by N. N. Glatzer
Franz Rosenzweig published his Stern der Erlösung without any explicatory matter; there was no introduction, no preface, no postscript, nothing that would give some inkling of the background and purpose of the work. Not even a publisher’s note or jacket copy served to introduce, however briefly, the at-the-time-unknown author. The book, Rosenzweig felt, was to speak for itself; whoever was discontented with prevailing academic philosophies (and theologies) would find his way to it. Furthermore, he was deterred by prefaces to philosophical tomes and their authors’ “clucking after having laid their egg and their discourteous, derogatory remarks directed to the reader who has done no wrong as yet, not even as much as reading the book.” When, in 1925, four years after the publication of the Stern, Rosenzweig issued his “Das neue Denken” (“The New Thinking”), subtitled “Some supplementary remarks to the Stern der Erlösung,” he forbade publication of this essay in any further editions of the Stern, either as introduction or postscript.
It was therefore with considerable trepidation that I yielded to the proposal by the publisher of The Star of Redemption to write a prefatory note. For, though several books and a good number of studies and essays on Rosenzweig are now extant, acquaintance with his life and background cannot be taken for granted. Rosenzweig himself abandoned his original position of considering the Star strictly as a textus when, shortly before his death, he asked me to prepare an extensive list of references to his Judaic sources to be included in the second edition of the work.
Franz Rosenzweig was born December 25, 1886 in Cassel, Germany, as the only son of a well-to-do, assimilated Jewish family. From 1905–1907 the highly gifted boy studied medicine, followed by several years of study (to 1912) of modern history and philosophy, mainly under Friedrich Meinecke, historian in the Ranke tradition, and Heinrich Rückert. In 1910, he began work on a major research project anent Hegel’s political doctrines and his concept of the state. One section of the investigation served as a doctoral dissertation (1912); the two-volume work, Hegel und der Staat (Hegel and the State), completed in 1914, appeared in 1920. In it, Rosenzweig, by means of the biographical approach, traces the dramatic development of Hegel’s historical and political philosophy, a philosophy largely conditioned by Hegel’s own life. While working on this project, Rosenzweig discovered (1913) a manuscript page in Hegel’s handwriting, marked “Essay on Ethics.” Close analysis proved the page to be the oldest Systemprogramm of German Idealism, composed by Schelling rather than by Hegel; he published his findings later, in 1917.
The work on Hegel was sufficient testimony to Rosenzweig’s mastery of historical research, his mature grasp of the historic process, and his grasp of the philosophical claim of German Idealism. And he was fully aware of his power and the lure of a prestigious academic career. The year 1913, however, marked a crucial turning point in his life. With ever-increasing clarity he realized the ambiguity of the scientific method and the hubris of philosophical Idealism to understand absolute truth. Hegel’s all-encompassing theory of world, history, spirit, and man broke down before the individual asking the existential question: Who or what am I?
For a proper understanding of all that was to come in Rosenzweig’s intellectual life and especially of what motivated the writing of The Star of Redemption, it is essential to realize that this turning point was determined not by objective, theoretical speculation but by a personal need. In declining a university position in Berlin, he tried to explain his stand in rational, academic terms. No wonder the explanation failed to register with his teacher, Professor Meinecke. Overcoming his embarrassment, the young man wrote a letter to Meinecke, speaking “in a very personal way.” “In 1913, something happened to me for which collapse is the only fitting name. I suddenly found myself on a heap of wreckage, or rather I realized that the road I was then pursuing was flanked by unrealities.” The study of history satisfied only his “hunger for forms,” but no more. He began “to search for his self, amidst the manifold for the One.” By reexamining his Jewish heritage (“I descended into the vaults of my being, to a place whither talents could not follow me”), he gained “the right to live.” Academic scholarship ceased to hold the center of his attention. “My life has fallen under the rule of a ‘dark drive’ [a term Meinecke had used in his letter to Rosenzweig] which I am aware that I merely name by calling it ‘my Judaism….’
“The man who wrote [at the time as yet unpublished] The Star of Redemption is of a very different caliber from the author of Hegel and the State.” He elucidates his new attitude to life and to people (which is the theme of the “new thinking”) by saying that now he is inquired of by men rather than scholars, by men who stand in need of answers. “I am anxious to answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a certain discipline, that insatiable, ever-inquisitive phantom which like a vampire drains him whom it possesses of his humanity. I hate that phantom as I do all phantoms. Its questions are meaningless to me. On the other hand, the questions asked by human beings have become increasingly important to me.” Knowledge was to be service to men.
