The Event of Dialogical Thinking

Throughout the ages, a binary thinking has developed in the exploration of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. Such development has entailed the repression of ternary thinking. Binary thought is marked by the oblivion of alterity as it appears in the form of the second personal pronoun, i.e. the Thou. Our aim is to examine critically the possibilities of this ternary thinking in the dialogical philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas. 1. The Binary Character of Modern Times In modern times, thought and action are characterized by a binary pattern. Ever since the anthropological turn in Descartess philosophy, the autonomous subject has acquired a central and foundational place within philosophy as well as within culture. The transcendent, traditionally referred to as God, began a history of progressive decline. At the same time, metaphors of the organic and the natural were replaced with those of the mechanical. This gave rise to the modern worldview. In his Discours de la mthode, Descartes describes how he casts doubts on the labyrinth of medieval thought in order to erect the city of modern philosophy upon the new foundation of the Cogito. To this Cogito, the world appears as an exteriority open to conquest. One of the central questions of philosophy asks how the diversity of the phenomenal world could be conceived from this principle. The philosophical project of Descartes and Kant, and of the idealistic philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, can be understood from this perspective. The subject finds itself placed over and against the objectivity of the world. The relation with this world takes on many forms. Questions arise with respect to the bridge between thought and reality, the (im)possibility of cognition of the world, the deduction of the world from subjectivity and the dialectical realization of freedom. Without exaggeration, it can be said that the relation

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between man and world is conceived in this binary fashion: reality is understood from the bipolarity between the subject and the object. The anthropological turn has brought with it enormous advantages. Culture experienced an explosion, technology came into existence, the continents were opened up, society came to be understood as producible. The high point of this thinking was perhaps reached in the turbulent decades after the French Revolution. At the same time, however, other aspects of reality were repressed or forgotten. When the binary subject-object relation becomes the dominant way of looking at the world, this relation can function as a procrustean bed. In several texts, Nietzsche demonstrated that metaphysics is genealogically reducible to grammatical structures.1 The predicative structure of propositions joins a subject to a predicate. On Nietzsches view, this given structure determines how reality can be thought. The metaphysical proposition connects a subject with an object. The nominative and the accusative gain a privileged place. The question here is what happens to the intersubjective relationship. Is not the transcendence of alterity being reduced in function by the identity of subjectivity? Two possibilities present themselves. Either the other is understood as an alien object, or as a subjectivity like I am (alter ego). In the first case, we can speak of the objectification of interpersonal interaction; in the second, of the adaptation of the other to the same. Topical problems such as multiculturalism and the universality of human rights have everything to do with this issue. Some thinkers like to link this reduction of the other in binary thinking to reigning political structures. It remains a very delicate matter to tie philosophy to politics. The metaphysics of Plato or the ontology of Martin Heidegger can certainly not be judged exclusively from the debacle in Syracuse or the enthusiasm for a determinate type of leadership. Nevertheless, it seems to make sense to uncover the underlying violence of philosophy. Overall, thinkers from Jewish origins like Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas, Theodor Adorno2 and

Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, edited and translated by Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair et al. (New York Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Nietzsche, Rhetoric. Description of Ancient Rhetoric; Lecture Summer, 1874. 3 Hours, in Carole Blair, Nietzsches Lecture on Rhetoric, Philosophy and Rhetoric 16(1983): 94-129. For a discussion of Nietzsches rhetorical texts, see Anne Tebartz-van Elst, sthetik der Metapher. Zum Streit zwischen Philosophie und Rhetorik bei Friedrich Nietzsche (Freiburg im Breisgau Mnchen: Karl Alber, 1996). 2 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975).

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Marc Ellis3 relate modern philosophy to the experience of death. These authors do not intend a refutation of philosophy. On the contrary, in their view the experience of death is the ultimate truth of this philosophy. The colonization of America (Ellis), the murderous nationalism in the trenches of Verdun (Rosenzweig) and the holocaust (Adorno, Ellis and Levinas) show the devastating power of a way of thinking which apprehends the other from on es own subjectivity. The use of such terms as one-dimensionality (Rosenzweig) or totality (Levinas) designates the unity of the ontological-political structure of Western philosophy. In a famous study on Levinas bearing the telling title Violence and Metaphysics, Jacques Derrida writes explicitly about transcendental and ontological violence. 4 He also points out what is problematic about these connections. 2. The Ternary Structure of Dialogical Thinking Binary thinking seems to ignore or repress something.5 Apart from the grammatical forms of the nominative and the accusative, we also have the vocative and the dative, i.e. the personal modes which designate direct address and giving. Within the context of a sentence, the vocative is always separated by a comma. The dative refers to the addressee who can himself become a giver but never the object of the gift.6 These two cases depict a dimension of reality that cannot be reduced to a binary pattern. The basic scheme which is suggested is not therefore the linear dynamics between subjectivity and objectivity. It is rather a triangular structure in which the subject-object axis is completed by the subject-subject axis. The vertices are formed by the first person pronoun ( I in
3

