirit as a key influence in the development of European national identities. The two texts which brought this influence to the mainland appeared even before the middle of the century, characteristically in

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the land of the suppressed adversary: Voltaire’s Letters on the English and Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Law. Voltaire became a champion of English religiosity. Montesquieu was the liaison for the ideal image of English internal politics, parliamentarism. The sowing of these ideas first occurred in the second half of the previous century, at which point they were met with the resistance of a surge of religious introspection and a will for a prudent shaping of the world; it took a twenty-five-year European war for them to gain broader prominence. While the French state decided on a single-sided, absolutist conquest of the mind at the beginning of the war, England became home to the hearth for the fire of new ideas by the end of the war. Just as Columbus’ work only now gained broader significance, Martin Luther’s work could only now transform into the »democratic individualism« through which Protestantism could finally evolve from an internal belief system to a world-shaping power. Yet this observation already leads beyond one side of the turnaround in 1688: the permanent entry of England and the overseas perspectives into the circles of European politics. The other side of the process, the surrender of Europe’s borders to the northeast, also belongs here.

Russia At the same time as the wars in the West, unrelated yet equally violent events were happening in the East. The fact that Austria’s armies defini­ tively pushed the Turkish forces back into a defensive position at the time belongs to some extent to the framework of old European politics, particularly considering France’s historical alliance with the Sultan. In contrast, the alliance between Austria, the German Northeast, and the Slavic predominance in Poland at the time — broadly, the future »Eastern powers« — became apparent in the great act which introduced that reversal of the previous alliance: the successful deployment of Vienna. It was, however, still within the frame of old Catholicism. Yet this frame was now dismantled by the epoch’s other great event in the East: the rise of Russia. When Peter the Great forced his land to follow the example of Louis XIV in its development into modern statehood, a great power based on the European model was formed for the first time on soil untouched by the Roman Church. Geography shaped the great currents’ direction of growth; they ran up against the Turkish to the south and the Swedish to the north. In fact, in the fight against Sweden — separated by Polish territory from the Habsburg-ruled states — Russia’s European relations

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reached their adolescence. Poland and the North German powers who took interest in it, Saxony and Prussia, were the intermediary connecting elements between Russia and Europe: Prussia in particular was the power that had simultaneously participated in both wars, the War of Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War — or from Prussia’s perspective, the Western and Eastern Wars. And they indeed remained concurrent: the two great fires never did clash together to fuel one single blaze. Nonetheless, Russia constantly maintained political relations with the North German powers, particularly with Prussia (with whom it shared a border); if one of these powers was pulled into the great European movements, then Russia was immediately forced to take sides. What Peter began in an organizational sense became irreversible in the great struggle for the existence of the newly established state: Europe’s northern borders were no longer defined by the Leitha and Vistula, but rather by the Sava and the Volga.

Enlightenment It was at this moment that the Latin ring that had surrounded Europe was first broken. Now, for the first time, Machiavelli and Luther’s combined project — the release of the state from the ecumenical Catholicism of the Church — was completed. Now that the reign of the great old schism had been taken by the political community of the European nations, Protestantism lost its appearance of rebellion hitherto inherent to it in the Latin world. The three Christian denominations now stood on equal footing in the international community: the foundation for the century of European enlightenment was now laid.

England, France, Austria, Prussia, Russia The great political antagonism which had consumed the previous two centuries — Habsburg and Bourbon: the old empire and the first king­ dom — was still defined by the medieval origins of this first modern world. On the other hand, the rivalry that characterized European politics for more than a century after 1688 is the first to truly align with Machiavelli’s prophecy for the modern world: England versus France, kingdom versus kingdom, state versus state. As such, this century became the age of colonial wars for both opposing powers. Not in the sense that they were

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striving to build their empires overseas: the fight for the colonies was a fight for trade. The concept of state remained anchored to European soil; only the concept of state power made its rounds across the earth. In that power structure as it was understood in this century, the goal of the individual state is quite simply to increase its own power. Not at the will of an absolutist ideology, nor to conquer the world — the remains of the medieval imperial ideology promoting expansion across the »world« had dissolved — but instead with the goal of making space for itself among the endless masses of powers in the European world. This definition of power found its borders neither within itself nor within a global context, but instead solely in comparison with its neighbors’ power. Within this definition of power, the external face of inner life took the foreground, acting as an internal asset to support outward-facing policy: the economy. Politics were informed by the economy to an unprecedented degree; the concept of a national economy arose in this century. Now the framework of England and France’s rivalry, expressed through trade wars, was filled with the old and new antagonisms of the remaining states; Prussia entered first, rising as a North German great power, while in the South, Piedmont exploited the same political constellation to form the beginnings of an independent Italian nation-state. The significant events in 1755 — Austria’s stately quadrille that automatically drew Prussia closer in alliance — clearly revealed the new Europe which in 1688 had still been obscured by the old power groupings. Austria was able to put aside its in many ways classical rivalry with the French kingdom and bring a purely Austrian issue, the Silesian question, into the focal point of its policy — demonstrating that it had become a powerful state in its own right, with the empire only determining the diplomatic forms that guided the German side of the Habsburgs’ politics. Considering Maria Theresa’s disinterest in the results of the great power struggle in the West — favoring instead her conflict with Prussia — she seemed to model her leadership after Ferdinand VI after almost a century of rest for the Austrian state. These policies admittedly focused much more heavily on the state’s Catholic dimension than on the national aspects, and the renewal of Charles V’s politics was only meaningful within the narrower context of Austria. Yet nonetheless, Maria Theresa now began a conflict which lasted over a century whose roots lay in fighting for »dominance« instead of for the »empire«: the goal was no longer to restore the old empire’s place in the world, but to secure German political resources for the new Austrian state. Meanwhile, Prussia had risen in power through an initially timid and then increasingly bold exploitation

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of European relations; but now Austria, suddenly freed from its primary opponent, vehemently attacked, putting Prussia’s survival on the line. The blow was made even harder as Russia joined the alliance of Prussia’s enemies, allured by the prospect of sharing the spoils. Just as the rise of Brandenburg-Prussia had connected the old European stage with the North and the East, Friedrich’s heroic self-assertion allowed Prussia’s new connections to finalize with lasting potency. The Seven Years’ War was the first event to set the entire new system of states in motion, not only simultaneously, but coherently.

Austria, Russia, Prussia While the acquisition of Canada seemed to tip the scales in England’s favor in America, the Treaty of Hubertusburg appeared to preserve the old power dynamics in continental Europe. In truth, however, Prussia’s attempt of force had made it into no more and no less than the new fifth great power. And Austria, its attempt to develop its German power rejected, turned its focus toward expansion in the southeast with renewed interest. Yet now it was met with serious European competition for the first time: Russia had meanwhile also encroached on the Turkish empire via the surrounding regions. The Turkish wars of the following decades were arguably jointly led by both Austria and Russia; their natural antagonism was put aside through their collective seizure of Poland as well. With Prussia’s participation, a temporary joint surety developed between the three Eastern powers which did not even allow for a full materialization of the newly-awakened rivalry between Austria and Prussia within the framework of imperial politics. The Polish question, so heavily disputed in the spirit of the century’s power politics, thereby created a unique historical nemesis.

North America Overall, the generation following the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War is characterized by another temporary fragmentation into two halves. Just as the beginnings of the Oriental, the German, and the Polish questions were almost exclusively negotiated between the initially-participating great powers, the continuation of the great struggle over world trade was effectively driven by two opponents alone: England and France. Yet now,

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America is no longer fought over on European soil; the new and deciding characteristic of this age is that America itself ceases to be merely an object. The American War of Independence, by defining America as an autonomous center, robbed the French-English rivalry of the substance it had gained after the elimination of its original cause, the excessive power of Louis XIV. Both powers found themselves to some extent cast back into Europe; the view across the globe that had politically opened up for Europe at the beginning of the century became obscured once again. Internal problems that had ripened due to the political philosophies of the enlightened century began to emerge for both states. In France they erupted into violence. The consequences were monumental. The fundamentally atomized international community was once again faced with all-consuming questions. The idea of the balance of power lost its meaning; the unexpected unity of modern »Europe« called for a return to what medieval-Christian Europe had been, in its own way: a community.

Revolution and War It is thought that the epochal upheaval of ideas and the violent shuttering of the powers share the same root causes: to some extent, the war set the signet of the deed upon the thoughts of the revolution. This supposition, primarily based upon the events at the turn of the nineteenth century, is only half the truth. The war is a transition; it alone does not determine the destiny of the participating forces, rather it is also secretly determined by the ideological powers that it will help bring to light. The deeper reasons for the war are found both in its origin and its result, perhaps even more in the latter than the former. As such, it is flawed, for example, to view Protestantism’s existential struggle as the most significant component of the Thirty Years’ War; the war is just as significantly the birth of the structure of the absolute state. A long wartime period broke out at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth century, doubtlessly due to the threat of Louis XIV’s growing France — that is, due to the growth of the isolated idea of the singular modern state which had not yet been integrated into the comprehensive system of states. The true reason for the conflicts is therefore only first recognizable in their results: the very formation of the new state system, which permanently ventured beyond medieval constrictions and thus cleared the stage in these states for the spirit of Enlightenment to enter. The wave of war in the middle of the century demonstrates how on a purely superficial level, the conflicts

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resulted in absolutely no changes in Europe and no significant changes in the political map of America. They were intellectually meaningless in both their origins and their goals; they were wars of confirmation, not of global renewal. As such, the figure of Frederick the Great, as it was first constructed during the Seven Years’ War — an enduring and persevering hero — also in a sense became a symbol for the secular tenor of the whole war. In contrast, the revolutionary wars which took place between 1792 and 1815 once again exemplify the concept of war as transition. They drew their strength from the ideas of the eighteenth century that one might say were saturated with the demand for democracy; in truth, the ideas didn’t arise from the wars. The history of the first wartime years shows the extent to which political thought at the time had weaned itself off of viewing principles and ideas as a measure for extra-political stances; one felt too distanced from the age of religious wars to be able to strongly believe in the crusade for legitimacy demanded against the revolution. The old geopolitical rivalries — between Austria and Prussia over Silesia and between all three participating powers over Poland — compromised the First Coalition. Indeed, one could especially say of these antagonisms that the rise of Napoleon first became possible through the rivalry over Poland and that as such, said politics soon met their historical retribution. The fight against France first found its backbone when it once again fit in with the familiar political schema of the previous century — as England stepped in. The English-French rivalry once more, and for the last time, remained both the foundation and the frame of events from that moment until the Battle of Waterloo, for its time passed with the emergence of a free America. The territory that France still held in North America was relinquished at this time and Bonaparte’s attempt in Egypt to call the core of British colonial power (the occupation of India) into question disappeared into the sands — France’s naval fleet was taken out of the picture at Trafalgar. It was, on both sides, not merely — as a certain German philosopher believed — a ›heroic whim‹ on Napoleon’s part to maintain the rivalry which had become in principle politically insubstan­ tial. Geopolitically insubstantial and therefore essentially intellectually insubstantial. For what was the revolution if not the breakthrough of English — or at least, Anglo-Saxon — ideas into the hardened structure of Louis XIV’s state? And England postponed democratization only artificially, only for the purpose of war. Though it had stood on the threshold of the leading edge in terms of its internal development and through its experience in North America during this quarter century, by entering into the anti-French coalition it also embraced the banner of

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counterrevolutionary ideas. With Burke's book as their source, these ideas flowed throughout Europe. France, meanwhile, in that it increasingly led the war against its classical opponent from the previous century as a purely continental war, ultimately fought against Russia in particular (despite the five-year pause during its alliance with Alexander I), and was completely swept along by the flood of revolutionary ideas. This unleashed an equally new and fundamentally equally all-encompassing supranational force against it: the legitimacy of Jacobinism. For the popular wars in Spain, Tyrol, and finally in Russia were none other than this concept; the failed rebellion in Vendée developed from a French event to become a universal European concept. The two opposing »scares« the red and the white, both emerged from the confusion of this quarter century neither as victor nor vanquished, still full of untapped strength for further fights. Yet the truly new authority that arose from the conflict was a different force, almost unanticipated before the beginning of the revolutionary age, which sprouted from both competing forces in the Revolution yet exceeded both of them to become Europe’s foundation in the new century. It arose in Germany, and in 1813 it became the midwife of the events which gave purpose to the revolutionary contractions.

1813 Stein pulled the Czar over the Russian-Prussian border in spite of the resistance of his limited Russian surroundings, thereby unleashing the final European battle against Napoleon. Doing so, he forced the territorial Legitimist movement to come to terms with the sense of a far-reaching Europe. The ideology which bred this convergence of the limited statal and the revolutionary European ideas would have been entirely foreign to the previous century: it was the conception of each individual state’s obligations to Europe, a world-historical understanding of power as a servant to history; in principle Fichte’s idea of nationalism. Napoleon’s power, given wings by the new global concept of revolutionary ideology, could not be shattered by the counterrevolutionary resistance of the conservative popular forces, nor by the scattered European »Vendées«; that ideology was already sown too thoroughly all across Europe, which greedily accepted the seeds. Instead, it was shattered by the force of an equally wide-spread, equally European ideology: the state which riled its own popular forces against the enemies of Europe.