The disciple’s radical break with the honored tradition of the academe again failed to convince the master, who explained the young man’s position as an act of postwar disillusionment, though the letter clearly referred to events of 1913.
What Rosenzweig left unmentioned in his long letter was the religious element in his personal crisis; the reference to “the vaults of my being,” “my Judaism” was a mere allusion to what had taken place.
The decline and fall of Rosenzweig’s trust in academic scholarship and Hegelian thought was accompanied by the rise of a force of a different kind: religious faith. Rosenzweig discussed these issues with his cousins, Hans and Rudolf Ehrenberg (who had become Christians), and with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a man widely learned in jurisprudence, sociology, and history. The latter’s simple confession of faith and his position of full commitment to Protestant Christianity was especially instrumental in suggesting to Rosenzweig that faith was indeed a historically valid, intellectually admissible alternative. Judaism was only superficially known to him; besides, in the world of Christianity (as interpreted by his friends and now by himself) there “seemed to be no room for Judaism.” During a highly decisive, soul-searching debate between the two friends in the night of July 7, Rosenstock-Huessy forced Rosenzweig to veer from a “relativist position into a non-relativist one.” There seemed only one way out of the dilemma: acceptance of Christianity. Rosenzweig made only one “personal reservation”; he declared that he “could turn Christian only qua Jew,” i.e., by remaining loyal to Judaism during the period of preparation and up to the moment of baptism—at which Rudolf Ehrenberg was to serve as godfather.
It is not known whether this reservation was motivated by theological considerations—the example of Paul’s conversion—or by deep-seated, though undefined, allegiance to his ancestral Judaism that counteracted the daring, though rationally justified decision to convert. The weeks that followed must have been a period of anxious search in an attempt to do justice personally, to both forces—a rather impossible task.
The trying period came to an end after Rosenzweig, in the course of his “reservation,” attended a Day of Atonement service in a traditional synagogue in Berlin (October 11). What he experienced in this day-long service can be conjecturally gathered from Rosenzweig’s later reference to this most solemn day in the Jewish liturgic year: “Anyone who has ever celebrated the Day of Atonement knows that it is something more than a mere personal exaltation (although this may enter into it) or the symbolic recognition of a reality such as the Jewish people (although this also may be an element); it is a testimony to the reality of God which cannot be controverted.” In the section on the Jewish liturgic calendar in the Star, Rosenzweig states anent the Day of Atonement that here “God lifts up his countenance to the united and lonely pleading of men…. Man’s soul is alone—with God.” And in a later work, again with reference to the Day of Atonement, he says: “… in this moment man is as close to God … as it is ever accorded him to be.”
Prior to that memorable 1913 Day of Atonement, Rosenzweig had not thought it possible that the spiritual perception of the “reality of God,” of “being alone with God,” of the “closeness to God” could be experienced by a person within Judaism of his day. He thought that a true experience of faith calls for the mediator, Jesus. The thinker and theoretician in Rosenzweig needed time to scrutinize and examine what he had apprehended emotionally. “The reasoning process comes afterwards. Afterwards, however, it must come …” It was only several days later, on October 23, that he was able to write to his mother: “I seem to have found the way back about which I had tortured myself in vain and pondered for almost three months.” And in a letter to Rudolf Ehrenberg (October 31), while acknowledging that to the Christian no one can reach the Father save through the “Lord,” he claims “the situation is quite different for one who does not have to reach the Father because he is already with him.” The Church knows that Israel will be spared to the last day, but what is admitted for Israel in general is denied the individual Jew. “So far as he is concerned, the Church shall and will test her strength in the attempt to convert him.” Thus, in Rosenzweig’s view, the Church is historically justified in her conversionist efforts, yet the Jew must live his own role in God’s world. “Shall I become converted, I who was born ‘chosen’? Does the alternative of conversion even exist for me?” he writes in 1916, looking back at the events of 1913.
This, then, was the basis of “my Judaism,” which Rosenzweig mentioned in his letter to Meinecke without proffering any further information.
