Tertium Datur

Introduction

In his essay Das neue Denken (1925), Franz Rosenzweig warns against the “danger of understanding the new thinking in the sense, or rather the nonsense, of ‘irrational’ tendencies such as, for example, the ‘philosophy of life.’ Everyone clever enough to have steered clear of the jaws of the idealistic Charybdis seems nowadays to be drawn into the dark whirlpool of this Scylla” (GS 3: 156). The quote puts in a nutshell what this book sets itself to investigate thoroughly, that is, the meaning and positioning of Rosenzweig’s ‘new thinking’ in the context of contemporary philosophy. More precisely, it will be shown how the Homeric metaphor of a double danger provides the guidelines Rosenzweig seems to stick to throughout the entire development of his thought—which, at every level, takes shape as an alternative between two opposite philosophical positions that have to be equally avoided: idealism and irrationalism.

Both terms are actually conceived in a broader meaning than the one related to their actual historical manifestations. For Rosenzweig, idealism is not so much a particular period in the history of philosophy, as a basic attitude of thought lying at the roots of philosophy as such. Likewise, irrationalism is not only a philosophical movement, historically set in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but also—and more importantly—a general tendency opposite to idealism. In short, whereas idealism aims at reducing reality to reason, pursuing the goal of a perfect agreement between them, from the point of view of irrationalism, reality is by no means exhausted in the picture rationality can provide of it; rather, reality also consists of dimensions that are ‘irrational,’ in the sense that they place themselves beyond—or even against—the structures of reason.

However, despite Rosenzweig—and this book too, after all—adopting a mostly theoretical approach to idealism and irrationalism, it would not be correct to say that their historical scope is given no consideration at all. By ‘idealism’ Rosenzweig means, of course, a theoretical thinking strategy, but he also mentions the expression “from Ionia to Jena” (GS 2: 13), when referring to it. That means that idealistic thought is also situated in a historical context, with its origin in Parmenides’ philosophy (i.e. Ionia) and its conclusion in the Hegelian system (i.e. Jena). Rosenzweig refers to irrationalism with the term ‘point of view-philosophy,’ thus emphasizing its anti-absolutist character on a theoretical level. Yet at the same time, he does not fail to provide historical coordinates either, as he locates irrationalism’s origin in Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegelianism and follows its evolution up to Nietzscheanism.

Whereas it is sufficiently clear what ‘Jewish contents of thought’¹ may refer to, the question arises as to what could possibly be meant by ‘Jewish way of thinking.’ Fortunately, Rosenzweig himself attempts to answer this question in some lecture drafts written between 1920 and 1921. In Grundriss des jüdischen Wissens (1921), for example, Jewish knowledge is said to be “immediate (unmittelbar)” (GS 3: 579). This term is taken to mean a form of knowledge that, other than philosophy, does not rely on conceptual mediation for its own development. The difference between the Jewish-immediate approach and the philosophical-mediated ←12 | 13→one is also mirrored in a polarity between praxis and theory, where the Jewish attitude is placed on the side of concrete praxis against abstract theory. It is in this context, then, that Rosenzweig sees his goal in “leading knowledge back to a knowledge of life […] and making” (ibid.).

It is at this juncture, then, that Jewish thought comes in. As the immediate, praxis-based way of thinking that it is in Rosenzweig’s view, Jewish thought positions itself in the double-pole framework here at issue, by opposing philosophy and siding with common sense at the same time. Talking about Jewish thinkers, for example, Rosenzweig says that a struggle takes place in them, in which a Jewish way of thinking tries to overpower the philosophical one—more often than not unsuccessfully (see ibid.). On the other hand, by having a common enemy in the abstractive character of philosophy, common sense and Jewish thought are not only seen as in agreement with each other, but, going a step further, Rosenzweig reaches the point where the two notions are even considered to be the same, to be synonyms (see ibid. as well as Fabris 1993: 356 and Baccarini 1993: 374–375).²