Marc H. Ellis, Ending Auschwitz. The Future of Jewish and Christian Life (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1994). 4 Jacques Derrida, Violence et mtaphysique: Essai sur la pense dEmmanuel Levinas, in Lcriture et la diffrence (Paris: Seuil, 19792), 117-228; Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas in Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass (London Henley: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1978), 79-154. 5 Dany-Robert Dufour, Les mystres de la trinit (Paris: Gallimard, 1990) starts from the hypothesis that thinking is marked by the oblivion of the second grammatical person. In his book, the author looks at ternary rationality as it manifests itself in philosophy (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Hegel get special attention), in logic, semiology, linguistics, psychoanalysis and other integrating disciplines. Several reflections of this work, and in particular its spirit, were greatly useful to us. 6 Eugen Rosenstock, Angewandte Seelenkunde. Eine programmatische bersetzung (Darmstadt: Roetherverlag, 1924) was of great importance for the development of this kind of grammatical thinking.

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the nominative), the second (Thou in the vocative or the dative) and the third (it in the accusative). A rich and centuries-old tradition of thinking always tried to preserve this structure. 1. Not only the central dogma of the Christian religion but also various forms of polytheism and non-Christian monotheism testify to it. 2. Its traces can also be found within classical-rhetorical thinking. The sophists were not concerned with grasping reality (logical-ontological parallelism) but with convincing the other. This persuasive event bears a resemblance to tragedy. In this literary genre, the nakedness of human freedom is placed over against ineffable fate. However, since the famous and quite ambivalent conflict between Plato and rhetoric, it is possible to observe a partial neglect and a partial repression of the other within philosophy.7 3. The concept of caritas in Thomas may well be an illustrious exception. The observation that only a small number of philosophers wrote on love and the erotic may do as an indication. 4. After idealism, Ludwig Feuerbach is among the very first to advocate a renewed philosophical attention to the intersubjective relation. 8 Martin Buber views Feuerbach as the person who is at the basis of contemporary dialogical thinking.9 This episode may be rather the continuation of a rich tradition which survived within literary genres other than philosophy. 10 Yet it can be said that by the end of the nineteenth century the intersubjective relation is back on the philosophical agenda. Jewish philosophers here play a

Luc Anckaert, Language, Ethics and the Other between Athens and Jerusalem. A Comparative Study of Plato and Rosenzweig, Philosophy East and West 45(1995): 545-567. 8 Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundstze der Philosophie der Zukunft, edited by Gerhart Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983), 111: Die Trinitt war das hchste Mysterium, der Centralpunkt der absoluten Philosophie und Religion. Aber das Geheimnis derselben ist, wie im Wesen des Christenthums historisch und philosophisch bewiesen wurde, das Geheimnis des gemeinschaftlichen, gesellschaftlichen Lebens das Geheimnis der Nothwendigkeit des Du fr das Ich Alle wesentlichen Verhltnisse die Principien verschiedener Wissenschaften sind nur verschiedene Arten und Weisen dieser Einheit. 9 Martin Buber, Zur Geschichte des dialogischen Prinzip, in Id., Das dialogische Prinzip (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1954; 19845), 299-320. 10 Jurgen Wertheimer, Der Gter Gefhrlichstes, die Sprache. Zur Krise des Dialogs zwischen Aufklrung und Romantik (Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1990).