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Legitimacy and Revolution Whose Europe? What did the visage of this community look like as it briefly revealed itself as the fight’s goal? In the immediate aftermath, it was, from an outside perspective, restoration — »Restauration.« The old powers, the system from the seventeenth century, seemed to have been resurrected. Yet the inner band which had held this system together, the notion of a balance of power maintained only by their own weight and not by the specific inner substance of each locus of power, had economically burned itself out. The states had formed friendly and hostile relationships with intellectual powers. At first it might have seemed as if these relationships were to become deciding in the formation of the new groupings and alliances between the powers. However, on a superficial level, the whole conflict was ultimately perceived as a war of counterrevolutionaries against the principle of revolution. While the old states’ united front initially stood against France, the schism between the conservative Eastern and the parliamentary Western powers had already begun on the basis of »principle« at the Congress of Vienna itself. And if the substance of this rivalry was just as questionable to the ruling circles of England and France on the one hand as it was to Prussia and even Russia on the other, the following was certain: the political constellation from 1688 had met its demise in the shining postlude of the Napoleonic decade; the new factions no longer tied themselves to the names England and France. Yet the formation of a state was no longer based upon power struggles along its adjacent borders, but rather upon finding its internal structure in its preexisting national strength, with the ideal of the »saturated« nation-state set against the fundamentally unsatisfiable power state of the eighteenth century. This true nature of the new European system didn’t come to focus in Vienna because subsequent Austrian opposition prevented the German and Italian nationalities from forming states. Due to the revolutionary wars, Austria’s gaze was directed toward its western borders once more; it could not allow for the nationalization of the middle of Europe. Its interests corresponded above all with the fiction of the common interests of the »legitimate« powers; it is telling that the idea of Eastern powers was already abandoned in Vienna in the moment that Prussia’s great »Jacobins« temporarily steered the course towards German dominance in their state; that was the first time that, for a moment, the constellation of Prussia/Russia versus Austria/France was drawn — a framework under which Bismarck would later achieve German unification and Victor Emanuel would finalize

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Italian unification. The fact that a compromise was reached in those January days in 1815 is the real reason that Europe was, in contrast to the eighteenth century, by all means a community for decades to come; yet instead of being a family of nation-states, it presented itself primarily as a community of Christian peoples under their legitimate rulers across from an underground community of revolutionaries working against this Holy Alliance: »Young Europe.«

Eastern and Western powers As the ideological rivalry became political reality, it developed into a rivalry between the Eastern and Western powers. The consequences lasted until 1878, or arguably until 1890, even considering that it only erupted into conflict one time at the turn of the century, and even then not entirely. Italy was able to reach the critical period of its ascension through its exploitation of this rivalry. Yet it was only dominant in its first decades, at most until the Crimean War. It was already disrupted by Russia’s participation in the formation of the first two independent nations in the Balkans, Greece and Serbia, during their revolutions in the 1820s. England’s partisanship against France in the formation of the Belgian state had the same effect. However, the century first began to show its true face through the deployment of the nearly quarter-century-long period of war and revolution at its center, starting in 1848.

1848 The idea of nationality had existed as a secret sense shared between the conflicting revolutionary and counterrevolutionary powers and was destined to mediate the seemingly irreconcilable contradictions of democracy and legitimacy, the individual state and the community of states. Originating in Germany, it was the ripe result of the great ideological movement that Germany had been experiencing since the end of the eighteenth century. When German politics began to adopt the idea of nationality in 1848, Germany moved into the center of European events. France’s offensive was namely also responsible for Europe’s latest state of agitation — there, concordant with the long-since fulfilled national ideal, the revolution focused on state social matters — which means, considering the level of development of global transportation

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at that point in time, solely internal issues. But the social questions in Germany played a secondary role in 1848; the highly politicized national question stood in the foreground. It became the destiny of this revolution that German Piedmont found itself in joint surety with the old Eastern powers, ready to turn its forces against the West. Yet when it came time to make a decision for the national future, it constantly hesitated to meet a decision between — or even in opposition to — its two Eastern allies. Fundamentally, a solution would have been possible by aligning with Austria against Russia or vice-versa. The former was ruled out by Austria itself, who — barely having regained its balance — determinedly chose the path of rivalry in Kremsier [Czech: Kroměříž]; the latter possibility failed at Russia’s hand as it found itself at the height of its power against the strengthening of the Europe’s middle during this moment. The third possibility would have been to take on the fight against both Eastern powers simultaneously with rear cover in the West, but Prussia’s king could not accept this break from the tradition of 1815 with which he had grown up. It was necessary for Europe to bloodily resolve the Eastern-Western antagonism in which it had entangled itself in order to recognize its doctrinaire methodology and make space for the true interests and state-forming forces of the century.

Crimean War The protagonists of the rivalry between the Eastern and Western powers were Russia and England. The intersection between these two powers’ interests was European Turkey. Russia saw the possession of Constanti­ nople, which it had already claimed in the name of the Czar, as a matter of political honor; but the Dardanelles served as a path to the Mediterranean Sea and therefore to the most direct involvement with the fate of Europe. England, on the other hand, had recognized the significance of the Mediterranean Sea as the path to India since their surprise attack on Napoleon in Egypt; even the entente cordiale later signed between the two Western powers would nearly fall apart due to France’s new claims in Egypt. Therefore, by defending Turkish sovereignty, England was defending its own access to this avenue of power. Yet this produced a natural alliance with Austria, which as a neighboring state had strong interests in preventing its own access to the Donau — upon which it based its existence as a modern state — from being blocked by Russia’s southern expansionist policies. Due to this state of its interests, Austria

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now found itself provoked into questioning its relationship with its Russian »friends« in the war between Russia and the Western powers. In contrast, while Cavour concurrently prepared for a Sardinian solution to the Italian question by aligning with the Western side of the war, Prussia remained loyal to its Russian neighbors and arguably became Russia’s savior by preventing Austria from instigating direct conflict, despite the great temptation to solve the German question at this moment. Thus were the international conditions for the Prussian solution to the German question, aligning against Austria and relying on Russia for backing support, already created under significantly Bismarckian influence. The alliance between the Eastern powers, insofar as it touched on guiding principles and not on the shared policies toward Poland — meaning, insofar as it found its roots in 1815 and not 1772, and considering the reality of its current interests — had proven in its hollowness that there was now room for the natural development of these relations.

Nation-state The concept of the nation, as it developed in the nineteenth century, had its roots in the democratic elements of revolution. While the states of the eighteenth century merely regarded themselves as powers, the revolutions brought the population into the concept of state. The demos of the democratic idea became a nation at the hand of the ethnos. Yet while this nationalism arose from the universalism of democratic ideology, now only a hint of that universalism remained in the concept of nation — not in the rough form of principles but rather in the harder-to-conceptualize gestalt of historical service. The duality of the new national idea is distinctly reflected in the destinies of the title of Kaiser: the scion of an ideology that transcended state and ethnicity was grafted onto the stem of the old reality of states from the eighteenth century.

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»Kaiser« Since its inception, the notion of empire has carried with it the meaning of a supranational claim to power. The emperor possesses not the people, but rather the empire. Just as the empire stands in contrast with the people, the emperor is the foil of the king. Thus did the hero for which the title was named, the great Caesar, reshape the Asian notion of global empire: it no longer meant one ruling nation with an appendage of subservient peoples, but rather an empire in which the founding imperial ethnicity negotiated its right to sovereignty. For this reason, the old Roman Empire developed despite the initial adverse reaction after Caesar’s deeds, and as such the ethnic German kings of the High Middle Ages elevated their empire over their own kingdoms. This incomparable living connection between empire and kingdom in the same office, which essentially, within a secular context, only echoed the rivalry between the secular power and the spiritual, or eventually — as we can recall — the rivalry between the ethnic German kingdoms and the christianized Roman empire, remained constrained due to the resistance of the Eastern Roman Empire against the old Western half of the empire. Such did the East Roman soil become the site of Caesaropapism. It is no coincidence that in the nineteenth century, the liberation of the Greek-Orthodox Rayah people regularly followed the grounding of a national Church, and it is especially no coincidence that Caesaropapism experienced its classical form here once Russia began to seriously emphasize their claim of inheritance of »Tsargrad« Constantinople. This Russian empire — an empire because it readily wanted to caesaropapistically equate its »kingdom« following our terminology, with its ethnic foundation — now entered into European history: the first purely national empire. As the great Napoleon, acting as emissary for the new revolutionary ideology, renewed Charlemagne’s crown and shattered the old empire into pieces, the last Roman Empire of the German Nation claimed the imperial title for Austria alone in a most peculiar reversal of the relationship between universal and individual state ideologies which had shaped modern history since 1500. Considering that Napoleon’s empire had proven itself to be only a transitional structure, the Austrian Empire was the second purely »ethnic« imperial title in Europe after Russia. Napoleon III’s imperial title, in that it did not associate itself with Napoleon’s reign in 1804 but rather consciously and vocally with his reign during the Hundred Days, could also be considered a national empire. The hereditary imperial Parliament at the St. Paul's Church in

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Frankfurt and its realization at Versailles was likewise a renewal of the old German kingdoms and not of the Roman imperial title; it was consciously decided to only restore the former power; the national side of the old imperial rule. Disraeli’s empire in India was the first to leave this circle. The national empire of the eighteenth century is the conclusion of the reframing of the concept of state which had been in development since 1789. As seen from the outside, the community of states still appears the same as it did in the seventeenth century. Yet these states are filled with a soul by an influx of peoples; they have ceased to be relationships of authorities defined by purely random borders. Instead, the internally limitless weight in the system of powers, the volonté générale, took the role of an ethnic state, a power limited historically and by nature and therefore capable of »saturation.« The democratization of the states, which no longer encompassed small structures such as the polis or the canton but instead expansive modern states, practically had to resort to striving toward the ideal unanimity of nationality. Nationality was to some extent the historically and naturally inherent realization of the volonté générale, which had originally been called into being as the soul of the state during the revolution. Yet because these nation-states constructed themselves over the scaffolding of the old system, they did not entirely align with the volonté de tous: the will of the more or less nationally heterogeneous state populations. The overlap of this discrepancy between the volonté générale and volonté de tous — the conflation of the idealized core nation with the accompanying separatists into a single state-nation within the singular nation-state — fulfilled the national concept of empire of the nineteenth century; and in it the specific concept of state in this century established its symbolism, individually confining itself within the borders of its own state and peoples and enhancing »humanity« in the outside world only spiritually as it shied away from the idea of a world empire.

Turin-Berlin-Vienna-Budapest The history of European states in the two decades between the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 was carried out within these borders, which had only been provisionally and theoretically crossed by individuals up to that point. The biggest change, which had been striven toward since the beginning of the century and which could now finally become reality after the collapse of Europe’s artificial division between Eastern and Western powers, was the political nationalization

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of the middle of the region: the formation of Germany and Italy. It was carried out with liberal exploitation of the system of powers, which had been loosened, or even blown apart, like never before. Seldomly — barely even in the eighteenth century — did such a rivalry of forces which one might say had no systematic relationship play out like the one between Cavour and the empire-founding Bismarck. The states’ limited focus on themselves and their own popular goals allowed for a policy of recklessly shifting alliances, the most daring changing of fronts; there was almost no solid, persistent rivalry in the European system. This state of complete lability proved itself to be the statu nascendi for both Middle European peoples. The peoples in the East and West received the law of their destiny as it was embossed by the demonically progressing wills of the two nations who walked the path toward their statal forms without looking to the sides. Austria, tightly intertwined with both events, was particularly confronted with the question of its statal existence. As long as Austria competed with Prussia for German dominance — prior to 1848 secretly, and thereafter publicly — it drew the conclusion that it should emerge as a significant German state. But the democratic wave which had flooded over even Metternich’s state in 1848 covered up such a cleft between the idealized volonté générale of the nation-state and the volonté de tous of the nationalities that it appeared that only a unique combination between the principles of federalism and the nation-state, a method of »balancing out« could address it. As Austria then split into German-Austrian and Magyar-Hungarian states in 1866, and as Galician and Croatian secondary states branched off from those, the idea of the nation-state as understood in this century was built up in its seemingly enduring form via an intensely convoluted avenue. The nationalities which remained minorities were at a disadvantage. Everywhere in this age, attempts to solve the difficult equation between state and nation more or less followed the recipe of a melting pot, and where this didn’t work, minority nationalities were repressed. The Poles’ fate in Russia, the Alsatians under the Second Reich and later the Lorrainers under the Germans, the Poles under Prussian rule, the Germans under Magyar rule, and the Irish under English control — it is always the same. And to the greatest extent, but under entirely differing conditions, the national idea appeared in the bloody wars through which North America, still without a true connection to the European circle in accordance with its formation, rose from a federal state to a centralized state. Here, one could say, the foundation for nationality to come was laid for the very first time.