Another distinguishing trait of the Jewish way of thinking is its capability to connect the notion of life with those of eternity and truth. In Der jüdische Mensch (1920), Rosenzweig describes Jewish existence in terms of “polarity” (GS 3: 561) ←13 | 14→between antithetical features,³ in particular between a life in time and a contact with eternity.⁴ The Jewish people live in time, like every other people, but, differently from any other people, they also partake of eternity, as they have been “with God” (bei Gott) since forever. This “direct connection with God is the very core of being Jewish” (ist ja wirklich zentraljüdisch) (574)—says Rosenzweig—and if one now considers that “God is truth” (GS 2: 423), the “proximity to God” (Gottesnähe) (GS 3: 574) that plays such a central role in Jewish life turns out to be also a proximity to truth, which plays an equally central role in Jewish thought.⁵

According to Rosenzweig, then, two main features stand out as defining the typically Jewish way of thinking: (1) close relation to concrete life and (2) constant reference to the notion of truth. Together, they make Jewish thought settle into a middle position between two extremes. The first feature, establishing concreteness and experience as a foundation for thought, finds itself at odds with the abstractness of idealism—that is at odds with what has been called the first way. The second feature, on the other hand, prevents this anti-idealistic slant from going too far and turning into a form of irrationalism—that is prevents it from following the second way. Preserving the notion of truth as a reference point allows thought to keep its distance from any tendency to give up that notion altogether, thus constituting a permanent check against any possible irrational-relativistic drift.

Now, the point is that when Rosenzweig describes his ‘new thinking,’ he mentions the same features he also recognizes in Jewish thought. Although not framing the discussion explicitly in terms of a contrast between philosophy and Jewish thought, in his essay from 1925, Rosenzweig criticizes philosophical ←14 | 15→strategies that lead to an excess of abstraction and emphasizes at the same time the concrete nature of the ‘new thinking.’ Moreover, it is in that same crucial essay that the Rosenzweigian conception of truth as ‘verification’ (Bewährung) finds its most mature expression—thus testifying to truth still playing a central role in Rosenzweig’s view. Irrespective of the particular shape the notion of truth takes in the ‘new thinking,’⁶ the very fact that it still takes a shape, that is that it is not completely discarded, is enough to distinguish the ‘new thinking’ from any form of irrationalism.

To put it briefly, concreteness and truth can be taken as the keywords defining Rosenzweig’s ‘new thinking.’ Its concreteness opposes the first way of idealism, while its consideration for the notion of truth represents a stand against the second way of irrationalism. This double distancing from both forms of philosophy is exactly what at the same time brings the ‘new thinking’ closer to what Rosenzweig considers to be Jewish thought. The third way that the ‘new thinking’ comes to represent can thus be seen as an oriented one: it leads away from philosophy—from both of its branches—and toward Jewish thought. This book adopts the idea of a thus conceived third way as a key to the interpretation of Rosenzweig’s position, which basically aims at going beyond the limitations of philosophy—idealism or irrationalism—and getting closer to an extra-philosophical tradition, such as the Jewish one.⁷

In conclusion, this book will show that a third-way-model can find application at every level of Rosenzweig’s structured picture of reality. At its first level, Rosenzweig’s account of the basic elements, the Urphänomene of God, world, and human being, emerges as a combination of the idealist conception and an irrational view—a combination, though, that is irreducible to each of its components, and thus constitutes a third way between them. At the second ←15 | 16→level of reality, each of the three paths of creation, revelation and redemption turns out to be based on one central concept—‘relational otherness,’ ‘event,’ and ‘oriented praxis,’ respectively—which marks a radical break with both idealism and irrationalism, while revealing its derivation from Jewish sources at the same time. That means, once again, that Rosenzweig’s ‘new thinking’ is not only a third way between two philosophical stances, but it also takes shape as an approach to Jewish thought.