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prominent role. The reason is to be found in the significance of the intersubjective relation with the other in the structuring of Jewish identity. Jewish life and thinking indeed circles, in an oscillating dynamic, around one central question: how does man relate to the infinite? After the holocaust, Emil Fackenheim accentuated this interest: Judaism is to be understood, not as an evolution of ideas in the direction of a pure rationalism, but as a confrontation of finite human existence with the Infinite. 11 The term con-front-ation refers to the relation between two faces looking at one another. The relation of the finite human being to the impact of the infinite breaks up the current binary schemes and pushes thinking towards the exploration of the inconceivable and the unimaginable. The in-finite can be comprehended as the non-objective antipode of the finite. The infinite can refer to divinity or God. But the other person who is transcendent with regard to my finitude is also in a sense infinite. Finally, infinity indicates the abysmal depth of existence which can undermine finitude. Trauma and transcendence often have much in common. The French thinker of Jewish origin Jean-Franois Lyotard suggests the term the inhuman. He thereby aims to articu late the transhuman, through which the other can mean height as well as depth.12 Within the Jewish-dialogical tradition, Buber was the first to acquire fame. His work I and Thou13 duly belongs to the intellectual commons. In this short text, Buber contrasts the intersubjective relation to the objective relation. Both types of relation seem to exclude one another. Buber clearly prefers the first type of relation. One could say that he elevated discussion of the repressed dimension of binary thinking. However, he does not succeed in developing a dynamic ternary thought.

11

Emil L. Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future: Essays in Jewish Theology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 60. 12 Jean-Franois Lyotard, L inhumain: Causeries sur le temps (Paris: Galile, 1988); The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991). 13 Buber, Ich und Du, in Das dialogische Prinzip, 5-136; I and thou (New York: Scribner, 19582).

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3. Rosenzweig and Levinas Rosenzweig tried to do so. He formulated a very sharp critique of Buber. Levinas follows Buber to a strong degree. Both authors can be regarded as prominent representatives of dialogical thought. They develop a new thinking which starts from a razor-sharp criticism of Western philosophy. Beginning from their critique, they write on human freedom, the intersubjective ethical relationship and the relation with others. In contrast to idealistic thought, which they denounce as dangerous, they discuss human individuality (the first person), relationality (the second person) and the objectivity of the cultural world (the third person). And in doing so, they sought to bring to light an originary experience that was once repressed within Western culture. As young doctoral student from Kassel, Rosenzweig had studied in depth Hegelian philosophy of law under the direction of the famous historicist Meinecke. This resulted in a doctoral dissertation, Hegel und der Staat, which is still authoritative.14 Rosenzweig also became renowned through the identification of the manuscript best known as the Systemprogramm.15 The discussion on the authorship of this important fragment remains a classic example of philosophical textual criticism.16 At the end of the First World War, Rosenzweig faced the abysmal reality of the Western world. The death-culture of the trench lines was one of the fundamental experiences that detached Rosenzweig from the idealistic and post-Hegelian systems. In such a desperate epoch, when so pessimistic a work as Die Untergang des Abendlandes could appear, and young passionate people such as Tillich, Bloch, Heidegger and Barth, as well as Hitler and Rosenberg sought after constructive perspectives, Rosenzweig wrote his magnum opus under the

14

Franz Rosenzweig, Hegel und der Staat (Aalen: Scientia, 19622). 15 Das lteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus, in Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften. III. Bd: Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, edited by Reinhold Mayer and Annemarie Mayer (Dordrecht Boston Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 3-44 [=ZL]. 16 Cf. Das lteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus: Rezeptionsgeschichte und Interpretation, edited by Frank Peter Hansen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989).

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telling title The Star of Redemption.17 It is a huge attempt to read the experience of a fragmented world as a portent of a redemptive perspective of unity. The basic experience of unity between God, man and world had become very problematic. Rosenzweig points out how these three regions of metaphysical reality branch apart, like a kind of river delta. He also tries to think anew these three elements, so as to place them into a new perspective of unity. Within the Jewish tradition, it is the sabbatical transition from darkness to light, from the moment of rupture (Sjebirat ha-kelim) to restoration (Tikkun-olam).18 In his thinking, and starting from the death experience as the ultimate question of the meaning of life, Rosenzweig accomplishes the metamorphosis of the question of man as an irreducible, relational and truth-loving being. Levinas was awakened from his dogmatic slumber by the Second World War. Earlier he had already nurtured some doubts about Western thought, especially the prevailing phenomenology.19 However, the caesura of the Second World War demanded a quest for a new thinking of the messianic peace after the rupture caused by the war. Following a series of shorter texts, Totality and Infinity represents the first fully written testimony to it.20 For Levinas, the confrontation with the abysmal depths and the unfathomability of existence raise the question of infinity. It is necessary to devote attention to the inhumanity of nothingness in order to be opened up to the inhumanity of infinity. How is it possible to think the relation with infinity? Is it possible at all to think and to articulate the good beyond being? Does the content of this thought not exceed thinking itself? Does the ideatum not transcend the idea? Rosenzweig interprets his own thinking as a