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Alexander II, Napoleon III, Victoria The states which had yet to address the big national questions at that time, or which did not address them seriously, were Russia, England, and France. While Russia finally took charge of its internal reform after the Crimean War and withdrew from the international political nexus, France remained deeply entrenched; the sort of European dominance that had been foisted upon it at the conclusion of the Crimean war, impacting it more than its English allies, should have helped the third Napoleon solve both looming national questions in France. He was, ultimately, bruised by each of them. The desperate politics of prestige in the subsequent years spanned from Querétaro to Sedan. Similarly to its opponent Russia, England had withdrawn somewhat from conti­ nental affairs after the Crimean war, just as after 1815 it had resumed its substantially insular politics compared to the eighteenth century. It became concerned with internal problems, to some extent and over the course of several decades gaining the prominence which the continent had obtained through its revolutions, and concerned itself heavily with its colonial questions. English colonial politics in the nineteenth century are largely defined by a lack of serious competition; the seal was set in Waterloo after Trafalgar. Yet there was also an internal shift after its experience with America; there was hardly a concern with empire building; the concept of economic power once more became linked to an unprecedented industrial boom in the free-trading motherland. Instead, the political leaders in England at the time viewed colonial possession as a potential solution to the social problems produced by modern industrialism. It was similar to the origins of English colonial politics in the seventeenth century, when the colonies could have been considered an escape route from the internal religious struggles of the time. Colonial politics were, in any case, anything but imperialist; at the time England may even have surrendered their colonial (or at least, quasi-colonial) possessions, the Ionian islands, voluntarily and without resistance. Like in all other European powers, in England the century was also a significant era of inner enrichment for the state; the concept of state was born: nationalization through the means of democratization. The picture of statal European society at the beginning of the 1870s demonstrates the same internal focus for everyone; there is something like a vacuum between the states, and even between Europe and the outside world. One feels among one’s own — »saturated.«

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Africa Yet the path diverged as early as the remainder of the 1870s. There was a series of small and large events which happened almost simultaneously, for the most part seemingly unrelatedly, that introduced the new era. The years surrounding 1880 cemented the transition. At this time, with friendly approval by Germany — who took part only hesitantly, more symbolically than seriously — the division of Africa between England and France began, and namely with the definitive tendency toward empire building; at the time England gave a new meaning to the application of the nineteenth century’s imperial ideology. Victoria’s imperial title was not bound to the motherland, but rather to the most significant colony; the sum of value was taken away from a national focal point and placed instead on the peripheries of imperial power. The first modern imperialist doctrine quickly arose in England at the time: the world will become English. That was when plans for the imperial consolidation of a global British domain emerged.

1879 On the continent, the rise of the Baltic Slavs was the catalyst. For the first time, the three disparate powers of Russia converged: the feelings of the rural masses, governmental politics, and the demands of »society.« The pan-Slavic philosophy brought pre-Petrine, Petrine, and post-Petrine Russia together to form a massive unit; this program, which reached beyond the concept of nation to the idea of race, was the first time that the Eastern great power ceased to be a barren, soulless »colossus«; only then did it become a truly vital force. On the way toward the realization of its claims, it was confronted by its familiar opponent: England. Germany took on the negotiations as a third party uninterested in the Balkans, leading to the great shift in German politics. As Bismarck, in pursuit of his endeavors to maintain peace in Europe after Germany’s national saturation, negotiated between Russia and England, he destroyed the mutually tolerant relationship that had been built with Russia — for Russia’s mediocre position at the conclusion of the Crimean War and subsequent repudiation of the 1856 straits treaty [sic] had granted Prussia the opportunity for German unification. In face of Russia’s mistrust, Germany sought out a new alliance: Austria, which had not initially followed Bismarck’s historical suggestion to shift its focus back to its

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southeast in 1866 and had instead held onto its German ambition, felt imposed by Russia’s renewed Balkan politics and was obligated to defend its claims; Andrassy, as a Hungarian, was inclined to shift the majority of the weight of the whole state’s politics in the direction of Hungary and laid hands on Bosnia; Bismarck covered Andrassy’s back. This move created the conditions for the powers’ renewed deployments. Austria now joined as a third party in the alliance between the two states which had previously nationalized themselves in conflict with Austria. And so, following diplomatic tradition, the power groupings had shifted again, this time to a position which Bismarck wished to maintain. Bismarck sealed the secret pact with Russia focused on avoiding prospective Austrian invasion of Russia in order to prevent Russia from being drawn into a French alliance, though this pact could not be preserved for long. If Bismarck had believed that he could have at least secretly maintained Europe’s labile state under the conditions which had brought him his greatest successes and preserved a solidified coalition, he conversely reached beyond his own secret politics back to the great mid-century German plans by considering the acceptance of German-Austrian affiliation in the Dual Alliance. And the alliance was immediately followed by internal side effects in Austria, even outside of these events. Now that it had finally seriously come to terms with the Prussian solution to the German question, its own Germans — who to that point at least had control in Cisleithania — were finally granted a significantly freer position. Yet the dominant German liberal politics failed in the active Balkan policies leading to Sarajevo, and that broke their neck. From that point on, Austria began its period of attempts to reign with its nationalities and to treat the Germans as one nationality among many; the economy and the Church offered themselves as internal unifiers, for nationality had become merely a dividing force. As such, the Social Democrats and the Christians more or less openly became political parties in the subsequent period. The other pillar of state power was the Magyars, who benefited from the smelting of the nationalities into a nation-state more than the Germans; with that conglomeration, Magyar interests were dominant in foreign policy and strengthened the pressure to push the whole state to the southeast. In Austria, the internal aspect of the new world formation foreseen by the Triple Alliance appears notably early. Yet the shift in the German Empire since then proved to be more significant, if also more gradual.

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Social State The internal development of the new German state had to this point played out under Western influences. Even the great reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in as much as they were not directly motivated by France, could be traced back to English example; especially since Montesquieu, it was believed that the preserved remains of the »beautiful freedom of the Germanic forests« could be found. What arose out of these Western structures in Germany was, at first, not itself a political form, but rather a notion: the notion of nationality as the fundamental, naturally inherent, destiny-fulfilling realization of the democratic idea of ethnicity. This equation of nation and nature, which in France and England became self-evident over the course of their arguably happier and more direct national histories, was experienced in Germany to its fullest extent and therefore first in this moment became a European mode of understanding. Yet its own form of statal efficacy did not arise from it. Internal policy in the decade after Königgrätz can be traced directly to 1791, or even to the »Civil Constitution of the Clergy.« Yet then, starting in 1872, a chain of events began that fully and entirely paralleled the French events at the end of the previous century, a »German Revolution« from which the German state ascended to its classical form following the European pattern. It was, however, an upheaval that flew in the face of the dominant political ideologies of the century, as the imperial decrees for the state took the defense of the weak into account; the state-loyal, state-founding citizen of 1789 became like a child at home.

From Bismarck to Wilhelm II The new ideas, which Bismarck recognized more in their indirect effects than in their true depths, were forced upon the country with a full raging bitterness. It was a revolution, not bloody, but full of poison. The obstruction of the still leading, empire-founding National Liberal Party, whose entire agenda was shunned by the combined social and economic policies of state intervention; the targeted lawmaking against the Social Democrats, who didn’t realize that the government — heartlessly and therefore securely — was on the path toward fulfilling their own party’s goals; the cool relationship with the Catholic Center Party, whose cooperation had been won but not their trust; the unsatisfying dismissal

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of the remaining bourgeois liberals from 1848…this time of transition and rebirth left behind a murky picture for the coming generation. One experienced the downfall of the old without seeing much in the new beyond the highly idiosyncratic shifting of the old giant who, in his struggle for the future of his work, made no attempt to hide that he was prepared to destroy the solid foundations he had created if it seemed like they stood in the way of this future. It might then have been perceived as a redemption when the first years of Wilhelm II’s autocracy suddenly illuminated the goal the state was steering toward, if the seeds of bitterness which clouded the view had not already been disseminated, and if these prospects were not themselves once again constricted in the coming period before the outbreak of the Great War. Those were truly prophetic years: the young emperor extended his hand to the parties who had feuded with Bismarck and who, almost unpredictably at the time, held the seeds of Germany’s internal future: the Centrists, Poles, and the bourgeois Left formed the governmental majority for a time; the anti-socialist laws were repealed and social policy attempted, initially fruitlessly, to garner active participation from the working class; relations with Austria were reestablished on more of purely ethical foundation with the revocation of the Reinsurance Treaty which had remained unknown to the Austrian government (only now could it develop from an international alliance to a constitutional one); the navy was formed and, almost more significantly, this nation with a history of land warfare set its sights on naval power; and in Jerusalem the emperor, with nearly unknowable meaning at the time, referred to himself as the friend of »three hundred million Mohammedans.« These were mere beginnings, still without internal relationships; where connections were sought, such as in Naumann’s ingenious program book from 1894, only a number of the politics were considered together, and — as with Naumann’s ideas on the relationship between naval imperialism and social liberalism — within an antiquated formula, somewhat akin to the theory and praxis of nineteenth century England. The full extent of these politics had still never been considered as the single unit that our contemporary war has taught us to recognize. And those who used the key phrase »yellow peril« could even less effectively find their way into the luminous fantasy of the still distant future which made the geopolitical concept of Europe visible for the first time, and for the first time indicated the destinies of the new, post-medieval Europe as it had been realized since the eighteenth century.

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From Pan-Slavism to Pan-Asianism Russian ideology at the time reformed itself along the lines of thought which looked beyond the development of the present situation. The attendant who accompanied the current Czar on his trip to Japan as successor to the throne, as well as Russian philosopher Solovyov, both elevated the concept of Pan-Slavism to »Pan-Asianism«: Russia, as the dominant party of Christian Europe, had the global mission of pulling the old, far-Eastern spiritual religions into the Christian sphere. It was the first (though still fantastical) political — viz. serious — confrontation of the problem which had at that point only been addressed by the Christian missions and, occasionally, in fashionable thinking; it became politically relevant through the wonderful rise and outward Europeanization of Japan. And in this form, »Pan-Asianism« was meant to step out of the realm of thought and into the bright light of reality. However, it was not due to the idea’s own significance, but rather because it became entangled in the old European powers’ relations. The power whose sphere was encroached upon by Russia’s new world-political dream (and its consequential strides into South- and East-Asia due to the failure of its Balkan plans in 1879) was England.

From Gladstone to Chamberlain An empire-building epoch had also begun for England in 1880, symbol­ ically inaugurated by the English imperial title in India, and practically executed through a series of endeavors that were meant to lead the way to bringing this, the most important colony, entirely under English control. Cypress and Egypt, Sudan and South Africa, Suez and Mecca are all stations along this path. An era of great empire-founding conquerors and colonizers began: the testament of the young Cecil Rhodes, the sickly Oxford student with a Cesarean soul, revealed the final, planetary extent of these ideas; what he himself and the conquistador Kitchener accomplished — while Chamberlain had only recently presented the drafts for a unification of the white oversea colonies with the motherland — was already nearly a cohesive African-Indian empire. There were still some holes: the German possession of Eastern Africa and, most importantly, the Turkish right to Arabia — although it was never truly acted upon and was now undermined by the intellectual center of Islam in the blossoming academies in English-protected Cairo — still stood in the

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way. But Russia’s encroachment on India’s borders was a direct threat; the goal itself was put into question, and the concerns along the way receded. Germany, who still wished to have Russia as a helper despite growing suspicious of its rivalry in Africa, its Turkish alliance, and its threateningly expanding navy, abandoned an anti-Russian approach. Because of this, England, in a bold entry into the new, realistic geopolitical state, reached for a Japanese alliance, and Japan gained for itself a position in the East while providing England with India’s security.

Advance A tremendous expansion of the world stage was made visible by the Manchurian war in the past quarter century. It was clear that only the powers who still existed on this stage could be counted as great powers; the old focal points of European politics lost their meaning. France, who had retracted its African plans after England’s resistance in Fashoda, withdrew from this collection of powers. Its hypnotized gaze upon the opening in the Vosges, which had been pitifully narrowed by the new modern standards, lamed its strength. This state, which at times could have stepped up as a dominant European power in the nineteenth century, was reduced to a mere political helping power, if admittedly a helping power of the highest class. The fact that once again a European problem, the Balkan question, could at least apparently be at the forefront of politics despite the expansion of the theater was a result of the resistance against Russia in Asia.

Encirclement As Austria’s reliance on Russia’s military and internal weaknesses and on Germany’s assistance was a step toward the Balkans, if only formally, the two powers — Austria and Germany — suddenly found themselves across from the sealed diplomatic front of those who remained, inclu­ ding their »ally« Italy and especially England, which now took up its antagonism toward Germany with full energy after Russia’s elimination. This opposition’s point of intersection did not lie in Constantinople, but rather in Baghdad, which was simultaneously the bridgehead of Middle European-Turkish politics and a crossbar blocking the way to building the English empire from Capetown to Cairo to Calcutta. With this, the

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Dardanelles — the old, classical intersection of English and Russian interests in the nineteenth century — became a secondary question for England while they became a primary question for Germany and Austria. This explains, despite a number of fluctuations, the persistence of the European powers’ deployments in the subsequent years which had begun with the annexation of Bosnia and which brought about an unbroken chain of Turkish wars starting in 1911 that led, uninterrupted, into the Great War of the present.