The academic year of 1913–1914 Rosenzweig devoted to an extensive study of the classical documents of Judaism. A major influence on him was Hermann Cohen, the founder of the neo-Kantian school of Marburg who, in 1912, had come to Berlin to teach Jewish religious philosophy at the liberal Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academy for the Scientific Study of Judaism).
The first literary expression of his newly acquired stance in religious thought came in 1914, in an essay entitled “Atheist Theology” (“Atheistische Theologie”). In it he is sharply critical of both the stress on the humanity of Jesus in modern Protestantism (as opposed to the Christ of the traditional Church) and the emphasis on an idealized people of Israel (as opposed to Israel the recipient of the revelation at Sinai). Boldly, he characterizes both these theological views as atheistic since they obscure the reality of the divine and obfuscate the distinctness of God and man, “that terrible obstacle in paganism, both modern and ancient.” What is needed is a renewal of “the offensive thought of revelation”; offensive, for it points to the divine breaking into (Hereinstürzen) the lowly, human, sphere, or, as he called it later (1916), the “intrusion of the spirit into the non-spirit.” The event at Sinai cannot be replaced by (or interpreted into) the autonomous moral law; by the same token, for the Christian, incarnation cannot be replaced (or interpreted into) God’s humanity. The essay is, in part, directed against Martin Buber’s thinking at the time.
The radical meaning of revelation occupied Rosenzweig in his correspondence with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy in 1916; it is lucidly discussed in his comprehensive letter to Rudolf Ehrenberg, dated November 18, 1917 (the so-called germ-cell [Urzelle] of The Star of Redemption), and becomes a most crucial tenet in that work’s central section.
Rosenzweig had joined the German armed forces at the beginning of 1915 and from March 1916 onwards was assigned to an antiaircraft gun unit at the Balkan front. It was therefore during the war years that his intellectual position matured and became ready to be set forth in writing. At the end of August 1918 he started to write The Star of Redemption—on army postal cards. The bulk of the book he wrote after the retreat of the Balkan troops in September 1918 and upon his return to his native Cassel. As evidenced by the dates on the original manuscript (now in the care of the Franz Rosenzweig Archives in Boston), he wrote the sections of the book in quick succession; the final section bears the date February 16, 1919.
The work is a triumphant affirmation of the “new thinking”: thinking that ensconces common sense in the place of abstract, conceptual philosophizing; posits the validity of the concrete, individual human being over that of “humanity” in general; thinking that takes time seriously; fuses philosophy and theology; assigns both Judaism and Christianity distinct but equally important roles in the spiritual structure of the world; and sees in both biblical religions approaches toward a comprehension of reality.
But before granting us a view of the affirmative aspects of his “new thinking,” Rosenzweig prepares the ground by a polemical attack against Hegel and German Idealism as a whole, a philosophy that dared to ignore individual man, his anxiety, his fear of death, his loneliness, letting him vanish in the concept of the all-embracing World-Mind. The existentialist in Rosenzweig posits the priority of being before thought, contesting the Idealist assumption that all of existence, being based upon thought, can be grasped by thought.
The first part of the Star examines our knowledge of the three elements of existence: God, World, Man. The starting point is the negation of each. The “nothingness” is then dialectically overcome by a negation of the negation and an affirmation of what is not nothing. These are clearly conceptual constructions, a method from which Rosenzweig could not free himself, though he considered them to be mere “auxiliary concepts.” Readers who found the theoretical, abstract, metaphysical sections heavy going, were advised by him not to stop but quickly to go on, since the main substance was to come later. He maintained that the first part of the book had only one intent: to demonstrate that the three concepts of thought—God, World, and Man—cannot be deduced one from the other, but that each one of them has an independent essence. “He who understands Part One does not need the rest—and vice versa.”
Idealist philosophy considered language to be subordinate to thinking. Speech, its proponents argued, is but a means of expression. But already Schelling assigned to language a central position in his anti-Idealist system. “Language is the most adequate symbol of the absolute or unending affirmation of God,” he said. And: “Without language not only no philosophical, but also no human consciousness can be thought of.” He assumed existence of a primeval language, common to all humanity. Wilhelm von Humboldt saw in language “the craving for one speaking to the other”; “true speech (Sprechen) is colloquy (Gespräch).” To him, it is not the subject matter that connects the speaker with the listener, but the I confronting the Thou. The word is not only an expression of reality but also a means by which to explore it. The anti-Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach opined that true dialectics “is not a monologue between a lonely thinker and himself but a dialogue between I and Thou.” The true I “is only the I that confronts a Thou,” whereas the idealist I does not recognize a Thou.