17

Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften. II. Bd: Der Stern der Erlsung, edited by Reinhold Mayer (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976). We refer to The Star of Redemption, translated by William W. Hallo (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) [=Star]. 18 Gerrit W. Neven, Schepping als profetie: Over de betekenis van het denken van Franz Rosenzweig voor de christelijke theologie (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1989). 19 As early as 1930, Emmanuel Levinas published the first French study on Husserls phenomenology: Thorie de lintuition dans la phnomnologie de Husserl (Paris: Alcan, 1930). The text was translated into English as The Theory of Intuition in Husserls Phenomenology, by Andr Orianne (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973). The primacy of the theory, conceived within a specific structure of intentionality and the subject-object relation, raised suspicions in Levinas. The critique culminated in TI and more specifically in the section on the Phenomenology of Eros (TI, 256-266). 20 Levinas, Totalit et Infini. Essay sur lextriorit (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961). We refer to Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh The Hague: Duquesne University Press Martinus Nijhoff, 1969) [=TI].

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new thinking. 21 Levinas likes to designate his thinking as a thinking of infinity.22 Levinas designates the relation between both works as follows: We were impressed by the opposition to the idea of totality in Franz Rosenzweigs Stern der Erlsung, a work too often present in this book to be cited.23 It is this very relation that we want to study in depth. 5. Thematic attention of Levinas for Rosenzweig Levinas has clearly indicated which themes of the Star had moved him. In at least nineteen places, he mentions Rosenzweig.24 The points of particular interest for Levinas with respect to the Star can be grouped in four important topics. They are all connected with the opposition to totality. First, Levinas is deeply moved by the description of the irreducible subject. Like Rosenzweig, Levinas discovers a totalizing structure within idealistic philosophy, which permeates as a method the whole of Western thought from Ionia to Jena. Rosenzweig stresses that it is impossible to confer a meaning to death within this line of thinking.25 The gods as well as the world remain silent. In the light of death, man is thrown back upon himself. This individuation (the term stems from Kierkegaard) means a rupture within reality. At this point, Rosenzweigs empirical thought offers an interesting perspective. First of all, from his utterly authentic experience of death, man appears to be autonomous. This autonomy represents a rupture within totality. Next, inwardly, man is also
21

Rosenzweig published a personal reflection on his own opus magnum with the meaningful title Das neue Denken. Einige nachtrgliche Bedenkungen zum Stern der Erlsung in ZL, 139-161. See also The New Thinking in Franz Rosenzweigs The New Thinking, edited and translated by Alan Udoff and Barbara Galli (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 67-102 [=NT]. 22 The characterization of Levinass philosophy as the thinking of infinity is based on Totality and Infinity but also on the text Ethique et Infini. Dialogues avec Philippe Nemo (Paris: Arthme Fayard, 1982), translated as Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, by Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985). In addition, we mention the articles La philosophie et lide de linfini, Revue de Mtaphysique et de Morale 62(1957): 241-253; Encyclopaedia Universalis. Vol. 8 (Paris: 1968), s.v. Infini; Religion et ide de lInfini, Le Monde, 5 September 1982, 11; Sur lide de lInfini en nous, in La passion de la raison. Hommage Fernand Alqui, edited by Jean-Luc Marion (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 49-52. 23 TI, 28. 24 The references of Levinass texts that speak on Rosenzweig, can be found in A Critique of Infinity. 25 Entre deux mondes, 126.

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irreducible to his essence or ethos. Being meta-ethical, man disposes of his essence in freedom. Any attempt at totalizing wrecks itself on this irreducible core of humanity which is marked by an outward and an inward difference. The inhumanity of death, opposed by the meta-ethical subject, means the fragmentation of Hegelian thought into three fragments: In the dread of dying, which no system can dissipate by avoiding it or embracing it, the Hegelian totality breaks up into three absolute separate elements. 26 It is worth noting that Levinas explicitly uses the word separate. Second, Levinas pays a lot of attention to the relational aspect of Rosenzweigs thinking. The genuine reality does not coincide with the irreducible substantiality of man. In retrospect, from the death experience onward, man, God and world are conceived as separate substances. As such they are hypothetical.27 True reality consists in the absolute experience of their relationality. These relations can easily be described as love. Love unites, according to Levinass reading of Rosenzweig the elements without entailing a new totalization. Revelation expresses the basic relation between God and man. For Levinas, the great challenge resides in thinking this relationality: In my view the crucial point lies here: the way in which a unity of irreducible and absolutely heterogeneous elements can originate within the general economy of being unity which can not be one life and time.28 a