Middle Europe The outbreak of this war is the conclusion of the development that had begun in 1880. Only now were the interrelations comprehensible. It is hard to imagine something that so severely departed from the spirit of Bismarckian politics — not merely from individual maxims, such as the inherited friendship with Russia (which had been much more of a side effect pushing hard against the perimeters of the war) — as the politics that led to Germany’s entry into war, and into this war in particular. Above all, the alliance with Austria, under the idea of »Nibelungen Loyalty« that had begun with the non-renewal of the secret Russian treaty, was something entirely Wilhelmine. German politics, after a brief moment of withdrawal and self-reflection on the Bismarckian tradition of reckless egoism for the individual state, boldly took on the Austrian goals as their own during the decisive July Crisis — the alliance had indeed become more than an ordinary alliance; the Southeastern border of German imperial politics now extended to the Donau. But this was the first time that the old relationships with Turkey, which were previously founded on a negative basis of disinterest, and which had also recently existed without any political reality (or rather, without any imperative external necessity) as the philosophical bridge to Baghdad crumbled, were solidified — only now did the politics of the Baghdad process gain a solid geographical foundation, the compulsion arising from the pull of the borders. Germany was able to engage with Turkish politics, but it could just as easily abandon them and seek its fortune in other constellations. And so did the picture of a German Middle Europe transcend to the Bismarckian imperial structure, a great alliance of nations that would bring together the West- and South Slavs, Maygars, Turks, Arabs, and perhaps even the colonial possessions in the black continent. And as this face of the world’s future emerged from the boiling cauldron of

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present necessity, the country at the core of this future finalized the internal organization necessary for its own future. The previous century’s concept of nationality had manufactured a unity between the state and its constituent people by putting the state into the possession of the dominant nationality. Neither the presence of foreign nationalities within the state nor the presence of a national diaspora or irredentas beyond the state’s borders compromised the German state’s characterization as a nation-state. In political practice, both presences led to difficulties and dissatisfaction that could not be rectified within the framework of the old idea of statehood. Yet with the great transition since 1878, the »German Revolution« an idea of statehood had arisen which put the state in a new position in relation to nationality. The democratic concept of citizenship formed in the French Revolution had made residents into responsible co-creators of states’ politics, and had practically guaranteed the unity of this statecraft through the nationally unified aspect of the creators; this concept was replaced, or at least filled out, by a new one which saw the citizen as having a principally protective relationship to the state. Then a form of state became conceivable which went beyond and overrode the national self-government to include multiple nationalities. Such did the »social« philosophy of state — as opposed to the previous »liberal« philosophy, which continued to apply within its (national) borders — become the condition for the entry of the nations into the supranational confederation. However, because this problem suffered by the global German empire proved itself to be a future problem for the opposing powers, Germany’s state socialism — whose roots lay in the ten years leading up to the war, deeper than the necessity of the moment despite the rapid development forced upon it by the war — became exemplary for the people whom it fought. Internally, however, this meant the faithful entrance of the Social Democrats into the state, for state socialism was no longer perceived as a trap but rather as an essential component of the government. In contrast, Catholicism gained support through the political convergence with Austria and the West Slavs, which drastically strengthened the position of the Center. This made it into the carrier of future politics, both by and against its will, the part of the population who were somehow prepared to comprehend the new post-Bismarckian connections standing by its side. Naval power, Middle Europe and the Near East, social politics, and the autonomy of nationalities were brought together under the ironclad protection of the Prussian empire, which now

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began to shimmer in the radiance of the old imperial regalia resting in the treasury of the Imperial Hofburg Palace.

Greater Britain The great empire was smelted together in the forge of war under German leadership, and the existence of the British Empire was decided in that same war. How often had those on the outside told fables of its impending dissolution, of the conflicts of interest which existed between the mother­ land and her overseas realms? Now that was all proven to be negligible. The world empire which previously could have been challenged, who had continuously drafted and then discarded magnificently organized plans for economic and constitutional politics to build its stronghold, this tremendous portrait of Anglo-Saxon competence now stood before the eyes of the world in its full potency. England held together the foreign populations as well as the parts of its own people which had become independent overseas, all without significantly intruding into the depths of foreign national traditions. Instead, it did so through a reliable mixture of severity in the right moments and a generally high degree of trust (at times seemingly too high) that almost always proved to be successful.The skill with which it did so created a form of empire which had never been seen before. Germany, itself being unconscious of this desire and carried forward by the winds of history, was pushed towards an utmost German form of world empire: the political life form built out of nations and states that assembled themselves like the limbs of a body, each independent and living, each complete yet none of them a whole in and of themselves. While it politically strove for a concept of world consisting of uniquely-colored parts illuminated by a single source of light, like Goethe had once conceived in the philosophy of World Literature (in just as German a manner); England, following the classical traditions of its new history, created a concept of world empire which allowed for the isolating freedom of all participants, the unity of associated states in contrast with the German unity of an ethnic family. The intellectual struggle over these conflicting concepts of world during the war, that of »culture« and that of »civilization« was negotiated between the two Western powers and the middle-sized powers. France especially (here too acting as a helping power) had spoken on behalf of the Western side of the powers; in the ideal of the frictionless machine, both political concepts of world came to

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an agreement through the constantly converging intellectual histories of the Western powers.

Russia Russia remained silent. What had been produced in the cacophonous European battle of perspectives was only a poor copy of Western expres­ sion. Its true disposition would have to be guessed. It lies, like every historically important disposition, in its destiny. This destiny, already certain at the onset of the war, begins with the pushing of the state’s body to the east and the dissolution of the Polish and Baltic territories. After the separation from the »lazy West« the Russia formed is Dostoevsky’s Russia, and despite Polonophilic ideologies, in principle Solovyov’s Russia. Its world-historical goal will move once again in the direction toward which it had shifted at the pinnacle of the Russian spirit after the Congress of Berlin: toward its Asiatic East. What inner form this Russian empire will take, irrespective of the adoption of elements from the classical form of empire (which is shaped by German state socialism in the coming epoch), can only be hinted at. For Russia is the only one of the great powers that still has not reached its classical concept of statehood as achieved by France under Louis XIV with absolutism, by England in the eighteenth century with parliamentarism, and by Germany today with socialism. It appears that the shaping of a nation’s fundamental nature in literature consistently precedes the achievement of the classical, exemplary form of the European state. Russia has undeniably completed the former step, but has yet to complete the latter. Yet just as there are secret, difficult to articulate threads that lead from Rabelais’ expansive and full-bodied power before 1685 to the state of Louis XIV, from Shakespeare’s intellectually lithe men to Pitt’s state, and from Goethe’s bourgeois-clad depth to Bethmann; the way to the future of the Russian state will somehow stem from Dostoevsky’s demonic zeal. If it is permissible to put the uncertain into words, then I wish to say that in contrast to the Middle European interweaving of state and mind and in contrast to the neat Western division between the two, Russia — in the spirit of its Church that had shaped the Asian side of Christianity — will establish and implement both forces; Russia’s impotence across from Europe lies in its inability to either cleanly separate the purposeful external from the dark depths of internal life (like the English) or to

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meaningfully unite the two (like the Germans); instead, I believe, it will find its strength in Asia.

Prospects Three world empires are struggling against each other, no longer fighting for existence, but in truth continuing only to fight over their borders. After the war they will all remain standing, but they will not fill the world entirely, neither individually or all together. Independent focal points have developed — at least in Japan, seemingly the future dominant power in the Buddhist and Confucianist East, and in North America, the apoikia of the entire new ecumene despite its Anglo-Saxon origins — even if they have both aligned with the old European system in this war. And within the future Middle European system, Islam exists as an element of thoroughly dark possibility and the question of whether it will permanently remain in a community centered around Europe — its origin as an Eastern answer to the Christianization of Europe doesn’t exactly speak against it; yet nothing here is as certain as the fact that the future focal point of the Middle European-Western rivalry will lie in the Suez Canal, its »Dardanelles« therefore no longer in the political focal point of Islam but rather the intellectual one… thus opening the gates and doors to Islamic influence on the further development of affairs.

World Thus will the most looming global questions, the questions that lie beyond the Christian world, beyond the heir of the old ecumene, remain largely untouched. Only an attempt of a supranational organization of the world will emerge from the ashes of the present global fire, and because it will only be an attempt, it will exist in multiple forms. The great conflicts, the conflicts over the fundamental idea of the world, are yet to come. They will interweave themselves with the conflicts and alliances of the contemporary concepts of empire. Yet this creates an unprecedented condition: any opponent, the head of one party or another, will — even if it searches and finds its allies among the empires of this war — truly stand outside, beyond the world that could still be said to descend from the old ecumene under any right. The spatial containment of the entire earth in ecumenical thought will then be established by this war. Eternally

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separated cultural spheres have been discussed before. I do not believe in this. For God, of whom it is written in scripture is a warrior, created only a single heaven and a single earth.

THALATTA NAVAL DOMINANCE AND MARITIME FREEDOM The Water The pull of borders draws the history of the singular earth. Yet the earth itself has had its own natural borders since the beginning of time. Everywhere, the surrounding sea crashes against the coast. Two or three massive islands: such is the state of dry land among a collection of waters.

World Map The political and geographical pictures of the world are not the same. However, the former is dependent on the latter. World history has progressed at a snail’s pace, taking thousands of years to theoretically prove the roundness of the earth, and hundreds of years to prove it experimentally. We are currently experiencing a beginning. The world was historically flat even for the political generation directly before us, exactly as depicted in Homer’s geographical worldview. It is even so today — but let us not get ahead of ourselves.

»Lands« and »Islands« That »Homeric« worldview as we have preserved it — a large inland sea, surrounded by coasts, with a narrow band of ocean encircling its entirety — is not the oldest worldview, certainly not the oldest world-historically. The »Homeric« world is preceded by one that we might describe as »biblical«: the worldview of the great Eastern empires, whose destinies are collected in the concave mirror of prophetic scriptures in a similar manner that the Greek soul’s diffusion through the convex lens of Homeric writings radiated the Greek destiny across the world. In this biblical worldview, a sea does not undulate at the center; there is instead

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an enormous landscape, a landscape upon which the great empires are formed and dissolve, over which sweep the northern storms of the nomadic nations, and upon which the tempests of power tensions release themselves with a rumble. Every sea that crashes against the continent’s mass is an ocean — not the world’s narrow collar from the Homeric perspective, but a tremendous unknown. One was namely aware of coasts beyond the seas, but they did not connect, they did not give the sea form, no enclosed distinction: they were the »islands« of the Second Isaiah, scattered points in an unending sea, distance, the most external, that which lies beyond of the self-contained solid ground in the middle. This sea is not the »high« sea, not the powerful back of the living being around whom the coasts huddle, suckling upon her to gain their life, strength, goals, and wills; instead it is the yawning abyss surrounding the familiar land, the abyss into which sailors and ships venture »downward.« Earth, given to human beings to live upon, refers solely to the solidity of land.

Thalatta As Xenophon’s Ten Thousand Soldiers escaped from this continent that they had crossed from one end to the other and as they celebrated with the joy of those who had returned home, they were spatially no closer to their homeland than they were during their entire trip through the limitless plains and mountains of the continent. No matter what: they saw the sea, the coast, and by seeing the coast, they could glimpse the opposite coast, could glimpse their homeland; the sea guaranteed their return; where there was sea, it belonged to the Hellenes. Greek life grew, nestled along the surrounding coasts in hundreds of auxiliary settlements; no external terrestrial border confined its expansion; one who wished to draw the inner border was forced to follow the flow of the coasts forming a ring around the sea. It was the closed-off coast of the Mediterranean Sea; the ocean on the other side was only a grim legend; reality, beloved reality, was merely that which belonged to them, that which was familiar at the center of the world where they lived. The final word of the eternally touching epitaph that greeted Eretria’s war-torn sons of the homeland who rested so far from the sea »in the very center of Ecbatana’s plains« was appropriate for them: »Farewell, my dearest sea.«

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Okeanos Alexander’s campaign then led the Hellenes deep into the continent. For more than a millennium, Asia had remained in the memory of legends and fairytales as the last of the great ancient empires that this land’s broad neck had grown accustomed to carrying. Alexander himself saw it differently. His superhuman forward march did not take the conquered land into consideration; he only created roads and established fortress cities at their controlling points. Wherever possible, he left the surrounding areas to their original occupants, giving them free reign. And somehow, this was always possible; he wanted to force only their friendship, only to protect that which he had created himself: the road. Yet the road through that endless »plain of Ecbatana« strives toward a single goal: the sea. The infinity of its will, woven together and felt with a shutter across all times, is precisely this: he wished to open the ocean itself, that which had previously been a dark exterior, to the Greek world; it too should become the »dearest sea«; Greece’s sea was to expand beyond the borders of the enclosed sea, a piece of whose coast Greece shared, out to the infinity of the further seas. And as this unconditional will, the greatest that the Greek world had proffered, was shattered by the languid stock of this very same world, Alexander salvaged as much of his boundless plans as he possibly could. Instead of the road to the furthest beach of this most exterior sea, he compromised by reaching its nearest beach. The navy was formed, and at the mouth of the current that carried him seaward, he declared the symbolic achievement of this external goal to the solemn victims who set out to the ocean. The sacrifices to Okeanos indicate anticipation in a double sense: anticipation of this exterior goal and anticipation of achieving the next one: the circumnavigation of the continuous coastal lands starting at the point he reached. This too he was forced to leave to someone else; he himself led the indispensable tool of his will, his army, back to the land. But his heart remained with Nearchus’ fleet, who was destined to complete his work; the narratives his successor told in the weeks after returning to Babylon, as the destiny of Nearchus and his fleet was still uncertain, demonstrate that vividly: particularly the final story, as the admiral, scouting ahead for the fleet safely returning home, returned alone. Alexander, only now fully convinced that the rumors of the downfall of the fleet were insubstantial, made the effort to personally greet this friend benignly and gently, learning that the fleet was salvaged having completed his vision. And now the fleet, no longer the army, was his most direct tool in completing his final plans, which were

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once again directed seaward with the tapping and circumnavigation of Africa’s coast — yet death snatched the blossoming commencement of these plans away from him.

