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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2014
Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas are three of the most prominent Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. This paper looks at the different understandings each author offers of intersubjectivity and authentic self-hood and questions the extent to which for each author God plays a role in interpersonal relationships.
I am grateful to Professor Anthony O'Hear and Adam Ferner for their willingness to re-schedule my lecture in order to avoid the Jewish Sabbath.
2 Gibbs, Robert, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 ln Totality and Infinity, tr. Lingis, Alphonse (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 38Google Scholar
4 ‘The appearance of the Other in the world corresponds therefore to a congealed sliding of the whole universe, to a decentralization of the world’. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel (New York: Washington Square Press, 1993)Google Scholar, 343
5 Sartre, Jean-Paul, No Exit and Three Other Plays, trans. Gilbert, Stuart (New York: Vintage, 1989)Google Scholar, 45
6 There are two English translations available: I and Thou, 2nd edition, tr. Smith, Ronald Gregor (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958)Google Scholar and I and Thou: A New Translation With a Prologue ‘I and You’ and Notes, tr. Kaufmann, Walter (London: Simon and Schuster, 1996)Google Scholar. The Smith and Kaufmann translations were originally published in 1937 and 1970 respectively. All quotations below are taken from the Kaufmann translation, with ‘thou’ substituted for ‘you’.
7 I and Thou, 53
8 Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 2, ll. 33–34
9 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1998)Google Scholar, 31
10 Ibid., 29
11 However, the distracting thought does not necessarily mean that no I-thou encounter has taken place, only that I have now stepped outside it. Similarly, if one entertains the thought ‘this is an I-thou encounter’ that moment of self-consciousness signals that the encounter itself is over.
12 Both Kaufman and Gregor Smith (1957 revised edition) render Buber's phrase as ‘spiritual beings’. Given the context, ‘forms of spirit’ seems a better translation. See Berry, Donald L, Mutuality: The Vision of Martin Buber (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985)Google Scholar, 104 note 3.
13 I and Thou, 57
14 Ibid., 102
15 Ibid., 57
16 Ibid., 123
17 Ibid., 129
18 Ibid., 124
19 Ibid., 163
20 See Cohen, Richard, Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas, chapter 4, ‘Rosenzweig contra Buber: Personal Pronouns’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 90–114Google Scholar
21 Gordon, Peter Eli, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar, 122
22 Rosenzweig, Franz, The Star of Redemption, trans. Hallo, William W. (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985)Google Scholar, 3
23 Mosès, Stéphane, System and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, trans. Tihanyi, Catherine (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, 50
24 Ibid., 51
25 The Star of Redemption, 298
26 Rosenzweig's letter, dated March 11, 1925, can be found in Glatzer, Nahum N., Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (Hackett: Cambridge, 1961), 145–46Google Scholar. Rosenzweig writes of the Star: ‘Precisely the thing I hoped for when I insisted on a Jewish publisher has happened, while the thing that I feared, and that made me hesitate to publish it during my lifetime, has not happened: it has made me famous among the Jews but has not obstructed my influence with the Jews. And the reason for both is that they haven't read it. Again and again I am amazed at how little its readers know it. Everybody thinks it is an admonition to kosher eating.’
27 Pollack, Benjamin stresses Rosenzweig's systematic aims in his monograph Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Benjamin, Mara, Rosenzweig's Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 38. Benjamin notes that Vermes, Geza introduced the concept of the ‘re-written Bible’ in his Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies, 2nd, revised ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 67–126Google Scholar, and Alexander, Philip S. lists nine characteristics of this genre in his ‘Retelling the Old Testament’ in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, edited by Carson, D. A. and Williamson, H. G. M. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 116–18Google Scholar. Rosenzweig's work does not exhibit all nine characteristics of the genre.
