Franz Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig
Franz Rosenzweig
Born	25 December 1886; Kassel,German Empire
Died	10 December 1929(aged 42); Frankfurt,Germany
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy; Existentialism
Main interests	Theology,philosophy,German idealism,philosophy of religion
Notable ideas	Star of Redemption

Franz Rosenzweig(/ˈroʊzən.zwaɪɡ/;German:[ˌfʁant͡sˈʁoːzn̩ˌt͡svaɪ̯k]^ⓘ;25 December 1886 – 10 December 1929) was a Germantheologian,philosopher,andtranslator.

Early life and education

Franz Rosenzweig was born inKassel,Germany, to an affluent, minimally observantJewishfamily. His father owned a factory for dyestuff and was a city council member. Through his granduncle, Adam Rosenzweig, he came in contact with traditionalJudaismand was inspired to requestHebrewlessons when he was around 11 years old.^[1]He started to studymedicinefor five semesters inGöttingen,Munich,andFreiburg.In 1907 he changed subjects and studied history and philosophy in Freiburg andBerlin.

Rosenzweig, under the influence of his colleague and close friendEugen Rosenstock-Huessy,considered converting toChristianity.Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to live as an observant Jew first, before becoming Christian. After attendingYom Kippurservices at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, he underwent a mystical experience. As a result, he became abaal teshuva.^[2]Although he never recorded what transpired, he never again entertained converting to Christianity.

In 1913, he turned toJewish philosophy.His letters to his cousin and close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whom he had nearly followed into Christianity, have been published as ‘’Judaism Despite Christianity’'. Rosenzweig was a student ofHermann Cohen,and the two became close. While writing a doctoral dissertation onGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,‘’Hegel and the State’', Rosenzweig turned againstidealismand sought a philosophy that did not begin with an abstract notion of the human.

Later in the decade, Rosenzweig discovered a manuscript apparently written in Hegel’s hand, which he named “The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism.”^[3]The manuscript (first published in 1917)^[4]has been dated to 1796 and appears to show the influence ofF. W. J. SchellingandFriedrich Hölderlin.^[5]Despite early debate about the authorship of the document, scholars now generally accept that it was written by Hegel, making Rosenzweig’s discovery valuable for contemporary Hegel scholarship.^[6]

Career

The Star of Redemption

A representation of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption

Rosenzweig's major work isThe Star of Redemption(first published in 1921). It is a description of the relationships betweenGod,humanity, and the world, as they are connected by creation, revelation andredemption.If one makes a diagram with God at the top, and the World and the Self below, the inter-relationships generate aStar of Davidmap. He is critical of any attempt to replace actual human existence with an ideal. In Rosenzweig's scheme, revelation arises not in metaphysics but in the here and now. We are called to love God, and to do so is to return to the world, and that is redemption.

Two translations into English have appeared, the most recent by Dr. Barbara E. Galli ofMcGill Universityin 2005^[7]and by ProfessorWilliam Wolfgang Halloin 1971.^[8]

Collaboration with Buber

Rosenzweig was engaged critically with the JewishZionistscholarMartin Buber.The two exchanged letters on the subject of a lecture series which Buber had given. In 1923, one of the letters was published by Rosenzweig as anopen letterentitled "The Builders".^[9]

Unlike Buber, Rosenzweig felt that a return to Israel would embroil the Jews into a worldly history that they should eschew. Rosenzweig criticized Buber's dialogical philosophy because it is based not only on the I-Thou relation but also on I-It, a notion that Rosenzweig rejected. He thought that the counterpart to I-Thou should be He-It, namely “as He said and it became”: building the "it" around the human "I" —the human mind—is an idealistic mistake.^[10]Rosenzweig and Buber worked together on a translation of theTanakh,or Hebrew Bible, fromHebrewtoGerman.The translation, while contested, has led to several other translations in other languages that use the same methodology and principles. Their publications concerning the nature and philosophy of translation are still widely read.

Educational activities

Rosenzweig, unimpressed with the impersonal learning of the academy, founded theHouse of Jewish Learning[de;he]inFrankfurtin 1920, which sought to engage in dialogue with human beings rather than merely accumulate knowledge. Many prominent Jewish intellectuals were associated with theLehrhaus,as it was known in Germany, such asLeo Löwenthal,the liberal rabbiBenno Jacob,historian of medicine Richard Koch, the chemist Eduard Strauß, the feministBertha Pappenheim,Siegfried Kracauer,a culture critic for theFrankfurter Zeitung,S.Y. Agnon,who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature, andGershom Scholem,the founder of modern secular studies of theKabbalahandJewish mysticism(some of these intellectuals are also associated with theFrankfurt Schoolofcritical theory). In October 1922,Rudolf Hallotook over the leadership of the Lehrhaus. The Lehrhaus stayed open until 1930 and was reopened by Martin Buber in 1933.