Mare Internum The maritime city of Rome — for that is what it was, established at the mouth of the Tiber; its oldest coins minted with a ship to make it navigable by the ships of time — grew along the coast. It is the consequence of a romantic history falsified by the old trade patrician families if this nobility later on appears to be based on the trade and ownership of land; the memorials of civil developments spoke a new language, as did the spirit of the first centuries which were principally peace-seeking and not directed toward conquering lands (and especially not in the mainland). Thus did the republic first rise to its world-historical height at the very moment that the century-old, if not multiple centuries-old, trade agreement with the great mercantile power on the opposite African coast fell apart. At that point, the massive fight for the western half of the Mediterranean Sea escalated, in which both powers brought it upon themselves to gradually reach around the entire rim of the basin to pull South Gaul and Spain’s coasts into their directly controlled domains. Rome was the victor. The empire that was created in this war, step by step and without any drive for conquest, remained an empire of coasts — but it grew as such with natural necessity, following the pull of the enclosed sea’s coasts over into the eastern basin yet never reaching far into the land. It always clung to the coast, yet no longer ruled indirectly from colonies in the Greek tradition, but rather — as the heirs of the Diadochi — directly managed them in a more or less solid form of territorial political organization. In this way did the Roman Empire become the first maritime coastal empire, completing the idea that the Greeks had only dreamed of; the jubilation of the Ten Thousand, drunk with longing for the homeland, merely anticipated that which became reality only with Pompey’s great project: the establishment of peace in the Mediterranean. That was the first time that humanity was truly at home nearly everywhere that the coast of this inner sea reached. Yet in the very moment that the politicization of Homer’s geographical worldview was finally completed, the person arrived who was to become the man of destiny in his own era and in all of history to come: Julius Caesar.

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Mare Externum Caesar’s conquest of Gaul would become fundamental to European history. Within Roman history, it meant something entirely new: it was the first conquest of a land, not a coast; and beyond that, more significantly, it was the first great conquest that the Roman Empire was not forced to take due to circumstances — the pressure of surviving to the next day. It is, one might say, the first despotic deed of Roman history. In hindsight, this despotism pales in comparison to the recognition of a greater political context that awards this deed necessity, and it is nearly certain that Caesar pointedly registered this greater context and took it into account. But only when that great, far-reaching anticipatory insight into the dangers threatening the Mediterranean empire from the depths of continental Europe aligned with the highly personal necessities of the great leader — only then was the first step taken. When it happened, Rome annexed a vast portion of ocean-flushed continent onto its closed-off Mediterranean coastal empire and the man of this deed — the founder of the new European-Atlantic history — used Roman legions and German knights to battle Pompey — the man who concluded the European history which was purely Mediterranean — at Pharsalus. That was when Caesar’s deed began to reveal its world-historical face and make the perpetrator himself into its first servant. Caesar’s final plan, pacification of the dark, threatening hinterlands of Europe by conquering the Russian plains, the Germanic forests, and the connection of these regions to the Gaulish province, was the epitomal counterpart to Alexander’s final plans: Caesar’s plan was as land-oriented as Alexander’s was focused on the sea; just as the last and greatest descendent of Achilles followed the road to the sea with boundless compulsion, the progenitor of all kaisers and czars reached past all seas to encompass the empire of the continent with a massive, self-serving grasp.

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North Sea and Southern Sea Just like it did to Alexander, death ripped Caesar away from his still incomplete vision. And like Alexander’s vision, only the finite aspect, only that which in principle already existed, was salvaged; the traces of his infinite desire, his drive toward the ocean via the lands of the East, soon spoiled and faded away. In the same manner, Augustus Caesar was merely left with inherited achievements, not goals. The pacified world of the Mediterranean (the ecumene) and the surrounding transalpine space which sheltered it from potential Cimber storms — the great protector Augustus used these assets to defend the empire. But the new age, instigated by the genius before, prevailed in the face of all cautiously conservative wills. As the dark cloud of the North Asian plains and Germanic forests broke out over the Mediterranean and its flood threw everything together, the focal points of the great Julius’s two deeds brought the earth’s future into the light: Clovis I’s throne in Paris and Bishop Leo I’s seat in Rome were the mountaintops upon which history’s ark was grounded.

Paris and Europe Europe’s body held the new seat of power, but the new waters that washed over it were an ocean, dark and unknown. The two seas to the north only gradually won the security and liveliness of an inland sea. Thus did this new world initially turn its back to the ocean; its face remained pointed toward the southern sea’s coasts. As the new force connected itself with the old, as Clovis’ descendants were coronated by Leo’s, Caesar’s work may seem to have been fulfilled: the old Mediterranean world was no longer threatened by the European continental body; the Mediterranean once again appeared as the heart of the earth, while Europe and its continental depths seemed destined to become linked to the Mediterranean coast. Yet the old and new worlds which had mixed together on that fateful Christmas evening in 800 had separated once again, giving Europe a new, proper soul of its own, distinct from the Mediterranean. This new direction was the great result of the Treaty of Meerssen. Germany did not gain freedom or autonomy at the time, as a blindly nationalistic historian might claim, but rather Paris did. The golden burden of the imperial crown was soon to weigh upon Germany’s head. The empire would become Rome’s champion in Europe. Paris became Europe’s

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colony in the Greek tradition, yet it was a colony within Europe — the new, non-ecumenical, nation-carrying Europe; the continental body that gradually turned its gaze away from the old Mediterranean and toward the new sea, now no longer an »ocean.« The tension between »Paris« and »Rome« between king and emperor, nation and ecumene, Atlantic and Mediterranean, became the lifesource of the medieval world — not the personal union of the two as it had been for a brief moment under Charlemagne.

Asia and Mecca Yet just like all truly meaningful, foundational conflicts, it was not merely between two rivals, but was instead a conflict in which the two combatants reciprocally learned how to use their opponent’s weapons; the empire intermingled itself with the forces of the German Nation, the kingdom with the forces of the unified chivalric-scholarly civilization. Thus could both combine their forces in a national effort to accomplish an ecumenical deed should a common enemy threaten their shared domain: the old unity of the Mediterranean. And that happened.

Jaffa In his competent assessment of Arminius the Cheruscan as an opponent of the Roman Empire defeated in battle but not in war, Tacticus identified another terrible future foe of the Empire in addition to the Germans: the Parthians. Not one, but two dark clouds of continental peoples hung over the Mediterranean skies. The cradle of civilizations in the Near East, inexhaustibly baring a new ruling group every half millennium to serve that continent’s tremendous expanses, was seemingly temporarily sealed off by Rome’s commanders and caesars. Yet time and time again, the waves broke over the constantly shifting dam; only the Mediterranean coasts themselves remained untouched. And so, under the influence of an all-encompassing religious shockwave whose fertility had never been seen before, this ancient world of history experienced the birth of a new people. And no more than a hundred years after the new power had its breakthrough, the waves of the East crashed over the southern Mediterranean coast, their spray soon reaching all the way to the northern coast. The Mediterranean world had ceased to truly be what it claimed

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under the name of Rome. Sooner or later, a fundamental distinction between the two ecumenes — that of Rome and that of Mecca — would have to be established instead of merely building levees against the rising flood. The conflict would become a simultaneous fight over the old geography of the ecumene and Mediterranean dominance, while the corresponding end goal, both from a politically realist perspective and symbolically, was Rome’s possession of Mecca’s Holy Land on the farthest reaching part of its coast.

1453 As the Turks welcomed the Arabs and the Caliph assumed the East Roman throne, this fight — the fight between Mecca and Rome — was decided. Mecca was the victor; the transfer of the Caliphate to Byzantium made it clear. Yet as Islam, savoring its victory, shifted its focus to the Mediterranean and turned to face the West, it left the fight for the East at its back, thereby unknowingly sentencing itself to defeat. In the world-historical moment when Christianity discovered the New World within itself and abroad, Islam held fast onto the old one; it revealed the opportunities available in the internal and external oceans in Mecca’s geographic region and at last became a Mediterranean power in the moment that Europe finally turned away from the Mediterranean to face the pure mirror of the ocean. It was then that Islam decided on its future world-historical role.

1492 Europe decided on its own role in the year 1492. The closely dichotomous connection between the two dates is noteworthy enough. Columbus’ caravels were equipped using the spoils gained through the destruction of the final remnants of Islam’s Arabian zenith before it was to become entirely Turkish. As the new Europe began to establish itself, the last Greeks salvaged the treasures of antiquity from the domes of holy wisdom desecrated under the shadows of Mohammed’s hoofbeats. And while previously, similarly to Europe, Islam had reached from its deeply continental roots to the coasts of the Mediterranean; it now began to give up, acting in accordance with the polarized approach represented by the name Baghdad-Cordova, but in a contrasting sense: it narrow-mindedly

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clambered over the old sea while Christianity directed its keels toward the new seas. Until now, Islam had supplied Europe with the treasures of their common beyond: India and the Far East. Now it had to witness Europe reach its arm directly out to both Indias from its farthest coast. It had banished itself to a small world in the moment that the great Genoese declared: the world is small.

Routes to India The forelands of the new Atlantic Europe overlooked both Indias. The coasts and palm trees of new worlds suddenly emerged from behind the great, endless ocean which had previously crashed against lackluster coasts. And it was both Indias: not only the one of the old hemisphere, only accessible via a maritime voyage clinging to the directly-connected coast, but also the one which lay spatially closer and opened the way for daring, infinitely distant Western routes. Vasco de Gama was the first to realize Alexander’s dream of expanding the Mediterranean coast into a global coast and joining the Mediterranean to the ocean; but Columbus, discoverer of the »other route« to India, was the first to establish the independence of the new Europe, spying the opposite coast from the previously lifeless coast that Europe called its own. Coast and opposite coast — so began the conjoining of all oceans to form a sea. The discoverer’s blunder, which by the tremendous grace of destiny never crumbled, allowed him to recognize all oceans in his own. He could, in his error, anticipate the truth that would immediately become concealed once more for centuries to come as history focused on his mistake — that is, until now: the truth that there is only one ocean, and all coasts encircle it.

Old Authorities and New World The New World was there. How did the old powers seize hold of it? The grandson of the royal family whom Columbus had served won the imperial crown in competition with the Parisian king; the old internal European tension between the Mediterranean inheritance and the continental-Atlantic claim would break out into an all-consuming conflict at the last moment. The leaders of the conflict both already stood at the same new level in the Atlantic, the representative of the old

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power was particularly visible. The entire past and future rested, tightly interwoven, behind Charles V’s cool, mask-like visage. The last bearer of the imperial crown, who personally retrieved the golden collar from the old Caesars’ homeland, spoke the great, truly Columbian words that turned all backs to the Mediterranean: his was the empire on which the sun never sets. Yet it was equally true that the final victory was certain for France. Charles’ empire was shattered by the internal conflicts of the powers he forced together. It collapsed into purely ecumenical authorities who all established themselves upon the grounds of the new era: Spain’s kingdom, the German territorial states now free from Roman influence, the House of Habsburg’s power and the imperial title that followed it alone, without a trip to Rome, and the Roman Curia that had established itself directly on the grounds of the bellicose Julius’ religious state. The way in which the Catholic Church henceforth tried to realize their ecume­ nical claim as the original transmitter of their ancient heritage decisively symbolizes the entire changing of the times. It no longer did so via its classical connections with the world empire, fully realized by Charles V and witnessed in their portrayals by Thomas and Dante. Instead, it did so partially via the Atlantic missions of the great spiritual conquistadors, the Jesuits, and partially — for Rome’s old Second Sword [sic] was no longer swung across all four winds — via the authority of a power which was clearly non-spatial, space-denying, and consequently transcending all spaces. Here, for the first time, in the greatest measure and in a uniquely abstract form, this power would prove to be a foundation for all global powers: finance. In both cases, the Church inoffensively disavowed its old world foundation, the geographical heritage of the caesars — in short, the Mediterranean — and established itself in a changed world and by new means as an ecumenical power in a new sense of the word.

Atlantic Powers The maritime wind of the Atlantic was the animating breath for the new era. The Atlantic shore had finally and suddenly transformed from the back to the face of the European world. Three countries shared this shore; all others were relegated to the background. Spain had taken the first step, to some extent resolving the technicalities of the new way of life. France, that tireless carrier of aspirations toward new ways of life throughout their whole historically polarized old-new epoch since Caesar, promoted their legitimate claims to leadership now that the new

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modernity finally completely and unconditionally took the spotlight; leadership became theirs two hundred years after Columbus. And if the dialectic of medieval Paris — at least formally and within its objective role in the old ecumenical society — preserved the autonomous right of a young Europe, the Gallican Articles and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen freely expressed and distinguished the character and self-will of continental Europe from the entirety of Mediterranean antiquity. England — naturally the most Atlantic of the three countries — ultimately waited patiently for its time, which had to come due to its position; this path began immediately when France rose to its height after Spain was pushed aside. And two hundred years after France reached its peak, England reached its own.

Netherlands Yet at the core of this steady fight for dominance between the three com­ peting Western powers, a core to which two or three voices contribute, the heart of the new Europe is none of the three powers themselves. The head is nothing without the body, and behind its Atlantic face stands the entirety of Europe’s body, continental and Mediterranean, now forming a single mass. Yet the heart of all of Atlantic-continental Europe is the small piece of earth where the great, most European river flows into the ocean: the Netherlands. It is simultaneously the battle field and the prize in the Atlantic powers’ conflict: its loss would mean the beginning of the end for Spain, who while far removed is bound to its possession as a naval power; its neighbors France and England perpetually fight over it up until the last moment of this era, until Napoleon’s fall. And it represents a window to the ocean for Europe’s hinterland. By winning here, the heir of the old imperial power hopes once again to take part in the great life of the new world. Meanwhile, the younger powers who wish to rise are seeking their prospects through this window. For their entire lives, Brandenburg’s Great Elector and Russia’s great czar strive after what they witness here. This year is fateful for the entire epoch, the year that England attempts to reap what its two predecessors, Spain and France, had sown: a coalition of Europe’s entire midland that elevates the House of Orange to the throne as the Great Elector delivers the solution to the Amsterdam-London problem from his deathbed. And the Netherlands in this century had the same meaning for all of Europe, at the forelands and the hinterlands, just as Athens had carried significance in antiquity

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since the fifth century, Paris in the High Middle Ages, and Germany in the nineteenth century: the common place of learning, the burning point of the zeitgeists of freedom and individuality.