Rosenzweig’s thinking is concerned with the renewal of this speech-thinking (Sprachdenken), which he made an integral part of his grand synthesis of philosophy and theology, reason and faith. He strives to replace the method of (abstract) thinking, adhered to by earlier philosophies, by the method of speech. Whereas abstract thinking is “a solitary affair,” in an actual conversation something happens; you do not anticipate what the other person will say. The abstract, logical thinker knows his thoughts in advance. The speech-thinker, or as Rosenzweig, following a theory of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (Angewandte Seelenkunde), calls him, the “grammatical thinker,” depends on the presence of a definite other person.
The centrality of language, word, dialogue, name, should be understood not only in its opposition to abstract, conceptual thinking, but also as countering trends in modern times that display a deep distrust of language. Bertrand Russell (The Scientific Outlook) views language as a series of abstract nouns, mirroring an atomized universe of sense data. No longer can speech be used as a vehicle of communication between men. To Henri Bergson (Creative Evolution) language, due to its “static” quality, cannot do justice to the dynamic continuity of reality; only intuition, being wordless, nonlogical, can do this. A. N. Whitehead (Process and Reality), too, criticizes language as being at odds with immediate experience. A universe of “events” and “activity” calls for a new language composed of verbs. In our own day, language is the least common and least trusted means of communication though the term dialogue is on the lips of many. Were he alive today, Rosenzweig would have continued to champion the cause of the word and of speech-thinking with ever-renewed vigor.
Rosenzweig is careful to point out (in the essay “The New Thinking”) that his emphasis on speech does not imply a concentration on the so-called “religious problems” but refers as well to problems of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. The new theologian envisaged by him will have to be a philosopher “for the sake of his own honesty.” The two disciplines, theology and philosophy, are to be dependent on each other. “God did not, after all create religion; he created the world.” The fact that people speak to each and hear one the other points to “revelation.”
Creation, Revelation, Redemption: these are the “paths” that link the “elements” Man, World, God. To be sure, these are terms taken from theological vocabulary, but Rosenzweig uses them in an attempt to construct a comprehensive view of reality. In Creation—a continuous process—God, hitherto hidden in the mythical beyond, appears and gives the world reality. It is a transitory, finite, mortal, mute world. Creation, however, is only the first contact between God and world; the second is revelation. Here God reveals his love to man, whom he calls by his name. This act of God makes man aware of his being an “I.” Through the act of this love, man overcomes his isolation, his dumbness; now he becomes an individual able to speak and to respond to the first divine commandment: Thou shalt love. Love, ever present, is the foundation and the meaning of revelation. Now man translates his love for God into love for his “neighbor”—which is the first step toward redemption. Redeeming love liberates man from the finality of death. Complete redemption, the world in its perfection, eternity—this man encounters in prayer, in the rhythm of the holy days within the liturgic calendar. In living the sacred year, man “anticipates” eternity within time. Both Judaism and Christianity partake in eternity; both are grounded in the experience of love.
Creation, which Rosenzweig following Schelling identifies with the pagan world and with rational philosophy, is thus perfected in revelation—this, too, seen as a continuous process, not as a historical event—and revelation is consummated and fulfilled in redemption. Such a view of the world shows profound concern for the human person and the experience (never defined!) of the reality of God. Pictorially, God, World, and Man are represented by one triangle; Creation, Revelation, and Redemption, by another. Combined, they form a six-pointed star (a late symbol of Judaism) from which the book’s title derives.
