Hams Book Knowledge Edmund Schneider
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The distinctive framework of Franz Rosenzweig The system of belief of Franz Rosenzweig is one of the most interesting and surprising inventions of progressed thought, both popular and Jewish. There exists a background of discerned modern Jewish philosophers from Moses Mendelssohn, the firstborn philosopher of modem thought who systematically specified the essence of Judaism, to Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber. However, Rosenzweig was the basi to inject existential doctrine into Jewish thought and give it direction, both theologically Jewish and original. Rosenzweig coined a terminological system whose terms were taken from Jewish usage. He provided it is own guidelines and developed a distinguishable philosophical weave containing an interpretation of the struggle of Judaism with the other monotheistic religions. The Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig’s masterpiece, is written in a remarkable, ordered, dialectical singularity. In The Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig made one of the few attempts to develop methodically religious existential doctrine (MiMytos 262-273), This undertake makes the book unconventional, an special work among the philosophical works of our time. Rosenzweig’s life and personality also in a unique manner reflect his system of belief of life: “Man thinks that he philosophizes, but in actuality he writes his autobiography (“From Revelation” 162). Although raised in an assimilated environment, educated at the knees of the classical German idealism and system of belief of the Enlightenment so distant from that of religious belief, he all of a sudden turned sharply to faith. Author of the philosophical treatise Hegel and the State, Rosinzweig subsequently became the author of the theological book The Star of Redemption and translator of Hebrew poetry of the middle Ages and the Bible to German. He stood at the threshold of converting to Christianity and returned to Judaism to become one of it is most unfathomed thinkers. Intellectually acute, probing and exhilarating, his essays often times contained sarcasm and humor altho written for the duration of the last eight years of his life while he was badly ill and in agony, paralyzed allround his body and unable to speak (His Life). Notwithstanding the quality of being one of a kind of the man and his method, Rosenzweig’s doctrine is a not a singular phenomenon, but is a total spiritual procedure which characterizes post-Hegelian philosophy. This procedure places in the center of thought not understanding or an abstract method but rather existential man, real, critical man, with all his existential problems, emotion and agonies of soul. The philosophic path leading to Hegel In the approximately two hundred years which preceded Hegel, a direction in philosophical thought had commenced and produced which led inexorably t Hegelian thought. Among the substantial philosophers of this developmental amount of time was Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the father of English empiricism, who maintained that the source of understanding o noesis is the experience we acquire by means of our senses. Bacon produced the scientific method, which was adopted and adapted by, amid others, political philosophers dissimilar one from the other as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1701). Man’s dependence on his sensing devised from a scientific method to a philosophical concept. George Berkeley (1685-1753) set forth the rule: “to be” is to “be perceived” in the mind of man. He further asserted that the one thing, which exists for certain, is Spiritual reality, thought, the result at which the senses arrive. The skepticism of Berkeley was buttressed by David Hume (1711-1771), who refused the possibleness to understand thru our intellect any truth of reality. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) neither accepted the skepticism of Hume nor the earlier empiricism, and he suggested a synthesis, which transposed the center of gravity from the object to the “I.” We know, claimed Kant, by means of our senses as shaped by our intellect and not by the world surrounding us. Kant was not the only philosopher who nourished the “I”. René Descartes (1596-1650) based knowingness on one rudimentary factor “Cogito ergo Sum.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz’s (1646-1716) theory of monadology given a healthy elasticity to the “I” of Descartes, and the monism and natural determinism of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) found in the “I” total unity of spirit and the completely natural. The tremendous significance of “the new thinking” will become evident following a brief review of the theories and teachings of Hegel. Hegelian theory and reaction to it as background to “The New Thinking” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) contributed to doctrine in the two following ways: 1. He conventional the history of system of belief as a central authority and integral percentage of philosophical education. The dialectic observes things in motion, flowing, and knows that not everything, which was true yesterday, will be unfeigned also tomorrow. By it is nature, the dialectic is likely to accustom man to more outstanding tolerance. 