Roads The old trade roads shifted toward this new focus. If in antiquity the Mediterranean was the common military road for the riparian peoples, in subsequent eras Europe was composed of a continental Northern body and a Mediterranean coast. Trade hubs came to form where these two parts of the world conjoined, in upper Germany and subalpine Italy; for the main depositories of long-distance trade always arise when a powerful barrier within a shared world, surmountable only with audacity and a desire to win, lays the objects of desire before the eyes of the beholder and yet withholds direct access. Such did the Alps in the Middle Ages play the role that the Mediterranean played in antiquity; the largest trade cities lay at the foot of the mountains in the north as much as the south. In turn, a world appeared which, instead of forming two masses within itself, shifted its center of gravity to the sea. And there is only one place where trade is pushed just as distinctly to the nearest point where its largest continental mass expands toward the lifegiving coast: Nuremberg, Augsburg, Genoa, and Venice sink to the second and third ranks while Antwerp and Amsterdam rise.

1776 This entire dynamic in Atlantic Europe lasted for its two or three centuries under a double premise: first, the stagnation of the European hinterland, partially due to natural causes and partially contingent upon extraordi­ nary precursors; and second, the especially natural and only gradually yielding lifelessness of the New World, which was becoming a site of mercantile and colonial exploitation. Both passivities, that of Europe’s own hinterland and that of the New World, begin to rise up at nearly the same moment. Indeed, Europe’s center remained in the eighteenth century, just as in the seventeenth, the military exercise ground for the warring armies of the Atlantic powers: those of France and Spain in the seventeenth century, and those of England and France in the eighteenth. Yet internal centers of power strengthened themselves in these fights,

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initially only on the continent, and Frederick the Great’s personality already seemed to occasionally deviate from the framework which had a chokehold over the powers’ deeds in this Atlantic world war: the Seven Years’ War. And, more significantly, the object of the Atlantic conflicts increasingly ceased to be merely an object; England already deemed it necessary to carefully handle the interests of its colonists. Not carefully enough. With its own movement and in connection with the movements in Europe, the establishment of an independent power was consummated on the opposite coast’s continent. The war against England; the peaceful displacement of France; the self-liberation of southern Spain; and finally, as a fundamental conclusion to the whole series, the United States’ protectorate over the entire newly liberated continent as declared in the Monroe Doctrine, as the United States themselves, in their great national war of independence in the middle of the century, expelled the remaining European — or at least, aristocratic Western European — sympathizers through the dominance of the new, specifically American partisans, the Yankees in the best and worse sense: these events are all stations on a single path. Bear in mind: these are all entirely defensive movements, at least in the context of the American continent; they are not reaching outward; they are merely repelling foreign boots from their own shores. Furthermore: it is initially only the American East Coast that meaningfully declares itself as an independent power, these movements are all only directed toward the Atlantic side of the continent; even the internal conflicts resulting from the movements primarily play out both politically and militarily in the states of the East Coast. The other coast — the Pacific — remains at the continent’s back; only the Atlantic, not the Pacific Ocean, loses its oceanic character at the end of the eighteenth century to become an enclosed sea whose coasts have reached a quiet balance after three hundred years of European dominance. The Pacific remains asleep in oceanic infinity.

Cook and Napoleon Yet just then, the bold British seaman Cook is able to make the great reach over the ocean to discover a new continent for his country. By going to Australia, England is the first European power to push far into the Pacific Ocean; Europe’s Atlantic coast gains new sleeping opposite coasts by way of the new English colony in the Pacific in the same instant that the opposite coast in the Atlantic eludes its grasp; East Asian and

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West American shores rise from the water, far overseas. Indeed, England alone in all of Europe wins the view over this new sea; at that moment, the last great Atlantic rival, France, falls into civil conflict that will soon spread beyond its borders. As the now familiar, now independent opposite Atlantic coast slips out of its political vision; it relocates its main front back to Europe’s interior. And the English rivalry and the fight for the Netherlands merely echo like a powerfully reverberating tone from the organ of the previous Atlantic century, only audible in the brief moments between events, finally fading out with the conclusion of the continental conflicts.

The Continental States With France’s about-face, mainland Europe had suddenly once again become world history’s great stage. And now, the powers which had spent the last two hundred years developing in the world-historical background reveal themselves: the massive continental power in the East and the strong military organizations in the midlands. Indeed, the major ideology of global trade, of national wealth, which had increasingly formed the substance of statesmanship in the preceding eras of discovery, is staved off in the mainland. Originating from France’s internal tremors, which had to some extent been the turning point of its transition from the sea back to the mainland, the offensive spreads out across the entire continent. Everywhere, the powers turn within and grapple with the intellectual and economic forces of their populations, either bolstering or subduing them, but regardless becoming bound to them, thus fusing with their territory and the space which they occupied in an unprecedented manner. Ideologies of democracy and free trade lead the states to focus on their internal affairs. They are taught, instead of managing their interiors according to the demands of an objective and limitless foreign policy (i.e. population count, balance of trade), to emphasize the promotion of the interior (i.e. constitutional organization, increased production) as if that were an end in itself. They only base their foreign policy on their own needs. The oldest remaining (and indeed, the only) ecumenical power, the Church, keeps up with the democratization of its entire mechanism, like always a sensitive indicator of great historical transitions. This nationalization of states progenates an internally structured continental Europe with a decade-long alternating series of revolutions and wars: a Europe which consistently disavows its coasts out of pure pragmatism and

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understands itself, as the arbiter of the entire epoch declared for his own state, as »saturated.«

The Island Yet beyond the mainland lies the island. As a rule, it only superficially participates in continental affairs. During the mainland’s deep breath inward, England still faces outward with most vibrant potency. The Atlantic sea may be closed off to it, but now it must no longer focus on fighting the liberated opposite coast — for in the Pacific Ocean, a new series of opposite coasts appears from the vantage point of the young, life-demanding fifth continent. Undisturbed and facing practically no competition, England dedicates itself to the economic and colonial exploitation of the Pacific coasts. Its politics in Europe, especially in the Mediterranean, are also determined by the necessity of securing a path to this new ocean, which is henceforth meant to be an English sea as its adjacent Atlantic ocean is pulled away from it. The Mediterranean, therefore, becomes a singular path directly from England to the Peaceful Sea, reached directly via Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez; and indirectly via the formation of the new nation-states of Greece and Italy, who were heavily supported by and were forced to rely on England due to their nearly insular positions, offering a »controlled« route. And already, the dream of interconnected colonial possessions along the ocean’s entire western coast, from Capetown to Shanghai, crested the horizon. Cook’s work seemed to bear fruit for the Empress of India, just as Columbus’s work across the other ocean had once promised for Charles V.

The Dark Continent And it remained obscured. But perhaps only to our retrospective gaze today. For as soon as a unified Afro-Asian coast could be dreamed of, a new state of affairs commenced in the history of global discovery, and this new state of affairs awoke new political objectives which lead England to be faced with rivals once again, after nearly a century. The first shining daylight of history fell only over Africa’s northeastern land of estuaries; the continent was from that time forward known only as a land of coasts. Now, researchers — Germans and Britons alike — broke ground into the »dark continent« and, a century after Cook had discovered the fifth

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and final continent, first truly discovered the newest continent within the oldest. That is the deciding moment. Europe’s states are awoken from their internal slumbers. The nineteenth century is proven to be a mere intermission to world history. Admittedly, a restorative intermission, after which new actors enter onto the polished wood of the planetary stage.

Empress of India England, content with its lack of rivals, had set itself up in the free world of the Peaceful Sea. The eastern and western coasts of this ocean now also began to rouse themselves gradually starting in the middle of the century, both through the United States’ advancement toward San Francisco and through Japan’s transformation. And now, things threatened to develop here as they had a hundred years before in the Atlantic — so England itself gave the signal to begin the new epoch. It had originally felt like a motherland in the classical sense in relation to the colonies, each only viewed as a possession, a dependent island, and above all foreign — England alone was the live-giving, life-demanding centerpoint of the entire system. Yet now it had discovered imperialism. The moment is characterized by a visibly prominent act, the assumption of the Indian imperial title by the English queen. This act stipulated and announced that — if still not actualized for some time — the British Isles had ceased to be the centerpoint: a second centerpoint had now been created, one which for the first time was oppositional, purely non-European, thereby releasing England’s entire political sphere of influence, out to its very periphery, from its specific relationship with the motherland. A steady vibrancy was now poured out over the entire circle. What did this world empire look like as it became self-aware for the first time — the first world empire since the completed discovery of the entire earth?

British World Map It reached to the West and the East with two most intense stretches, grasping the white colonies of Canada and Australia, the former in the north of the Western Hemisphere, and the latter in the south of the Eastern Hemisphere. The imperial power now spans between these two most extreme points. The European cultural heritage forms the occidental heart of the massive body, while the Asian cultural heritage

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forms the oriental heart. But this structure, shimmering with evenly distributed tension as it reaches from one end of the globe to the other, has its central pillar, the transition between the Western and Eastern seas, in the oldest-youngest continent: Africa. The waves of both seas intermingle at its southern cape. The white colony in the West, Canada, had become a memorial to its French heritage and the purely Atlantic era of the empire; and the Eastern one, Australia, became a hotbed of a new type of person without pre-conditions as it became a setting for the future of the statal-societal experiment. In contrast, the South African colony meanwhile became the land at the cutting edge of the present in that decade; its full possession was struggled over in the decades following the assumption of the Indian crown. Simultaneously, however, the empire stakes its claim in the ancient land in the continent’s north under the leadership of the great East-West statesman who has made this empire-building his life’s work. Doing so, it secures the artery through which the empire’s two »hearts« communicate with each other. Africa, tapped by the British Empire in both the north and the south, suddenly reveals itself for what it is: the load-bearing central pillar in the halls of the earth. Not only do both of the oceans crash against its coasts; the sea of the old world, devalued since the end of the Middle Ages, also beats against its northern coast and is revitalized by the Suez Canal, which has opened the door to the East that had been closed until now. The older and younger oceans intermingle here too, and magical forces emanate from Africa’s northern coast that draw the eyes of mainland Europe back to the long-neglected Mediterranean shores. Stretched between three coasts, Africa gathers together the eras of the past and unites them to form our present day.

Opponents The people of Europe are awoken by the brisk breezes of the three seas, the oldest and the two younger ones, as they flow through the world from all directions. While England already dreams of uniting the backbone of the empire with its life-giving hearts, or at least with the Eastern heart, over the continent’s land bridges; France, Atlantic by nature yet already holding some claims on the African coast and in Southeast Asia, seeks a path straight through the continent in between on its global oceanic conquest. Yet England commands it to stop, and France, compromising its future, allows its claims to the empire to slip

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out of its hands. Russia reaches out wearing the vast cloak of its borders: already settled in across the wide expanse of the old world, it has one hand in Vladivostok in the furthest corner of the East and one at Haparanda in the closest corner of the Western ocean; and now it sets its sights on the connecting sea in the European South. But here too, England, once again spry and well-prepared, denies Russia the previously-tread path of the Dardanelles and even forces it away from all access points to the Eastern ocean using subtle political maneuvers at India’s northern border and, significantly, Japan’s military support. Germany, landlocked by nature, only hesitantly follows the call of the sea. The state offers protection to its explorers and merchants in Africa almost against its will; the German flag only flies in sparse and insignificant stretches of land in Africa’s Pacific South. But its navy grows, and the alliance with Turkey, which had previously been primarily based upon political neutrality, is now consciously promoted. And between the occupation of Kiautschou, the development of Mesopotamia, and the expeditions to Tangier and Jerusalem, the faint outline of an external border and internal bridges began to emerge. Only an outline. It is, like Frederick’s Prussia had once been, a royaume des frontières, a world empire made up only of points, more a loose collection of thoughts and plans than something real. But the navy grows, and it is real. And England takes notice.

Seas Demands for universal maritime freedom blossom in response to the reality of Germany’s universal maritime dominance. The fact that this is demanded only demonstrates that the oceans have ceased to be oceans, instead flooding together to become a single enclosed sea. The freedom of public, borderless oceans without seafaring neighbors is inarguable. Dominance can not be denied when surrounding an epicontinental sea occupied by only a single neighbor. But when the coasts come together around the sea and more than a single neighbor occupies that space, then the stronger powers must fight for naval dominance and the weaker powers must fight for freedom — and both for their rights to the waters. And so, maritime freedom cropped up as a key phrase in early conflicts, first in Holland as England — now a major maritime power — began to use its southern and eastern coasts to close off the North Sea, which had previously been politically, if not geographically, open. Yet the term could only become an all-encompassing demand as all of the world’s seas

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crashed against contested coasts, as the waters of the Mediterranean and Red Sea mixed together while the common global sea surrounded Africa — a sea in which countless masts bore the British flag, but in which an increasing number began to sport the black, white, and red flag.

War The World War of 1914 is a war over Africa. The entire development of English-German relations up until the war, from Peters to Lichnowsky, can be read within the African question. It is a war over Africa, over the oldest-youngest continent with all world-historical seas at its borders — and thereby a war over the world. Germany already had ample possessions scattered across Africa, alongside claims to the old conti­ nental European empire and connections to the Mediterranean via its alliance with Austria, as well as its protectorate over the Roman throne. And with the revival of the Mediterranean Sea after four centuries of stagnance, Germany seemed to strive to obtain the Western and Eastern cornerstones of Africa’s northern coast, tracing a route along the Western and Eastern thresholds of Europe’s Mediterranean coast. France, serving as England’s mere vassal since the Fashoda Incident, represented the path to claiming Morocco. And now Russia severed the tendons of the arm which grasped for Suez through Vienna and Constantinople, at the same time using the knife to stab France in the back. Yet Germany extended a shield to the east and struck out westward in a flash, lashing through the solid bridge that England had built over Gibraltar with France and Belgium after Fashoda. Germany then proceeded toward Flanders’ coast in a highly unexpected move, creating a gateway to the western ocean; the latest blow originally meant to be purely defensive became a threatening attack. In the other direction, what was originally a military defense soon reverted back to the political attack detailed here, fully pushing Russia away and thereby clearing the path to Constantinople. Yet just then, England intervened before greater Middle Europe could reach their goals, securing its possession of Africa in Baghdad and Jerusalem and therefore the road from the Cape to Calcutta whose construction was finally completed through the course of the war.