Despite his harsh criticism of the German idealistic tradition, its influence on Rosenzweig persisted both in the realm of philosophical issues and in writing style. He owes a great deal to Kant as interpreted by Schelling in his later period. On the problems of philosophy versus theology, his main debt is to Schelling’s The Ages of the World (Die Weltalter). That a personal philosophy is the only one justifiable after Hegel, he finds confirmed by Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, philosophers who made man the starting point of their thought. The influence of the poet Hölderlin and of the comparative philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt (in their concept of language) is a strong possibility, as is the direct or indirect influence of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. And as indicated earlier, Rosenzweig’s acquaintance with Rosenstock-Huessy and Hermann Cohen had decisive impact on his development. Yet, despite all these—and other—contacts with the works of both past and contemporary philosophers, he retained a remarkable measure of independence and full measure of freedom in confronting his partners in dialogical thinking.
The division of the Star into three “parts,” each consisting of an introduction, three “books,” and an epilogue (Transition, Threshold, Gate) was clearly outlined in Rosenzweig’s mind when he commenced writing. The plan served as a blueprint constantly kept in mind; he had only to develop the preconceived scheme. The descriptive subtitles for the introductions, the “parts,” and the “books” underwent revisions as the writing and rewriting went on. An early version of the Introduction to Part One (in pencil) has no subtitle; a later one (in ink) has, “On the possibility to think the All” (das All zu denken). The latter was revised to “… to know the All” (… zu erkennen—in the present translation, “… the Cognition of the All.”) Part Two, Book Three has the original subtitle: “Redemption, or The Eternal Birth of the Kingdom”; a correction in the manuscript substitutes “future” for “birth.”
Most Rosenzweig commentators find it significant that the Star begins with “from death” and concludes with “into life,” thus indicating the work’s major motif. However, it is of interest that the original beginning of the work was (in two copies, one in pencil, the other in ink): “Was not philosophy all full of presupposition?” (in the present version, section “The Philosophy of Totality,” paragraph two). Then, following the text of the Introduction to Part Three, dated December 20, 1918, there is a text, entitled “Start of the Introduction to Part One,” which became the celebrated overture to the Star. Clearly, this dramatic beginning occured to Rosezweig while the work was already in an advanced stage of preparation.
The concluding words of the work also underwent several revisions, apparently to give the message, “into life” the strongest possible appeal. The original wording reads: “To walk humbly with thy God: these are the words inscribed over the gate [leading] out of the mysteriously wonderful light of the divine sanctuary into life.” The word “sanctuary” was then qualified by the addition of “in which no man can remain and live.” “Into life” was removed from the sentence and a new one composed: “But to where do the wings of the gate open? Into Life.” The last two words were again revised, with the final phrase now reading: “Do you not know? [They open] into life.”
“Into life”—real life, returning to it after having partaken in what amounts to a vision of the divine, was the step to be taken after the argument—philosophical, existentialist, theological, humanist—was closed. “Everybody should philosophize at some time in his life,” Rosenzweig wrote (“The New Thinking”), “and look around from his own vantage point. But such a survey is not an end in itself. The book is no goal, not even a provisional one. Rather than sustaining itself … it must itself be ‘verified.’ This verification takes place in the course of everyday life.”
Rosenzweig realized that he had written an important and, at the same time, an unconventional work from the reader’s point of view. He therefore welcomed the proposal of a publisher to present his thought in a more popular fashion. He wrote a short treatise (July, 1921) that was to be called Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand (The Little Book of Common Sense and Diseased Reason). Here a patient, paralyzed by philosophy, is cured once he has learned to understand World, Man, and God as primary forms that underly reality, and to recognize their interrelationships. The application of “common sense” is to be adjudged not only as a corrective of the mind but as an expression of the health of man as a whole.
Again we encounter the major theme of The Star of Redemption, and the motifs of love, of language, and of the name. The three central chapters (VI–VIII) which describe the three stages of the cure, correspond to the three books of Part Two of the Star. Shortly after he completed the manuscript, Rosenzweig, dissatisfied with it, canceled its publication. It appeared a generation later, first in English in 1953, under the title Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, and in 1964, in the original German.
“Everyday life” imposed a severe test on Rosenzweig. Not long after his marriage to Edith Hahn (March, 1920) and his appointment as head of Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Free Jewish House of Study) in Frankfurt am Main (August 1920), a medical checkup revealed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with progressive paralysis of the bulba (February, 1922). In September 1922 his only son, Rafael, was born. In the years that followed, the gravely ill man defied his affliction and managed to continue living as an active scholar, writer, teacher, and friend to many—a man of faith, of love, of common sense, and a sense of humor. He died December 10, 1929.