Levinas combines the concern for the irreducible subject and the relational reality with a third, rather methodological aspect. According to Levinas, totalistic thought is shattered by the irreducibility of human subjectivity and love. We will have to address the paradoxical question as to whether and how separation and relation can be thought together. Levinas interprets Rosenzweigs thinking as an empirical philosophy. This is not a positivist empiricism whereby thinking would be determined by sensorial reality, but rather a rationality that articulates multiform reality.29 It is not thinking reason that determines reality, but rather the reality of lived relations which arouses thinking. The important question that

26 27

The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, 151. Star, 83: Hypothetical that is the word which clarifies that strange appearance of the pieces of the universe for us. 28 Entre deux mondes, 127. 29 Entre deux mondes, 126: Empirisme na rien de positiviste. Par exprience, il faut entendre la profusion des faits, mais aussi des ides, des valeurs, au milieu desquelles s coule une existence humaine: nature, faits esthtiques et moraux, les autres, moi-mme, Dieu

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arises is how this form of empirical thought is possible and what its implications are. Finally, Levinas also attaches great importance to Rosenzweigs outline of the relation between Judaism and Christianity. Both religions are two ontological modes of existence that contribute, each in their own ways, to the eschatological truth which is given to present reality. Levinas places most emphasis on the transhistorical significance of Judaism. The extra-temporal character of the Jewish liturgy is, as it were, an Archimedean point. It forms the possibility to make a judgment on history. Exteriority means that the outcome of world history is not the final judge of history, as Hegel contended. As a side remark to the concern of Levinas with Rosenzweig, we need to mention that Levinas takes on an equivocal attitude vis--vis the explanation and the explicit use of Rosenzweigs concepts. By way of illustration, we can work this out through the concept of the Selbst. (Numerous other examples could be work just as well.) By the Selbst, Rosenzweig designates the meta-ethical subject that withstands the reductive one-dimensionality of (post)-Hegelian thought. The term Selbst is borrowed from Hermann Cohen, from whom Rosenzweig drew much inspiration.30 Before the publication of Totality and Infinity, in the original version of Entre deux mondes, Levinas clearly referred to Rosenzweigs use of the term for designating the particular and irreducible status of man. He is Selbstheit, ipseity, existent and thinkable forth from himself. 31 This statements was made at the Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue franaise in 1959, to be published in 1963. After the development of his thinking in Totality and Infinity, Levinas omitted this reference when the article was reedited in 1976.32 The same holds for the German translation.33 Yet, in the later

30

In his later work Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Leipzig: G. Fock, 1919); translated as Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, by Simon Kaplan and introduced by Leo Strauss (New York: Ungar, 1972), Hermann Cohen used the notion of the Selbst as a reference to the irreducible structure of subjectivity. Rosenzweig had read the unpublished text as a type-written form, during the period he edited the Star. He was particularly impressed by three core ideas: the significance of the Day of Atonement for understanding Revelation, the anthropology of the Selbst, and, finally, the way in which Cohen uses religious terms such as Creation, Revelation and Redemption as philosophical categories. Apart from the sources of inspiration we mentioned here, the new logic of Cohen too was important for Rosenzweig. He applied this logic for developing the shapes of God, man and world. Levinas, however, denounces categorically the concept of correlation that Rosenzweig uses explicitly ( TI, 53: Correlation does not suffice as a category for transcendence, see also 149, 191) . The reason why lies in the fact that the correlation would annihilate the asymmetry of the relation with Infinity. 31 Entre deux mondes, 127. 32 Levinas, Difficile libert. Essais sur le judasme (Paris: Albin Michel, 19762), 253-281. 33 Zwischen zwei Welten. Der Weg Franz Rosenzweigs, in Zeitgewinn, 31-66.

