Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy

by Benjamin Pollock

Overview

Benjamin Pollock argues that Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption is devoted to a singularly ambitious philosophical task: grasping “the All” – the whole of what is – in the form of a system. In asserting Rosenzweig’s abiding commitment to a systematic conception of philosophy often identified with German Idealism, this book breaks rank with the assumptions about Rosenzweig’s thought that have dominated the scholarship of the last decades. Indeed, the Star’s importance is often claimed to lie precisely in the way it opposes philosophy’s traditional drive for systematic knowledge and upholds instead a “new thinking” attentive to the existential concerns, the alterity, and even the revelatory dimension of concrete human life. Pollock shows that these very innovations in Rosenzweig’s thought are in fact to be understood as part and parcel of The Star’s systematic program. But this is only the case, Pollock claims, because Rosenzweig approaches philosophy’s traditional task of system in a radically original manner. For the Star not only seeks to guide its readers on the path toward knowing “the All” of which all beings are a part; it at once directs them toward realizing the redemptive unity of that very “All” through the actions, decisions, and relations of concrete human life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107691315
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2014
Pages:	354
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Pollock is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. He is author of articles in the philosophy of religion and in modern Jewish philosophy appearing in AJS Review, Jewish Studies Quarterly, and other leading journals, and he is co-editor with Michael Morgan of The Philosopher as Witness: Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Star of Redemption as 'system of philosophy'; 1. System as task of philosophy: 'the oldest system-program of German idealism'; 2. 'A twofold relation to the absolute': the genesis of Rosenzweig's concept of system; 3. Alls or nothings: the starting-point of Rosenzweig's system; 4. 'The genuine notion of revelation': relations, reversals, and the human being in the middle of the system; 5. Seeing stars: the vision of the all and the completion of the system; Conclusion: the all and the everyday.

Editorial Reviews

Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy is, by a very long shot, the best book written on The Star. In its general framing of the issues and intellectual context, in its painstaking attention to detail, in its philosophical sensitivity and interpretive creativity, and in its striking originality, it is simply beyond comparison. Perhaps most striking of all its virtues is the great light Pollock’s book sheds on the method of The Star, which turns out to be a highly original method rooted in a radical rethinking of the methodological resources of post-Kantianism. This is almost as much a tribute to Pollock’s philosophical agility as it is to Rosenzweig’s. The book is a must-read for anybody with a serious interest in modern Jewish thought. But it should also find an audience among those interested in continental philosophy, post-Kantian philosophy, and contemporary Christian theology. Anybody who has ever struggled with The Star, and many more who one hopes will struggle with it, will be grateful for this book.” – Paul Franks, University of Toronto

"Going against the grain of a number of dominant strands in the interpretation of Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, especially in the last twenty years, Benjamin Pollock returns to the way in which a number of Rosenzweig’s contemporaries and, Pollock claims, Rosenzweig himself understood the task of the Star: as a systematic attempt to know “the All.” Lucidly written and meticulously researched, this book will enliven discussion not only about Rosenzweig’s The Star but also about the charge of philosophical thinking, broadly understood." —Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University

“One of this book’s great strengths is the close, patient, and philosophically attuned way Pollock reads texts. The scholarship is meticulous and comprehensive, superior to anything else we have, and the book reads like a detective story. But for all its quality scholarship, it is the philosophical subtlety and nuance of Pollock’s analysis that stands out. This is philosophical reconstruction and interpretation of a very high quality, comparable in every way to the best work we have on figures like Fichte and Hegel.” – Michael Morgan, Indiana University

“In this rigorous and lucid book the most philosophically demanding topic in the single greatest work of modern Jewish philosophy comes alive for the first time. For no question in Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption is more exacting than the question of system. Pollock’s work opens the door to a new philosophical reading of The Star, showing how Rosenzweig’s interests in dialogue, prayer, vision, death, and life all contribute to the renewal of the philosophical task of thinking systematically.” – Robert Gibbs, University of Toronto

“Pollock teaches us how to read Rosenzweig as a philosopher. Scholars and students in the fields of Jewish philosophy, German philosophy, and European intellectual history need this book.” – Martin Kavka, Florida State University

From the Publisher