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Peace Such is the state of affairs. From a world-historical perspective, Germany’s assault on the British Empire — »assault« in the same sense that Frederick’s smooth entrance into the Seven Years’ War was an »assault« — came to a standstill before it could reach its goal. But even if the final act of the war would no longer come out in Germany’s favor, then the politically unprecedented results of the defensive attacks on Belgium (which the opponent could not take back by force) must and would serve to once again achieve Germany’s political goal through the course of its negotiations — at least, within the scope that had been defined prior to the war. The unanimity with which the two warring parties — the »southeastern« and the »northwestern« — insisted on the renewal of the African colonial empire, despite being otherwise fundamentally opposed to each other, can be explained by the role that Africa would play in the natural extension of both powers, according to both Naumann’s and Terpitz’ projections. Africa therefore stood at the intersection of both powers. But the very fact that it was the intersection between two opposing objectives of war indicates that the ultimate reason for the war must also be found here. A war’s end goal and ultimate reason are always one and the same.

Ends of the Earth Beyond the final combustion point of events which, against our will, draws us into the British Empire’s frame — an empire formed by the outbreak of war and called into question by Germany’s entrance into said war — beyond this burning point exists a peripheral region not directly affected by the conflict: Canada and Australia in the British world, and America and Japan in the non-British world. The latter two were not robbed of their dangerous self-will before the war (unlike France and Russia), but rather were aligned with British interests only after the war had begun; their stance is more akin to an England-friendly neutrality than it is true, complete participation in the war. In Japan, this neutrality arose from the war, while in America it led to joining the conflict. The two powers shared common secondary interests — politically realist in Japan and ideological in America — while their natural primary interests were aligned against the cornerstones of the British Empire which existed within their spheres. It was in England’s best interest to distract them

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from these main interests and simultaneously neutralize some of their remaining self-will via their continuously fluctuating opposition to one another. England’s diplomacy shined in both cases. It succeeded at localizing the war to the European battlefield and the African objective, deferring all peripheral problems. America and Japan’s treaties in this war are more important and more noteworthy than their battles. The faintly visible clouds of what is to come are starting to crest the horizon, even as the storm still crashes in the present.

World Map Thus does political consciousness today span the entire globe upon which we live, even as it all relates to the narrow median of the European-African body. Not without reason did we just speak so much of the world’s periphery. One could also say of the aforementioned masterpiece of English diplomacy that it enabled not only its own furthest-removed limbs, Canada and Australia, to direct their gaze toward that center of the world; but also its natural opponents, the United States and Japan. It is self-evident that Japan and Australia would have interests only to their west, and the United States and Canada only to their east. Both parties, Japan and America, seem to forget that they have a »back« and could also »turn around.« If they did turn around, then two future opponents would look each other in the eye. Yet they do not. World politics now have a flushed-out world map to work with, but this world map is not drawn upon the globe but rather on a plane, like the Mercator projection: there is only one world, only one common sea, but this world has a center and an edge, the lines of latitude and longitude do not connect with themselves, the world is, in truth…still not a globe. And because it is not, Japan and America can still observe this war from the outside. They still have yet to be pulled in. Yet that means that they are still not part of the world. Europe, as it emerges from the old common world-sea to rear its head over Africa, is the world’s definitive centerpoint toward which the edges look. But there are still »edges«: one world which is older than Europe and therefore not reborn by it, and one which is younger and therefore wants to outgrow it. There is Asia’s aged consciousness and America’s childish one: they both believe, for contrasting reasons, that they are allowed to

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exist beyond Europe, crying, »What portion have we in David? and we have none inheritance in the son of Jesse.«

Dry Land History took on Vasco and Columbus’ tasks, but that of Magellan, which connected the two, has yet to be completed. The waters around Africa’s three coasts still roil together into one sea — but the earth’s dry land has yet to unite into one sphere. Humanity is not yet under a single roof. Europe is not yet the soul of the world.

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Der Rest, der bleibt – oder das ewige Dennoch Bericht von der Internationalen Rosenzweig-Konferenz in Frankfurt/Main

Nach Rom und Jerusalem wieder einmal Frankfurt als Tagungsort der Internationalen Rosenzweig-Konferenz (IRG) – nach der heiligen Stadt und der himmlischen nun also das Profanum der Bankenmetropole? Das wäre Klischee, und solches widerlegt sich häufig selbst, wie der Blick aus dem Hotelfenster im Frankfurter Westend zeigt. Ein bemer­ kenswertes Wechselspiel architektonischer Formensprache offenbart sich hier: zwei Kirchen schmiegen sich, so scheint es, an ein Ensemble aus gläsernen Bürohochhäusern, welche die Kirchtürme wohl um das Zehnfache überragen. Dieser Eindruck des Schmiegens überrascht, widerspricht er doch der landläufigen Ansicht sowie der häufig empfun­ denen eigenen Wahrnehmung, wonach das gigantisch Anmutende von Hochhausfassaden die sakralen Bauten früherer Zeiten zu erdrücken, gar zu vertilgen scheint. Hier aber behaupten sich die zwei Kirchen tapfer gegen die schiere Übermacht der Glastürme. Zugleich ist Glas das lichtdurchlässigste aller Materialien. Vielfältige Spiegelungen erzeugen die Wirkung von Transparenz, was immer hinter den Fenstern der Türme an Geschäften stattfinden mag. Wird deswegen in diversen Studien die Skyline von Manhattan oder Boston als Gotik der Moderne oder sogar als eine Art überdimensioniertes Tor zum Heiligtum bezeichnet? Also nichts von Tapferkeit der Kirchen, sondern gute Nachbarschaft der Formensprachen verschiedener Jahrhunderte? Bei mir wirkt das Bild der tapferen Gotteshäuser trotz alledem wie ein in den Morgenhimmel geschriebenes Dennoch. Solche Überlegungen begleiten mich auf dem Weg zum Campus Westend, dem Ort der Rosenzweig-Konferenz 2022. Hier empfängt die Tagungsteilnehmer:innen eine »neue« – vor 100 Jahren gebaute – Sach­ lichkeit, nüchterne Konferenz-Säle, die nichts Sakrales an sich haben, dafür aber Schutz und Kühle gegen eine ungewöhnliche Juli-Hitze bieten.

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In Rom und Jerusalem ist es dieser Tage nicht so heiß. Verkehrte Welt? Nicht die Welt ist verkehrt, aber die Verkehrungen und Versehrungen in der Welt sind dieser Tage nicht zu übersehen, vom Krieg auf europä­ ischem Boden, über die weiter andauernde Pandemie bis zur Klimakrise und den wirtschaftlichen Folgen all dessen bis zur Hungerkrise in vielen Teilen der Welt. Auch die Rosenzweig-Konferenz musste wegen der Beschränkungen aufgrund der Pandemie bereits zweimal verschoben werden. Dass sie nun stattfinden konnte, nannte Yehoyada Amir aus Jerusalem ein Wunder und das Zeichen eines großen Dennoch. Sogleich sehe ich die beiden Kirchtürme, die vor der Kulisse ihrer gläsernen Nachkömmlinge ihr eigenes Dennoch in den Stadtraum skandieren. Vieles ist anders als bei den beiden letzten Konferenzen, es sind weni­ ger Gäste und Redner gekommen, man spürt im Zwischenhaften der Begegnungen geradezu feinstofflich auch immer die weltpolitischen oder welthistorischen Veränderungen. Passender hätte deshalb das Thema der Tagung kaum gewählt sein können: »Franz Rosenzweig und die Geschichte«. Was hat uns Rosenzweig heute zu sagen? Die Frage wurde noch einmal zugespitzt im Grußwort, das Doron Kiesel vom Zentralrat der Juden vortrug: »Wenn Rosenzweig hier nach 100 Jahren plötzlich in den Saal käme, würde er gehen oder bleiben?«

Geschichte des eigenen Lebens Eröffnet wurde die Konferenz durch Ephraim Meir aus Jerusalem, den Präsidenten der IRG. Er hatte das Thema »Vom Tode zum Leben – autobiographische Spuren in Rosenzweigs Stern der Erlösung« gewählt. Leser des »Stern« sind vertraut damit, dass dieses Buch mit dem Tod beginnt und es am Ende heißt »Ins Leben«. Sie wissen auch, dass Rosenzweig keine abstrakte philosophische Spekulation geschrieben hat, sondern immer die existenziellen Fragen des Lebens schreibend bearbeitet hat. Wie nah er dem Tode war – nicht nur aufgrund des Einsatzes im ersten Weltkrieg –, das zeigte Meir anhand der Gritli-Briefe und anderer Dokumente auf. Schon nach dem berühmten Leipziger Nachtgespräch im Juli 1913, bei dem ihn sein Vetter und sein Freund bedrängt hatten, vom Judentum zum Christentum zu konvertieren, sei Rosenzweig nahe daran gewesen, sich das Leben zu nehmen. Im Laufe der Zeit sei immer wieder von düsterer Stimmung die Rede gewesen – und Rosenzweig habe sich gefragt, ob er sich aufhängen oder doch seine Dissertation schreiben solle. »Rosenzweig hat sich mit dem Stern

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zurück ins Leben geschrieben«, so Meir. Parallel zu diesem bedeutenden Werk hat er fast täglich an seine Geliebte Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy geschrieben, das Gespräch mit ihr und die gegenseitige Liebe waren für ihn notwendig, um den »Stern« überhaupt schreiben zu können. Stark wie der Tod ist die Liebe – dieses Zitat aus dem Hohelied der Liebe steht als Überschrift zum Kapitel über die Offenbarung. Müsste man nicht besser sagen Die Liebe ist stark wie der Tod? Wie auch immer. »Das Wunder der lebensspendenden Liebe« habe Rosenzweig auch zu den Sätzen inspiriert, wonach das verstockte Selbst sich zur sprechenden Seele auftue. Rosenzweig habe es selbst so erlebt und sich von hier aus ins Leben geschrieben. Meir sagte es so: »Rosenzweig war von der Vorstellung der Ewigkeit in der Zeit beseelt. Als Überlebender eines furchtbaren Krieges hat er eine Verpflichtung gespürt, der Ewigkeit schon hier und heute lebendigen Ausdruck im Leben zu geben, und er hat dies als ein neues Gesetz formuliert, ein Wunder, ohne das Leben nicht möglich sei.«

Weltgeschichte War es »nur« seine persönliche Geschichte, die Rosenzweigs Hinwen­ dung zur »Ewigkeit in der Zeit« bewirkt hat? Wie hier die politischen und weltgeschichtlichen Ereignisse hinein spielten, dieser Frage widmeten sich mit Inka Sauter und Christoph Kasten Forscherinnen der jungen Generation. Sie zeigten in ihren Vorträgen auf, wie sich Rosenzweig mit dem »Stern« in eine Dimension des Seins außerhalb der Geschichte – als politischer oder Weltgeschichte – hinein geschrieben habe. 1914 habe er den Krieg zunächst deutlich verurteilt, dann habe er über die Jahre eigene geopolitische Konzepte für ein Nachkriegseuropa entwickelt, bis er schließlich seine philosophisch-theologischen Überlegungen im »Stern« in scharfem Kontrast zur Idee des historischen Fortschritts formuliert habe, die er als säkulare Heilsgeschichte gescheitert sah, da ihr der Drang zur Machtpolitik und damit zur Gewalt innewohnte. Das Christentum habe für Rosenzweig, so Kasten, die Heilsgeschichte als Aufgabe zwischen Papst und Kaiser und den Weg der Nation spätestens seit 1500 als Weg zu Gott gesehen. Aus dieser Perspektive sei das Chris­ tentum der ewige Weg – und das Judentum demgegenüber das ewige Sein. Rosenzweigs geopolitische Überlegungen der Jahre 1916 und 1917 hätten schließlich angesichts der Grauen des Krieges eine deutliche Zäsur erlebt. Kasten zitierte Rosenzweig: »So sind wir wahrhaftig auf eine Klippe

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gestellt und müssen [...] zum Himmel der Ewigkeit auffliegen oder im Meer der Vergangenheit ersaufen; der Strom der Zeit hat uns ausgespien. Wir müssen das Zeitlose leisten, denn der Zeit genug zu tun und es ihr anheimzustellen ob sie es weiter trägt, ist uns schon versagt.« Das Zeitlose zu leisten habe für Rosenzweig seine Heimkehr zum Judentum bedeutet, in dem Erlösung und Ewigkeit bereits ganz gegenwärtig seien. Damit aber sei das Judentum dem weltlichen Raum der Politik und des Staates enthoben. In einer winzigen Andeutung verwies Kasten darauf, dass dieses Jenseits der Weltgeschichte für Rosenzweig auch in der Sprache sich manifestiere. Diesen Aspekt haben andere Redner der Konferenz aus verschiedenen Perspektiven ebenfalls hervorgehoben. Die Gegenwart ist die Zeit der allzeit erneuerten Geburt der Seele oder der Offenbarung: Der Augenblick, in dem der einzelne je neu zur Antwort gerufen wird. Dieser Augenblick, in den die Ewigkeit herein­ bricht, schaffe, so Inka Sauter in ihrem Vortrag, einen Raum der Begeg­ nung von Mensch, Welt und Gott außerhalb der Geschichte. Dass dieser Augenblick zugleich trotz alledem innerhalb der Geschichte zu verorten sei, darauf hat Yehoyada Amir in seinem Vortrag hingewiesen, indem er die Frage stellte: »Wie könnte denn die Ablehnung des geschichtlichen Fortschritts außerhalb der Geschichte stattfinden?« Amir gelang es, an einem konkreten Beispiel Rosenzweigs Verständnis der Spannung zwischen Ewigkeit und Weltgeschichte aufzuzeigen: Die Zerstörung des zweiten Tempels im Jahre 70, die als Trauma und Wendepunkt der jüdischen Geschichte gilt, habe für Rosenzweig keine neue Epoche eingeleitet, denn Zerstörung, Exil und Trauma könnten an der Beziehung des einzelnen Menschen zur Ewigkeit und zu seinem Gott nichts ändern.

