Franz Rosenzweig
| Franz Rosenzweig | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
December 25, 1886 Kassel, German Empire |
| Died | December 10, 1929 (aged 42) Frankfurt, Germany |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Existentialism |
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Main interests
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Philosophy of religion |
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Influences
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Franz Rosenzweig (December 25, 1886 – December 10, 1929) was a German Jewish theologian, philosopher, and translator.
Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel, Germany to a middle-class, minimally observant, Jewish family. He studied history and philosophy at the universities of Göttingen, Munich, and Freiburg.
Rosenzweig, under the influence of his cousins and his close friend , considered converting to Christianity. Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to live as an observant Jew first, before becoming Christian. After attending Yom Kippur services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, he underwent a mystical experience. As a result, he became a baal teshuva. Although he never recorded what transpired, he never again entertained converting to Christianity. In 1913, he turned to Jewish philosophy. His letters to his friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whom he had nearly followed into Christianity, have been published as Judaism Despite Christianity. Rosenzweig was a student of Hermann Cohen, and the two became close. While writing a doctoral dissertation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel and the State, Rosenzweig turned against idealism and sought a philosophy that did not begin with an abstract notion of the human.
Rosenzweig's major work is The Star of Redemption (first published in 1921). It is a description of the relationships between God, humanity, and the world, as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption. If one makes a diagram with God at the top, and the World and the Self below, the inter-relationships generate a Star of David map. 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.
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