2. He made the initial determination that the former respective philosophical methods are indicated in terms of the development of noesis towards one idealistic philosophy, which strives towards an sheer and exclusive truth, that is, to the “worldly spirit” – the divine orientation which aspires to fetch the humane world to finish feeling of satisfaction of spiritual freedom. Hegel saw in the history of doctrine a steady march towards “absolute knowledge”. Philosophy was not only a matter of understanding history but rather was the strength and the best means to direct the course of history (“die absalute Macht” ), to make the cognitive path fetch when it comes to events. However, the endeavoring of Hegel towards one total and finish philosophy, the one philosophy, which strived for sheer truth, conflicted with the numerous philosophical doctrines of earlier philosophers. Hegel solved this conflict with his dialectic. Philosophical conceptions based on theses, that is, On assumptions of only partial sensing of verity of the concept. Become in the course of thought anti-theses. These anti-theses are also partial in their sensing of the verity of the concept, nevertheless their fusion engenders mutual completion, synthesis, realization of one philosophical truth (“die TatalitÓ”t”). In other words, one ought to recognize any doctrine only by way of it is conflict with other philosophies, but one ought to recognize likewise it is veritable elements. Philosophy absorbs within it the fruits of the spirit of the earlier period, which opposes it, and that spirit completes and improves it and brings about the Hegelian synthesis. “That system of belief which is the last chronologically embodies the result of all the former philosophies, and hence it will have to comprise the principles of all of them; thus, as philosophy, it is the most advanced, fertile and explicit” (EnzyklopÓ”die, sec, 13, 47).Each philosopher, then, represents a specific stage of partial truth on the way to the entirety. A similar idea was not long ago proposed by Natan Rotenstreich, born in 1914, approximately 150 years after Hegel ( Al Hakiyum 25-28). According to Rotenstreich, each person must feel himself a necessary link in the development of custom, which is the complex of connections, which are transposed in each and each generation. The consciousness senses that one is a participant in an enterprise of giants that will never be completed. The I-myself is turned, then, by one’s modest primary contribution to a part of a heap of infinite thing. Man is not the initiator of processes; he knows that the world does not begin with him. Similarly, he can not put a to the enterprise with which he is associated, and he is, therefore, a share of it forever. Rotenstreich emphasizes the personal, subjective element, but there is no moment of system of belief perfecting itself, as there is according to Hegel. Rosenzeig employed the systematic and organized conception of Hegel, perceiving him as “the outstanding inheritor of two thousand years of the history o philosophy” (Star 61), but did not conclude consequently that Hegel was the sole owner of philosophical truth or that his predecessors propounded untrue conceptions. Hegel’s dialectic solution was not a conclusion after which no progression of thought, which opposes the essence of his dialectic vision, could be drawn. Philosophical weaponry of a fresh and modern type was necessary to resolve philosophical troubles as they continued to arise. This yearning for a new type of philosophical thinking that will function in the real world sensed the existence of man as he is rather than in terms of Hegel’s “worldly spirit.” This longing was expressed, for example, in Nietzsche’s “changing the scale of all values” and in the materialistic philosophical thought of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872). Not only was Hegel’s metaphysics being seriously analyzed, his “philosophy of nature” likewise was revealed as being false. His attempts to grasp the phenomena of nature from abstract assumptions and not from experimental science was mocked by expert researchers such as Carl Friedrich Gauss in his exploration on geometry and Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz in his work on the consciousness (Lectures). Hegel observed the world from the aspect of the sheer spirit, the “perfect” cognizance of abstract thought and did not consider the existence of real man as he is, living in the concrete world of his direct experiences and his real problems. Hegel sensed the world as consolidated and united, as an infinite ideal, everlastingly unattainable by science, a world which does not fetch man to concrete actuality at the depths of his soul. Hegel