Bliebe oder ginge er? Rosenzweig hier und heute Entfaltet dieser Ansatz nicht gerade vor dem Hintergrund der heuti­ gen weltgeschichtlichen Stunde, ihrer Ungewissheiten, mannigfaltigen Bedrohungen und Krisen eine heilsame Wirkung? Unabhängig davon, ob und wie stark man in einer Glaubensgemeinschaft verankert ist und einem Worte wie Offenbarung und Ewigkeit zugänglich sind, wirkt Rosenzweigs messianischer Geist universell. Dieser versinkt gerade nicht in Resignation vor einer oftmals brutalen Wirklichkeit, er lässt sich aber auch nicht treiben von einer medialen Sucht nach den neuesten Meldungen und Informationen, die eher die Ohnmacht als die Hoffnung befördern. Mediale Empörung und Aufregung führt nicht zuletzt zu

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einer Beschädigung der Sprache, ihrer Reduzierung auf ein Werkzeug der Kommunikation. Sprache scheint politisch und gesellschaftlich häufig mehr auf Ansagen, Durchsagen und Absagen orientiert – und auf klare Abgrenzung bis hin zur Verordnung und Zuordnung eines bestimmten Sprachgebrauchs in den jeweiligen gesellschaftlichen Lagern. Vor diesem Hintergrund war der Beitrag von Ynon Wygoda aus Israel bemerkenswert, brachte er doch unerwartet eine Triade aus Spra­ che, Ewigkeit und Erlösung zu Gehör. Vordergründig ging es um ein Projekt zur Digitalisierung von Zitaten aus dem »Stern der Erlösung«. Statt Zitat sollte man vielleicht besser von Anleihen Rosenzweigs bei anderen Autoren sprechen, denn zitiert wird im Sinne von Fußnoten mit Quellenangaben im »Stern« so gut wie nie. Das mag heutigen Normen widersprechen. Doch Wygoda sieht darin auch eine Methode, das Klare und Distinkte in Sprache und Text zurückzuweisen und damit jene Mehrdeutigkeit des Wortes zu bewahren, die in Zeiten abnehmender Ambiguitätstoleranz oft unter Verdacht gerät. Rosenzweig zitiere im »Stern« Goethe und Kant, Schiller und Schopenhauer sowie mannigfache Stellen aus der Torah eben meist nicht wortwörtlich, sondern er ironisiere, deute um und forme die ausgeliehenen Sätze zum Sprungbrett für Fragen und Widersprüche, so Wygoda. Es geht also bei dem Digitalisierungs-Projekt nicht darum, ausgelassene Fußnoten nachträglich zu ergänzen, sondern dem Leser einen Text- und Zitierraum zu öffnen, in dem von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit sich Texte neu begegnen und eine Gleichzeitigkeit verschiedener möglicher Lesarten entstehen lassen. Es ist gerade das zuweilen Unentscheidbare in der Zuordnung eines »Zitats«, das diese Gleichzeitigkeit aufscheinen lässt. »Es kann passieren«, so Wygoda, »dass eine bestimmte Passage im »Stern« sowohl von Schopenhauer wie von Hiob entlehnt sein mag – oder von weiteren Autoren.« Diese Form des Zitierens führe, so Wygoda, zur Erlösung – durch die sinnfällige Erfahrung, dass Sprache niemandem gehöre, nicht der Mensch mache die Sprache, sondern er ist es, der durch sie geprägt werde. Sie »gehöre« dem ganzen Menschengeschlecht als Morgengabe des Schöpfers, und mit jedem Wort, mit jedem Namen, den wir aussprechen, zitieren wir ungewollt diejenigen, die uns über die Jahrhunderte und Jahrtausende vorausgegangen sind. Die Sprache, so die implizite Aussage Wygodas, wirkt wie eine unsichtbare Quelle der Verbundenheit zwischen den Generationen sowie den verschiede­ nen Kulturen und Traditionen. Diese scheinbare Selbstverständlichkeit wird in den Kulturkämpfen der Gegenwart häufig ausgehebelt, so zum Beispiel, wenn die Voraussetzung für eine Übersetzung darin bestehen

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soll, dass Übersetzerin und Autorin die gleiche Hautfarbe haben, oder wenn ein Wort, ein Name, ein Satz dem Sprachgebrauch der gegneri­ schen Gruppe zugeordnet und deswegen tabuisiert wird. Rosenzweigs unkonventionelle Zitierlust und ihre Neuaneignung durch zukünftige Leser könnte wie eine Befreiung aus der Erstarrung heutiger sogenannter Identitätspolitiken verstanden werden.

Der Rest Zum Arsenal solch einer Befreiung gehört auf treffliche Weise ein weiterer berühmter Topos aus Rosenzweigs Werk: der Rest. Darauf wies die Rosenzweig-Forscherin Gesine Palmer aus Berlin in ihrem Beitrag hin. Während das Christentum aufgrund des Missionsauftrags sich immer weitere Teile der Welt aneigne, also durch Addition bestehe, so Rosen­ zweig, erlebe das Judentum bereits die Ewigkeit im Augenblick und bedürfe nicht der Ausdehnung in die Welt. Statt in der Addition bestünde das Wesen des Judentums in der Subtraktion, das heißt der Bildung immer neuer Reste. Auch der einzelne Jude gehe in seinem Inneren diesen Weg der »Restbildung«. Im Gegensatz zu manch post-modernen Philosophen, die den Rest des Judentums als Ausdruck von Diaspora und Exil nach all den fortdauernden Katastrophen bis hin zur Shoah verstehen, liest Palmer hier erfrischend anders. Sie macht den widerstän­ digen Rest stark, der sich der Auflösung in eine Gleichung – oder eine Gemeinschaft der Gleichen – entzieht und dadurch das Rätsel und die Würde der Einzigartigkeit der Person bewahrt. Gerät diese Einzigartig­ keit nicht zunehmend in Bedrängnis, wenn Differenz und Alterität nicht mehr als Bereicherung, sondern als Bedrohung empfunden werden? Die zunehmende Normierung in Richtung auf Homogenität produziert wieder einmal die sogenannten Abweichler und damit das Phänomen von Ausgrenzung und Ausschließung. Rosenzweigs Rest, darauf hat Palmer verwiesen, ist jedoch gerade nicht allein exkludierend zu verstehen, sondern eher als das berühmte Salz in der Suppe: der einzelne Mensch, der nicht restlos in einer Gruppe aufgeht, ist oft derjenige, der auf den blinden Flecken hinweist, der in allen Gemeinschaften existiert. Da wir nie das Ganze vor Augen hätten und insofern keine unserer symbolischen Ordnungen je vollständig sein werde, so Palmer, offenbare gerade derjenige, der nicht in dieser Ordnung aufgehe (der »Abweichler«), das Schändliche, das auch der besten Ordnung innewohne. Und weiter:

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»Der, für den die Ordnung nicht gilt, offenbart ihre Schande – und ist zugleich notwendig zur Erhaltung jedes Systems, in dem, wer nicht nach unten tritt, selbst nach unten getreten wird……. Seine letzte Hoffnung wäre, dass er der einzige ist, der bleiben wird. Diese Hoffnung aber muss zugleich die Furcht und die letzte Hoffnung der symbolischen Ordnung sein, deren abgeschiedener Rest er ist. Die Furcht, weil es sein könnte, dass am Ende nur ihre Schande übrigbleibt. Die Hoffnung, weil nur durch die letzte Rettung, das Übrigbleiben des Abgeschiedenen, der gesamten Ordnung ihre letzte Schande erspart bliebe.«

Besser lässt sich kaum formulieren, dass wir als Gesellschaft stets auf den Anderen als widerständigem Rest angewiesen sind – und wenn die Schande »nur« darin bestünde, dass die Gesellschaft in Selbstgewissheit und Selbstgerechtigkeit erstarrt. Rosenzweig hat diese Überlegungen des Angewiesen-Seins auf den jeweils Anderen vor allem auch für die Beziehung zwischen Judentum und Christentum formuliert, es spricht jedoch viel dafür, sie universell zu lesen.

Jüdisch-christlicher Dialog Explizit hat sich dem Dialog zwischen Juden und Christen in seinem Beitrag noch einmal Christian Wiese gewidmet, der als Frankfurter Gast­ geber die gesamte Tagung mit seinem Team in erstaunlich kurzer Zeit sorgsam vorbereitet und während der Tage stets freundlich zugewandt choreographiert hat. Sein Thema war »Die weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung der Bibel: Franz Rosenzweigs und Martin Bubers biblische Reflexionen in dunkler Zeit«. Was mit dem Machtantritt der Nationalsozialisten als Verfolgung der Juden begann und in der Shoah endete, kündigte sich schon in den 1920er Jahren an, nicht nur in Gestalt eines zunehm­ enden Anti-Semitismus der Gesellschaft, sondern auch als neue Stufe des immer schon gegenwärtigen Anti-Judaismus christlicher Theologen. Umso bemerkenswerter ist einerseits das große Projekt der Bibelüberset­ zung durch Rosenzweig und Buber und damit verbunden beider Einsatz für das, was sie biblischen Humanismus genannt haben. Durch die Hebraisierung der deutschen Sprache habe man, so Wiese, Deutschtum und Christentum voneinander lösen wollen, um dem Judentum einen ebenbürtigen Rang in der deutschen Gesellschaft zuzusprechen. Buber habe mit seinem politischen Plädoyer für eine prophetische Existenz, in der unser Leben ein Gespräch zwischen Himmel und Erde sei, die Christen miteinbeziehen wollen in eine neue Lektüre der Bibel. Lektüre

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nicht nur verstanden als Lesen und Wiederlesen der bekannten Worte, sondern als Anspruch an den Leser, das biblische Wort vielleicht zum ersten Mal schreiben und sprechen zu lernen, indem jeder und jede zum persönlichen Kommentar aufgerufen seien, durch den ein Verständnis der Schrift erst sich einstellen möge, so Wiese. Und dies vor allem bezogen auf die hebräische Bibel, auch Altes Testament genannt. Denn für das Christentum, das habe Rosenzweig stets betont, sei ein Rückgriff auf das Alte Testament überlebenswichtig, da das Neue Testament zu weltnah sei. Die Folge sei eine unselige Verstrickung des Christentums in staatliche und machtpolitische Dynamiken, was am Ende das Abgleiten in völkische Ideologien begünstigt habe. Harnacks Behauptung vom fremden Gott der Juden habe dann, so Wiese, in den 1930er Jahren zur theologischen Entgleisung geführt, das ganze Alte Testament als fremde Religion, die von Jesus aufgehoben und zerbrochen sei, zu verfemen. Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint das Werk Rosenzweigs und Bubers noch einmal in einer Perspektive, die über das Theologische weit hinaus greift. Wiese versäumte es denn auch nicht, mit Emphase darauf hinzuweisen, dass sich auch heute erneut Stimmen zu Wort melden, die das Alte Testament gern aus dem biblischen Kanon eliminieren würden. Darin könnte sich, falls sich solche Tendenzen weiter ausbreiten, tatsächlich eine neue dunkle Zeit ankündigen.

Was bleibt? Es ist nicht möglich, in diesem kurzen Überblick all die weiteren ori­ ginellen Beiträge aufzuzählen, geschweige denn zu würdigen, die sich dem Thema Ewigkeit in der Zeit, Geschichte und Sprache oder der Bedeutung des Gottesnamens gewidmet haben. Die dreitägige Konferenz scheint im Nachhinein selbst wie ein außerhalb – nicht der Geschichte, aber außerhalb der Gluthitze, welche dieser Tage über Mitteleuropa lag. Abgeschirmt hinter Jalousien und in gekühlten Räumen ließ es sich trefflich über Geschichte und Ewigkeit miteinander sprechen, in einer Atmosphäre freundschaftlicher Gelassenheit und Verbundenheit. Aus vielerlei Gründen waren weniger Menschen gekommen als zu den letzten Konferenzen, auch hier ein Rest? Sicher nicht im Sinne des Schwindens – sondern im Sinne des am Anfang erwähnten Dennoch, das nicht trotzigverstockt, sondern widerständig klingt: Etwas bleibt! Und wenn es ein Rest an spirituellem Raum jenseits der täglichen Nachrichten in einer ungewissen Weltlage ist. Und Rosenzweig: wäre er nun geblieben oder

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gegangen? Vielleicht ist die Antwort nicht wichtig. Er war und ist ja da, lebendig spürbar in seinen Worten.

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