Redeeming God, Redeeming Redemption (original) (raw)
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Redemption in Judaism is typically thought of as an historical and eschatological category: God has redeemed Israel in the past and will do so again in the future. Although this dipolar understanding of redemption has been dominant in Judaism, forms of actualized redemption have also found expression in which Jews, either individually or communally, secure a positive redemptive status in the present. This article focuses on the peculiar fact that Franz Rosenzweig and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik both include an actualized component within their theories of redemption. After brief consideration of Kierkegaard as a potential source for their accounts of actualized redemption, I explore how actualized redemption fits into Rosenzweig's and Soloveitchik's larger thought and consider their philosophical and theological motivations for conceiving of redemption as achievable. In the concluding section of the paper, I critique Rosenzweig's and Solovetchik's accounts of actualized redemption and suggest that Abraham Joshua Heschel's and Eliezer Berkovits' alternative theological anthropologies that emphasize the cultivation of holiness circumvent some of the problems I associate with actualized redemption.
Naharaim, 2022
This article presents Franz Rosenzweig's concept of redemption as a vehicle for raising some important questions for confronting the contemporary movement of Transhumanism. The upshot of our discussion is located in the existential questions asked, following a philosophical comparison of Rosenzweig's religious and philosophical commitment to human life in its most robust form, with Transhumanism's scientistic vision. To do so, the article first discusses some technoscientistic assumptions of Transhumanism, showing that it presumes what was once a core principle of German Idealism, the identity of reason and being, against which Rosenzweig rebelled. Then, the article turns to examine Rosenzweig's humanistic redemptive vision and its emphasis on the corporeal, the temporal, and the worldly (rather than the purely spiritual, the apocalyptic, and the other-worldly). The conclusion makes explicit the ways in which Rosenzweig's redemptive vision provides a contrasting model to the one set forth by Transhumanism.
This article presents Franz Rosenzweig's concept of redemption as a vehicle for raising some important questions for confronting the contemporary movement of Transhumanism. The upshot of our discussion is located in the existential questions asked, following a philosophical comparison of Rosenzweig's religious and philosophical commitment to human life in its most robust form, with Transhumanism's scientistic vision. To do so, the article first discusses some technoscientistic assumptions of Transhumanism, showing that it presumes what was once a core principle of German Idealism, the identity of reason and being, against which Rosenzweig rebelled. Then, the article turns to examine Rosenzweig's humanistic redemptive vision and its emphasis on the corporeal, the temporal, and the worldly (rather than the purely spiritual, the apocalyptic, and the other-worldly). The conclusion makes explicit the ways in which Rosenzweig's redemptive vision provides a contrasting model to the one set forth by Transhumanism.
The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 2019
In her well-known review of The Star of Redemption, poet, cultural critic, and philosopher Margarete Susman characterizes Rosenzweig’s project as theology that has “gone beyond the zenith of atheism” and articulates her view of this unique piece of work as the crowning achievement of the philosophical project of that time. But Susman’s assessment also addresses another issue of great significance: the fact that the atheism addressed by Rosenzweig’s book is the atheism of Goethe, and that the redemption that lies beyond this atheism becomes clear and gains voice only in light of the words of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, as we will see below. Susman’s assessment is consistent with Rosenzweig’s letter to Ehrenburg and identifies contending with atheism as a fundamental element of understanding The Star of Redemption. This article seeks a better understanding of Rosenzweig’s book based on Susman’s work. It also offers greater insight into Goethe’s significant role in the book and, in doing so, provides readers with a unique key for navigating the book that can also help understand the change in conception proposed by Rosenzweig in his Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Free Jewish House of Learning). In this context, the word “free” has meaning on more than one level and can be understood as applying to both the House of Learning as an independent institution and to the freedom of human consciousness. This article is based largely on Susman’s review article on The Star of Redemption and her essay marking the celebratory publication of another installment of Rosenzweig and Buber’s German translation of the Bible. Here, however, I also seek to understand the deeper meaning of the claim regarding atheism’s role on the path to monotheism using the terms of Rosenzweig himself, as well as the language and thinking of Emmanuel Levinas.
Franz Rosenzweig’s Dialogic Humanism in The Star of Redemption
Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities. (Philosophy of Being Human as the Core of Interdisciplinary Research) (ICCESSH 2021), 2021
The Star of Redemption (1921) is the major work of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1927); it is one of the most important books of the 20th century about the problematic of (co)existential philosophy, comparable and opposable to Heidegger's Being and Time (1927). Its purpose may be summed up by saying that human being is born into his own existence through the discovery of absolute Otherness. This New thinking, as Rosenzweig entitled it in a short 1925 essay, created a dialogic humanism alongside the critique of monological thought in the philosophical tradition. One should point out the main co-existential categories of Rosenzweig's proposal and briefly compare his unique point of view as a religious thinker with some main trends of modern and postmodern philosophy.
Preface to the Second, ebook edition of The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen
The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (2nd ed, 2020), 2020
In Cohen’s thought, “atonement” not only deals with the constitution of ethical and moral selves, but it also unifies Jewish and systematic philosophical spheres. The book title, The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, said much the same, just shorter, but it also created the misleading impression that the book narrowly focuses on a particular theologoumenon. I assure the reader that it does more. Both parts of the title are relevant. It suggests, and the book demonstrates, that the thought-figure (Denkfigur) of atonement provides a helpful key not just to Cohen’s Jewish thought but also to his systematic philosophy.