Illness and death

Grave of Rosenzweig

Rosenzweig suffered from the muscular degenerative diseaseamyotrophic lateral sclerosis(also known as motor neurone disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease). Towards the end of his life, he had to write with the help of his wife, Edith, who would recite letters of the Alpha bet until he indicated for her to stop, continuing until she could guess the word or phrase he intended (or, at other times, Rosenzweig would point to the letter on the plate of his typewriter). They also developed a communication system based on him blinking his eyes.

Rosenzweig's final attempt to communicate his thought, via the laborious typewriter- Alpha bet method, consisted in the partial sentence: "And now it comes, the point of all points, which the Lord has truly revealed to me in my sleep, the point of all points for which there—". The writing was interrupted by his doctor, with whom he had a short discussion using the same method. When the doctor left, Rosenzweig did not wish to continue with the writing, and he died on the night of 10 December 1929, inFrankfurt,the sentence left unfinished.^[11]

Rosenzweig was buried on 12 December 1929. There was no eulogy; Buber readPsalm 73.^[12]

After his death, his son Rafael fled Germany for Palestine in 1939. Rosenzweig's library with about 3,000 volumes was to follow him, but the cargo ship was diverted to Tunis during the Second World War. It is now in theNational Library of Tunisia,Dâr Al-Kutub Al-Wataniya.^[13]

References

^Glatzer, Nahum Norbert, ed. (1962).Franz Rosenzweig. His life and thought.New York: Schocken Books. p. XXXVI-XXXVIII.
^Emil L. Fackenheim (1994).To Mend the World.Indiana University Press.ISBN 0-253-32114-X.
^Geoffrey Hartman,‘’The Fateful Question of Culture’', Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 164.
^Robert J. Richards, ‘’The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe’', University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 124 n. 21.
^Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017).The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 63–4.ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.
^Magee, Glenn (2001).Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition.Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 84.ISBN 0801474507.
^https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2786.htm.Archived10 August 2018 at theWayback Machine
^Rosenzweig, Franz.Der Stern Der Erlosung[The Star of Redemption]. Trans. William W. Hallo. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1971.ISBN 0-03-085077-0.
^"The Builders", inOn Jewish Learning,ed. and trans. by Nahum Glatzner (New York, 1955).
^Franz RosenzweiginEncyclopedia Judaicaby Ephraim Meir and Rivka G. Horwitz, Thomson Gale, 2007.
^Nahum N. Glatzer,Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1961, 2nd edn.), pp. 174–6.
^Maurice Friedman,Martin Buber's Life and Work,page 410 (Wayne State University Press, 1988).ISBN 0-8143-1944-0
^Schneidawind, Julia (2021). "A Diaspora of Books - Franz Rosenzweig's Library in Tunis".Jewish Culture and History.22(2): 140–53.doi:10.1080/1462169X.2021.1916706.

External links

Arnold Betz's essay on Rosenzweig andThe Star of Redemptionat Vanderbilt University
Franz Rosenzweig'sDer Stern der Erlösungonline (in German)
Review ofThe Star of Redemptionby Spengler inAsia Times
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyentry on Franz Rosenzweig
Guide to the Papers of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929)at theLeo Baeck Institute, New York.
Guide to the Franz Rosenzweig - Martin Buber notebooksat theLeo Baeck Institute, New York.

[1] Glatzer, Nahum Norbert, ed. (1962).Franz Rosenzweig. His life and thought.New York: Schocken Books. p. XXXVI-XXXVIII.

[2] Emil L. Fackenheim (1994).To Mend the World.Indiana University Press.ISBN 0-253-32114-X.

[3] Geoffrey Hartman,‘’The Fateful Question of Culture’', Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 164.

[4] Robert J. Richards, ‘’The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe’', University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 124 n. 21.

[5] Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017).The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 63–4.ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.

[6] Magee, Glenn (2001).Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition.Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 84.ISBN 0801474507.

[7] ttps://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2786.htm.Archived10 August 2018 at theWayback Machine

[8] Rosenzweig, Franz.Der Stern Der Erlosung[The Star of Redemption]. Trans. William W. Hallo. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1971.ISBN 0-03-085077-0.

[9] "The Builders", inOn Jewish Learning,ed. and trans. by Nahum Glatzner (New York, 1955).

[10] Franz RosenzweiginEncyclopedia Judaicaby Ephraim Meir and Rivka G. Horwitz, Thomson Gale, 2007.

[11] Nahum N. Glatzer,Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1961, 2nd edn.), pp. 174–6.

[12] Maurice Friedman,Martin Buber's Life and Work,page 410 (Wayne State University Press, 1988).ISBN 0-8143-1944-0

[13] Schneidawind, Julia (2021). "A Diaspora of Books - Franz Rosenzweig's Library in Tunis".Jewish Culture and History.22(2): 140–53.doi:10.1080/1462169X.2021.1916706.

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