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published Preface to the book of Moss, Levinas clearly links Rosenzweigs concept with separation. This peripheral remark sheds some light on the ambivalent relationship Levinas has with Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig is often quoted implicitly. Levinas avoids making explicit quotations, making more use of the citation of ideas than of words, as such. This may lead to a certain sense of ambiguity with respect to the originality of his thinking. Formulated in a more positive way, one could say that the apparent similarities between both authors can occasionally conceal their points of difference. 6. A Speculative Gesture A thorough study of the intertextual relationship between Rosenzweig and Levinas cannot confine itself to an observation of parallels hinted at by the younger author alone. A greater challenge consists in exploring how Levinas approaches the questions brought up by Rosenzweig. On the opening page of Entre deux mondes, Levinas makes this point this way: The g reat importance of Rosenzweigs thought lies in the questioning he invites us to. But what exactly is the proper speculative gesture34 of Rosenzweig in dealing with Western thought? On the turn of modern rationality into its present fragmentation, Rosenz weigs project is marked by some ambivalence. On the one hand, he wants to make explicit the irreducibility of human particularity in its relation to infinity. On the other hand, he aims to depict the whole of reality in a single, all-encompassing picture. During the interbellum period, Rosenzweig is heir to both Kierkegaard and Hegel. This dual influence does not justify an existential and a systematic reading which might complete one another. On the contrary, a double approach mirrors the double relation of man to the absolute. Man has a twofold relationship to the absolute, one where the absolute has him, but still a second where he has it.35 In order to understand this complex relation, one should resist the temptation to flatten out the paradoxes in either a synthetic conceptuality or an analytical unraveling.
34

The term is borrowed from Moss, Hegel beim Wort genommen. Geschichtskritik bei Franz Rosenzweig, in Zeitgewinn, 67-89. 35 Urzelle des Stern der Erlsung, in ZL, 127; Germ Cell of The Star of Redemption, in Franz Rosenzweigs The New Thinking, 48.

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Only

by

taking

this

tension

seriously,

can

one

succeed

in

properly

understanding the dynamism of the Star as a powerful movement of thought that, by means of paradoxes, develops a view on its own, a transcendent form of truth. This ultimate perspective is formed by a mystical contemplation of God. The paradoxes must be recognized in their independence and joined together into a transcendent figure. The speculative gesture consists in preserving the tension between the different paradoxes in order to that they may develop into transcendent truth through their transformation. This gesture disrupts idealistically uniting thought, and opens a space for expressing the irreducibility and multiformity of actuality. 7. The Dynamics of the Star This concern with the speculative gesture can be further clarified through a survey of the dynamics of the Star. In the Introduction, Rosenzweig begins from an anthropological interest. From times immemorial, philosophy has struggled with the question: What is man? The question was not only put by the sphinx to Oedipus, but also contains the gnoothi sauton that has formed the arena of philosophy ever since Socrates.36 Immanuel Kant understood the question of man as the fourth question of philosophy, following the questions what man can know, ought to do and may hope for.37 This question cannot be answered through critical examination. It is the question which contains the radix of any philosophical thinking. Rosenzweigs thinking can also be understood as a search for an answer to this radical question.38 Starting from the experience of death, he works out the metamorphoses of the question of the irreducible man into the relational man who is in the end directed toward truth. The ultimate outcome is an openness to life. Within this perspective, the opening and ending clause of the Star form an
36

Platon, Protagoras, 343b in Platon, Werke in acht Bnden. Griechisch und Deutsch, Bd. I, edited by Gnther Eigler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990). The Greek text is taken from the famous Bud-edition (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1955); the German translation is by Friedrich Schleiermacher. 37 Immanuel Kant, Logik, A 25 in Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd. III, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998). 38 Rosenzweig, Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen, in ZL, 643-644; The Science of Man, in Rosenzweig, God, Man, and the World. Lectures and Essays, translated by Barbara E. Galli (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 63-79, 64: And so no the doubt that is initiated in this way reaches more deeply (as the doubt concerning the existence of God asked more deeply: What is God?) and asks: What is the human being?

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enclosure that evokes Abrahams order of faith or the Mosaic exodus movement perfectly well. The massive All cognition of the All originates with death, in the fear of death39 is responded to by the tender invitation Whither, then, do the wings of the gate open? Thou knowest it not? Into life. 40 In Star I, Rosenzweig depicts the individual as irreducible to philosophical rationality. The unique experience of irreducibility before the abyss of death and the Nought constitutes a pre-reflexive given. Individuality simmers the thinking of identity up to the point at which it boils over. The logical-ontological parallelism gives way to an ontological pluralism. The world and God can also be thought of as irreducible substances, just as man can. A structural separation divides reality into three autonomous regions of being. Mythical language articulates the experience of irreducibility in a metaphorical manner. However, everyday reality does not consist in some void in which are then situated selfsufficient atoms, but of the mutual relatedness of man, world and God. Star I describes the pre-rational experience equally as of a autonomy, but interprets precondition the for fundamental separateness transcendental