enclosed man in a world of abstract concepts, seeing man as a world in miniature, which loses it is connection with the true and critical reality and is eternally incapable of finding it. Man became, instead, a portion of the method, a portion of a speculative, magical, worldly scheme – the world and man are “one flesh” – merged and linked one with the other. Consciousness does not fetch one to unfeigned and real cognition, rather it results from the elementary and specific experience, maintained Hegel’s opponents. Contrary to Hegel’s opinion, Hegelian thought was not complete. Bacon, who two hundred years earlier distrusted thought in and of itself and favored cognition based on phenomena of nature and experiment, and Hans Vaihinger, who asserted two generations after Hegel that thought is unable to recognize the “absolute truth, ” were only two of numerous philosophers who disputed Hegel’s claim. There were likewise other doctrines, which were inconsistent with Hegelians thought. Among these doctrines are phenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), which presently dominates in Germany and France. Phenomenology seeks to light the unfeigned position of man’s knowingness by spiritual or external selective information (“phenomena”) without any ontological- a priori determination. Another dissident vis -á – visa Hegelian thought is Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), considered one of the fathers of the neo -Kantian “Marburg School.” Cohen asserts that the “logic of the inception” (“Logik des Ursprungs”) or transcendental ontology seeks the “true reality” or the final essence in thought, meaning that examination of the spiritual a priori creation, exposure of the data from the beginning as an infinite process, is that which determines the programmatic status of the consciousness of man. Cohen seeks to realize society organized on the principles of ethics and the safeguarding of man’s honor. The philosophers who followed Hegel were discontented with idealistic philosophy; they did not agree with Hegel that knowingness does not fetch one to unfeigned and real cognition and started out to fabricate philosophic thought that would not be restricted to the abstract and established method of Hegel. They sought, furthermore, to use doctrine to find resolutions to the troubles bothering real people in the concrete world. “The necessary tendency of philosophic action will have to fetch the philosopher to man…the special symbol of acknowledgement of man turns his independent essence to a distinctive personality which exists for itself…” (Principles of the Philosophy 60). In his book The Essence of Christianity ( Das Wesen Der Christentums), Feuerbach maintains that the existential reality in the life of man is in his faith in humane nature and in good deeds in this world. Marxian and Nietzschian thought also conflicted with that of Hegel on the necessary point set forth by Feuerbach. The difference, then, amid Hegel and those who opposed his thought is in the view of the kinship of the man-philosopher and philosophy, Hegel considered each philosopher as an instrument of philosophy, a representative of partial truth at a sure stage of the development of philosophy, That idea with regards to which the philosopher thinks becomes an idea, external to the philosopher, abstract and “perfect, ” on which the philosopher speculates and is not a percentage of him. Form the perspective of his opponents, not only was there a new conception of philosophy; there was also a new brand of philosopher. Man is now the determining factor; he is no longer enclosed in a world of concepts, but is tied to vital. Concrete and direct, experiential reality. Man has, in the words of Rosenzweig, a “world view,” he “takes a position ” (Star 143). He is not an instrument of philosophy; rather doctrine is an instrument of the philosopher, of man. “The philosopher lowers himself humbly to his experimental. Existing “I,” and then his system of belief will be more veritable, concrete and closer to the truth” (Dialogical Philosophy 173). Another conflict with Hegelian thought was led by the non-rationalists, those philosophers who opposed a doctrine in which man acts according to the intellect alone, leaving no place for the demands of the heart and feeling. Søren Kierdegaard (1813-1855) claimed, for example, that Hegel changed religion to an absolute, conceptual-cognitive idealistic philosophy, which prevents man from attaining the possibleness of direct connection with God. He declared that “truth is subjective and that the indispensable element in doctrine is ‘the subjective philosopher’” (post-Scriptum, sec. 2). Hegelian thought monistic idealism, which solves everything by one principle, the idea the “spirit” – prevented man from making the connection of faith. The world is, Hegel claimed, only an idea of God without a theistic undertone; rather, it is pantheistic, since things are not developed by the idea: they are the idea itself. Nature, science and the arts are all achievements of consciousness