Abstract

Chapter One will discuss place as dialogue between man and God. Man's place is in the middle of the universe as a living, real creation. This idea forces man to be within a specific time and place, part of a dynamically moving stream of changing life-experiences, never stagnant and always flowing. ;Man's place must be in a frame of dialogue that requires him to use the word "you," that is, the second person singular pronoun used with a verb in the present tense. ;From this usage, a frame of dialogue develops naturally among three elements: God, man and the world. Man's place, then, is in a dialogue with God and with the world. ;Chapter Two will discuss the prior conditions to the occurrence of the meeting between man and God. Several conditions must be fulfilled before man can meet with God: Only the gifted man meets with God. The second prerequisite for the meeting is the commandment to love God, after which God can then respond. The dialogue begins with the confession of man, which occurs because man thinks it will be to his advantage. He believes that God can forgive him. This hoped-for redemption is built upon a prerequisite of faith. Chapter Three will discuss the belief aspect of the meeting. His faith supports and reinforces the meeting. Its foundation is in the knowing objectivity of the past, and it is manifested as experiential, subjective "orientation" of the present. Chapter Four will discuss the aspects of the dialogue meeting. Rosenzweig changes the historical meeting to a personal one. The meeting is real, factual, not figurative, and does not depend on what happened before. It is a sudden event, an axis between past creation and the future redemption. The present time makes the reality of the meeting firm. The meeting takes man from the pole of pessimism to that of optimism. The dialogue gives man purpose. ;Chapter Five will discuss the ultimate purpose of man--the dialogue between man and the world with love constituting the content of this dialogue. After man gives his love to God, he can give love to his fellow-man, which love redeems the world and becomes the purpose of man. Redemption designs the future, but Rosenzweig wanted to bring the designs for future to the present so that the redemption could be something the Living man sees and experiences now. Expectation causes the future to be manifested in the present, and dismay preserves the power of and nourishes the soul