relationality. A non-violent relationality is only possible between autonomous centers.41 In their separateness, man, God and world form the deep matrices or nodes of the network of relational reality. Star I formulates the paradoxical relation between an experiential and a transcendental thought. The theme of autonomy is central. Over the course of the book, autonomy is developed into the relationship both with the exteriority and with transcendence. As a thinker of experience, Rosenzweig gives voice to the existential irreducibility of man. At the same time, this is an exploration of the possibility of developing an allencompassing view of relational reality. Star II describes relationality as the development of man, God and world. In his singularity, man is addressed in a unique manner by God who reveals himself. This existential revelation consists first of all in an orientation of human freedom. Man is called on to realize, in freedom, his essential capacity to help
39 40

Star, 3. Star, 424. 41 Friedrich W.J. Schelling, Aus der Jahrbchern der Medicin als Wissenschaft, in Schellings Werke. 4. Hptbd.: Schriften zur Philosophie der Freiheit 1804-1815, edited by Manfred Schrter (Mnchen: Beck, 1927; 19652), 61-222, 174: wre nicht jedes ein Ganzes, sondern nur Theil des Ganzen, so wre nicht Liebe. Rosenzweig alludes to the text from Stern, 61-62 to word the enclosure of the Greek ideal of the polis as it was questioned by the sophists: Dass er nur Teil eines Ganzen sein solle. [Star, 57: that he is only part of a whole]. The basic idea of the text consists in that the relation presupposes the autonomy of its poles.

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the incomplete world; this ethical commitment means the redemption of the world. Language is the formative element of human freedom as ethical commitment. Revelation is a discursive event through and through. This linguistic event is the unfolding of the mythical, metaphorical speaking which evokes primitive experiences. Simultaneously, revelation is an encompassing cosmological event. Revelation does not only take place within human intimacy, but is also a world historical event in which man has its place. Towards the world God reveals himself as creator. God creates the world from the height. This means a recognition of the independence of the finite world. Man, through revelation, discovers himself placed within the all-embracing love that God spreads as his footprint throughout the world. Redemption is the cosmic event of the blossoming of love in the world. God reveals himself in a world that develops towards wholeness. An analysis of the dialogical language demonstrates the diverse moments of dynamic relationality. Star II is the transformation of the paradox between experience and the transcendental into the paradox between existential experience and the global meaning of revelation. Autonomy is here developed into language. Star III is devoted to the truth event. The paradox of revelation is reiterated as the paradox of interiority and exteriority. Judaism lives the truth of revelation out of its interiority and identity. It detaches itself from world history and institutes a liturgical time of its own. Truth is lived through as eternity. Christianity (and the people) experiences this truth as the call to realize eternal truth within history. The relation between eternity and time, between liturgy and history, determines the paradox of interiority and exteriority. Judaism and Christianity, each in its own way, represents an aspect of truth. Truth however is never fully present. It is always to come. Truth reveals itself as a transcendent openness in the figure of the Star of David. In this mystical figure, a first triangle forms a field having God, the world and man as its corners. A second triangle offers a perspective on the relations between these three vertices. The relation between God and the world appears as creation, the relation between God and man as revelation, and the relation between man and world as redemption. Whereas the separate triangles represent irreducible entities and relations, the transcendent truth consists in the interconnection of the triangles into one figure. Truth is a figure which is structured around the openness at the heart of the hexagon which is
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circumscribed by the inner sides of both triangles. As a whole, the vertices are borne by the internal core of the void. The paradoxes are joined into a single shape. The Star is the progressive transformation of an initial paradox toward a growing transparency. The tension between experiential thought and transcendental thought has altered into the paradox of an existential and systematic thinking. In a subsequent transformation, the paradox appears as the tension between the interiority of the existential revelatory experience and the exteriority of the cosmic revelation. In the light of eternity, the paradoxes form a composition. The topic of autonomy is introduced in Star I, developed through language in Star II and completed in a (trans)historical perspective in Star III. Through this dynamic, Rosenzweig can discuss the fundamental structures (concepts), the relationality (existence) and the truth of reality. It is mainly Grtz who stressed this stratification.42 By contrast, Moss, in his pioneering work, defended the position that the systematic and existential character of Rosenzweigs thought represent two sides of the same pic ture.43 In the present text, we demonstrated that the tension mentioned in Moss should not be restricted to the terms of system and revelation, but that it opens a perspective on the whole of the Star.44 8. A Critique of Infinity: Rosenzweig and Levinas Whoever wants to study critically the relation between Rosenzweig and Levinas cannot do so without an interpretation of the already cited quotation from the opening section of Totality and Infinity.45 There, Levinas asserts that Rosenzweigs opposition to totalistic thinking constitutes the nerve center of his criticism of Western thought. An intense reading of the two main works of the dialogical tradition allows to state that this assertion is not exaggerated at all. As a framework for reading which will allow us to explain this contention of Levinas,
42