person man likewise is the feeling of satisfaction of consciousness, and there is only the conscious, so the private “I” has no place in this method. The “I” is similar, as in the theory of Spinoza, to a “light wave rolling along the waves of the ocean.” The object (“substantia”) according to Spinoza is the spirit according to Hegel, each engulfing everything within it. Thus, the solitary “I” cannot face God, as one who stands before God whether in prayer or as sinner or as a thinker. The basic assumption of faith is that man may stand and present his essence before God, that God may speak with him and he may speak with God, or in the words of the German historian, Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886): “Here each age is genuinely prompt to God” (Star 225). Ranke depicts the events of the past “as they were when they occurred.” That is, the events are depicted b means of the revelation of God in the metaphysical idealisti image, which gave signification to the occurrences, and not by means of the intellect (“The Significance”). In refuting Hegel, the non-rationalist Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) claimed that in rationalistic schemes we may attain only noesis of the possible and popular laws noesis of the real is always individualistic, it requires an act of the will which results from a personal need which may not be supplied by future prospects or potentials or ordinary laws. Against the “negative” rationalistic system of belief Schelling placed a “positive philosophy,” based on faith and will, which system of belief devised the powerful and modern basis for existential, religious philosophy, from which system of belief Franz Rosenzweig was influenced greatly. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) raised the “will” above “consciousness” (“ratio”) (The World). Schopenhauer claimed that the will resembles a thing which itself is outside our ken, beyond the capacity of our cognizance to understand; the will is the singular reality in us and in the entire world. Man’s knowingness serves the power of blind will, which lacks intent and proof and will never be satisfied (compare Star 47, 49 and 57). Nietzsche holds that only the will to govern and be powerful exists in all beings. Will is the active element in natural and humane phenomena; our mental cognizance distorts and opposes life, and science is of value but is not veritable. Among other non-rationalists who contested Hegel’s monastic idealism were Theodor Lessing (1872-1933) and Solomon Ludwig Steinheim (1789-1866). Lessing argued that truth is not revealed by consciousness, that it is concealed from cognizance and found amid the silent forces, which activate and direct the cognizance in it is action (Einmal). Steinheim (1789-1866) asserted that one does not reach religious truth (creation of the world, revelation) by mental deliberation since this truth is subject to revelation only. He “denies speculative doctrine because of it is rationalistic nature and makes faith itself a type of consciousness, not identifying it with the rationalistic consciousness” (Al Hakiyum2: 168). Philosophy’s two discerned paths Rosenzweig’s thought has a special place amid the thinking which disputed Hegel. Although he belongs to the non-rationalist stream of thought, continuing the line of Schelling, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Nietzche, Rosenzweig relies to a great extent on the anthropological motifs of Feuerbach which are “the basi revelation of renewal of thought” (Naharayim 232). However, there is likewise an interlacing of rationalism and anti-rationalism, as is evidenced by the following: “Revelation remembers back to it is past, while at the same time remaining of the present; it recognizes it is past as portion of a world passed by…for in the world of things it recognizes the substantive ground of it is faith in the immovable factuality of a historical event” (Star 215). “There is something in consciousness which is beyond consciousness…consciousness is the basis for reality, but knowingness in it is very essence is likewise reality” (Naharayim 207). Thus, Rosenzweig’s system of belief follows two paths: One road philosophical theology chose for itself, in which the intellect is the nourishing factor. The system of belief of religion trekked the second path, revelation serving as it is basis. These two paths, according to Rosenzweig, supplement each other, one nourishing the other, and neither may subsist independently. This conception is comparable to Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who also developed a outstanding synthesis amidst science or fixed knowingness and the perfection of belief. However, while Aquinas derived faith from Christian revelation (Basic Writings), Rosenzweig derived it from the soul of man, according to which the kinship amidst system of belief and theology is determined. Rosenzweig, contrary to Steinheim, cited that he was assisted by intellectual, philosophical means to prove it is substance. Rosenzweig opposed