29 Benjamin, op. cit., 39
30 Ibid., 40–41
31 Richard Cohen, op. cit., 76
32 Star of Redemption, 175–76
33 Putnam, Hilary, Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (The Helen & Martin Schwartz Lectures in Jewish Studies), (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 44Google Scholar
34 Star of Redemption, 164
35 Benjamin helpfully points out that in Genesis ‘Adam’ does not become a proper name until ‘the sex differentiation of the first, androgynous human being in Genesis 2:21.’ Op. cit., 44
36 Here I differ slightly from Benjamin's reading of Rosenzweig. Benjamin reads the unmarked transition in Rosenzweig's text from ‘Adam’ to the soul who answers ‘here am I’ as a universalizing move within his reading of the biblical text. However, her reading of Rosenzweig's allusions to the biblical characters who are called twice and respond ‘here I am’ misses the precision of Rosenzweig's focus on Abraham rather than on a composite of Abraham, Moses, and Jacob (who are the only Pentateuchal characters who are called twice and respond ‘hineni’). Of these three, it is only Abraham who is given his name by God (his name is changed by God from Abram to Abraham in Genesis 17:5). Benjamin suggests that Rosenzweig jettisons ‘the particularistic element of God's address to the Pentateuchal characters’ in order to produce ‘a text in which any and every soul responds to the direct invitation of God’ (op. cit., 45). I would suggest that far from jettisoning the particularistic elements of the Abraham story, Rosenzweig highlights them through the emphasis on Abraham being named by God, and that he does so to underscore his own insistence that divine love is not an attribute of God, but is always particular, addressed to a unique individual, who must respond in his or her particularity. Benjamin's otherwise perceptive reading of this text also omits to mention that in the Jewish interpretive tradition God's repetition of the name is seen as a specific linguistic form indicating divine love or devotion (see Rashi on Genesis 22:11 and passim).
37 Star of Redemption 176
38 Star of Redemption 205
39 Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, tr. Lingis, Alphonso (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, 28
40 Ibid., 21
41 ‘The Paradox of Morality: an Interview with Emmanuel Levinas’, conducted by Wright, Tamra, Hughes, Peter, and Ainley, Alison, tr. Benjamin, Andrew and Wright, Tamra, in The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, edited by Bernasconi, R. and Wood, D. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), 176Google Scholar
42 Perpich, Diane, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 78–79Google Scholar
43 Ibid., 79
44 Totality and Infinity, 37
45 Ibid., 110
46 Ibid., 112
47 Ibid., 116–17
48 Ibid., 39
49 Ibid., 50 (emphasis in the original)
50 Ibid., 50–51 (emphasis in the original)
51 Ibid., 194 (emphasis in original)
52 Ibid., 197
53 Ibid., 199
54 Idem.
55 Idem.
56 Ibid., 200
57 Ibid., 244
58 Ibid., 40–41
59 ln Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, tr. Cohen, Richard A., (Pittsuburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, 98
60 Totality and Infinity, 101
61 Ibid., 69
62 Ibid., 213
63 Idem.
64 Ibid., 28. (see above)
65 Moyn, Samuel, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, 116
66 Ibid., 116–17
67 Wright, Tamra, The Twilight of Jewish Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas's Ethical Hermeneutics (London: Routledge, 1999), 76Google Scholar
68 Fackenheim, Emil L., To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Blommington: Indiana University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
69 Mordechai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Joseph Soloveitchik were, respectively, the leading theologians in the Reconstructionist, Conservative and Orthodox denominations during this period.
70 Levinas, Emmanuel, Difficult Freedom; Essays on Judaism, (tr. Hand, S.) (London: Athlone Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 291
71 Wright, Tamra, ‘Beyond the “Eclipse of God”: The Shoah in the Jewish Thought of Buber and Levinas’, in Levinas and Buber: Dialogue and Difference, edited by Atterton, Peter, Calarco, Matthew, and Friedman, Maurice (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004), 203–25Google Scholar.
72 Levinas, Emmanuel, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, (tr. Lingis, Alphonso) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981)Google Scholar.