Heinz-Jrgen Grtz, Tod und Erfahrung. Rosenzweigs erfahrende Philosophie und Hegels Wissenschaft der Erfahrung des Bewutseins (Dsseldorf: Patmos, 1984). 43 Moss, System. Moss interpreted Rosenzweig clearly from Levinas. In the wake of his study appeared simultaneously, within the same inspiration, the French translation of the Star, LEtoile de la rdemption, translated by Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel (Paris: Seuil, 1982) and the prominent issue of Les Cahiers de la Nuit Surveille. Franz Rosenzweig , edited by Olivier Mongin, Jacques Rolland and Alexandre Derczanski (Paris: La Nuit Surveille, 1982). 44 Anckaert, God, wereld en mens. Het ternaire denken van Franz Rosenzweig (Leuven: Universitaire Pers, 1997).

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we can look at the events of trauma and transcendence, which are beyond thematization. The way in which Rosenzweig and Levinas think of the relation between finite existence and infinite thinking is closely intertwined with the choice of trauma as a starting point of thinking. The opposition to the idea of totality is not a negative revolution. It aims at preserving the worth of human subjectivity and relationality. Rosenzweig speaks of an Adabsurdumfhrung that is simultaneously a Rettung: What is written here is still nothing other than the reduction ad absurdum of the old philosophy and, simultaneously, its salvation.46 This examination finds its starting point and breeding ground in the question as to how Levinass thought of the experience of infinity as withstanding totality has been made possible by Rosenzweigs text. Levinas did not merely explore, transpose or translate themes of Rosenzweig. Rather, he repeated the specific speculative gesture with whom Rosenzweig resists idealism in a new phenomenological context.47 The possibility of thinking the infinite, i.e. the experience par excellence, is at stake here. This critical investigation experience48 represents a dismantling of Rosenzweigs and conducted Levinass in a Kantian way seeking to formulate the transcendental presuppositions of philosophy. The idea of infinity is exposed to criticism. In doing so, it can prove to be signifying something unutterable because of its impossibility and problematicity. Articulating the necessary conditions removes the protective coating of more sympathetic and often sacrosanct interpretations. Such a critical approach issues out into a respectful distance with regard to the great meanings of texts which exceed the conscious intentions of their authors and readers. Our reading is also supported by a clear ethical perspective. We are aware that it might be well defensible to read Rosenzweigs thought fruitfully apart from the ethical question. Yet, if one is to explain the significance of Rosenzweig for Levinas, then the ethical context can hardly be disregarded.

45 46

TI, 28. NT, 73. 47 Richard A. Cohen, Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 223-240 convincingly argues that a parallel can be observed between Rosenzweigs resistance against Hegelian idealism and Levinas s opposition to phenomenological thought. 48 In another context, Foucault thoroughly thought through this relation of intertwinement between a transcendental necessary condition and an empirical moment regarding the status of the finite consciousness: Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: Une archologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), more specifically on the pages 329-333 with the heading Lempirique et

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Our concern with this commonly shared, speculative gesture, consisting in the refutation of the idea of totality through a new insight into relational reality, determines the structure of our exposition. We will not elaborate the different paradoxes as we have previously in other texts, but rather inquire into the possibility of this kind of thinking. 1. First, we will compare the starting points of the thought of both Rosenzweig and Levinas. The confrontation with absurdity and the primordial image of man is here at the center. 2. Subsequently we examine how they can think the relation between man and infinity. 3. This is of great consequence for social-political relations. 4. From the interplay of the first person (the separation as inner richness) with the second person (the language of the relation of infinity) and the consequences for the third person (politics), we ultimately will be able to point out the often silent assumptions and preconditions of dialogical thinking. The question of the possibility of translation occasions this: What is the nature of the relationship of Athens and Jerusalem?

le transcendental. The book is translated into The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock, 1977).

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