forcefully any existence-belief doctrine, which is itself based on his conscious investigations. His anti-rationalist system of belief resulted from faith, but this faith was drawn from the rationalistic history of creation (Star 213), and in this aspect, his doctrine is not dissimilar from others constructed on logical, rationalistic concepts. Rosenzweig opposed Hegel zealously. Instead of the dated abstract thought of Hegel came concrete “new thinking” connected to words, men and real experiences. Man is free – he is own master The act of transferring the center of gravity from system of belief to the philosopher invented not only a obligation for man, but also emphasized that man is free. He is his own master; the entire obligation for his existence rests on his shoulders alone. Man inhales his freedom from the will and imagination. He does not breathe freedom from the progress and accomplishments of science as propounded by materialism, nor does he find it I the originative spirit of man as propounded by idealism nor from intellectual psychological result of perception learning and reasoning of the world pursuant to rationalism. Nietzsche, for example, sensed a new form through whose strength of will discloses the subjective values which condition thought and humane conduct on the freedom of his choice. Rosenzweig proclaims a “very personal type, a type of philosopher of world view, one who takes a position” (Star 143), who rises and flourishes on the pedestals of freedom, obligation and capacity at the time of the meeting of man, God and the world and, in regard to a Jew, for the duration of his struggle with the Jewish way of life of practical commandments. The philosophic “I” of Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig is not the solitary “I” of Immanuel Kant, an “I” which knows not one thing when it comes to the world, with which it has no contact. Similarly, Descartes, in stating “Cogito ergo Sum” did not speak of his private “I” but of the abstract thinking “I”. Yet Kant speaks incessantly in regards to the “I.” Which is the center of a organized system, but as Kierkegaard says, insofar as one speaks persistently regarding the “I,” that “I” becomes thinner and thinner until it becomes at long last the actual spirit of the dead (Dialogical Philosophy 17). According to “the new thinking,” freedom of choice is not a matter of obligation or obligation which comes to man from without by command or decree. This freedom is man himself – existence – “existence for itself” (“Fürsichselbstsein”), according to the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) or “being itself” (“sich zu eigenist”) in the words of Martin Heidegger. Therefore, he can not flee from himself except by suicide and death. Man has no choice but to be free. Thus, in each circumstance we are responsible, since obligation rises from the ground of freedom (L’Existentialisme 64). One errs if he thinks he may pack and flee from himself by way of the Kantian Or Hegelian abstract dogma. Thus, man has two available courses: the way of favoring freedom and the way of opposing it. Life for the sake of freedom is unfeigned life, authentic life. One who utilizes freedom in order to fight it or to limit it is domainname in the world lives an insubstantial, inauthentic life. Such a life is not consistent with the nature of man (Portrait 75). Man is free to fabricate good and evil, truth and falsehood. He approves or negates the world and proclaims his presence and nothingness. Man who chose freedom chose well, and not only for himself but for all humanity (L’Etre 143). The person is the source of freedom. There is no freedom other than the freedom of the individual. For this reason, each man must develop and formulate the truth of the test of the values as well as the values themselves. In respect of our lives and experiences, there is no world other than the world of man. Even values are not one thing other than values as they relate to person man. Thus, the person must formulate values. Without the individual, they would not have arisen and there would be no values (L’Existentialisme 34-35). Man by nature is neither good nor evil. He is good or evil to the extent that he increments freedom in the world. Freedom, then, is neither a priori nor objective. It is the being of man who lives it each day and each moment. It is the unfeigned existence since it exists for itself (L’Etre 641). On the difficulties which gave birth to existentialism Rosenzweig sought refuge from uttermost subjectivism when he abandoned in 1913 the idealistic system of belief and the historicism of Friedrich Meinecke (1862-1954), his teacher (see Die Entstehung). He returned to theology, to the non-rational faith philosophy, while deliberating on “the clear brightness” (Star 143) of subjectivism, which Heidegger rooted in his creation of pure subjectivist philosophy. Rosenzweig’s comprehensible statement gives evidence of the lack of clarity that existed in the world of philosophy. Each philosopher, religious or not, aspired candidly to nullify the being of man as object, desiring to see man as subject only. However, in perceiving the “I” as subject alone and turning their back on the goal to be attained element in their philosophical thinking, these philosophers exposed themselves to significant difficulties. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev (1874-1948) spoke of the decline of freedom, of freedoms lack of candor and man’s subordination to freedom. Jaspers saw in subjectivism a prison, comparable to the snail who builds it is house and is everlastingly tied to it. It is not surprising that in this try the real freedom withdrew upon the making something publicly available of an imaginative freedom. The freedom represented is abstract, a vague freedom. Indeed, there is no unfeigned freedom of choice since our choices are always fixed a d dependent on constituents upon which we have no, or inconsequential, control. Man did not pray for simple, corporeal or metaphysical freedom. He wanted real freedom in thought, economics, religion and all around his personal life. Man wanted freedom to lift stumbling blocks from the path of life, control disease and catastrophes, master the surroundings and improve in general that which exists. Such a freedom is indicated in action innovation, creation, and revelation of the clandestine and noesis o the hidden. Existential freedom is not turned toward the external world of the real and critical meeting with God and the world; instead, it is turned to the abstract, to the intangible. 1. The lack of knowledge. We live our life without understanding it, without knowing anything regarding our intent and what we must do. Even if man has a conscious nature, he cannot conceive reality. As a result, he cannot be at home in the world, and he is “thrown” into an adversarial environment. This alienation is evident in Sartre’s novels and plays, the dramatis personae being uprooted from their societal environs and got rid of from their past, each missing out internal spiritual unity. What determines the reputation of the confrontation of man with his world is not the intellect; rather it is a sure essence, which is described as nausea or anguish at the finality and fragmentation of humane existence. In respect of life and death, existence is not one thing other than passing from not one thing to nothing. Being, in it is generality, is not understandable and cannot be known since it is connected, on the one hand, to humane consciousness and, on the other, it is given to us evermore fragmented so that man comprehends always his limitations, the fragmentation of his being and consciousness. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) stresses that without knowledge, minuscule man is lost I the innovative world, which is arranged with no way out. There is no other possible way for the hero of The Trial (Der Proze? ) other than to receive the judgment of death, even though he does not recognise for what, why nor by whom he is accused, tried and sentenced. Modern society is mysterious, a sort of blind and evil strength which prevents the person from exercising free choice and the joy of life, permitting him only to yield to his uncomprehended fate. Without knowledge, one may not know the expected, and the lack of this psychological result of perception learning and reasoning leads to fear of the unknown, and this fear leads to uncertainty, confusedness and helplessness. 2. The fear of death. Martin Heidegger, the extreme and heartless realist, presents an authentic being, founded o the possibleness of a race toward (the fear of) death. One must live, Heidegger claims, though the sole reason for his life is his death. From the moment one enters the world, we receive the sentence of death. One has no choice in this matter. If so, how may man function with this ever-present active and tragic obsession? For fear is a strong aroused reaction with physiological aftermaths such as paleness, trembling, sped up pulse and breathing and dryness of mouth which may at last result in the cessation of all hope and total paralysis of creation caused by the entire waste of one’s energy. 3. The lack of purpose. Existentialism will never perceive intention in man since man is not yet specified inexorably. The goal to be attained of a priori good disappeared since there is not now any compete and infinite consciousness that will calculate it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) wrote: “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted” (The Brothers Karamazov). Sartre and Nietzsche ignored the existence of God, and Heidegger stated that all existence is man and not one thing more. Man abandons the world of values and the a priori commandments, which may warrant his conduct because he is unable to find something to rest upon his world has no intent and consequently likewise no ethical values. Such is the dismal condition of man. He is comparable to one who walks on a tightrope above the abyss whose bottom disappears from sight. Is there no exit from this fearful vision? |
