Cosmopolitan Political Theology in Cohen and Rosenzweig

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONHermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig have been credited with of religious in twentieth century.1 The expression is ambiguous, and has led to a division of labor between philosophical and theological receptions of their thinking. As a consequence, politico-theological aspect of their works has received less attention. However, under twin pressures of a renewal of interest in Carl Schmitt's Christian theology in contemporary Leftist thought, and of growing importance of Leo Strauss within studies, Cohen and Rosenzweig have been recently associated with a form of Jewish theology.2 This article argues that Cohen's and Rosenzweig's distinct engagements with theology share aim of providing a philosophical interpretation of messianic ideal that is oriented toward a cosmopolitan conception of democracy. Both authors seek in so-called diasporic condition of Judaism those elements needed to reconstruct a conception of peoplehood beyond those offered by liberalism and nationalism.This article puts forward three theses with respect to conjunction of Judaism and theology in Cohen and Rosenzweig. The first thesis is that messianic ideal orients theology of Cohen and Rosenz-weig towards a form of cosmopolitanism characterized by a conception of rule of law that is no longer tied to state or to sovereignty, and in that sense is both supranational and anarchic. In contrast, theology that Schmitt develops roughly at same time is designed to defend sovereignty of national and imperialist state, and assigns priority to order over law.3The second thesis is that theology of Cohen and Rosenzweig undoes kind of opposition between Greek and Roman political and monotheistic that Leo Strauss would later refer to as problem of Athens and Jerusalem.4 This article shows how Cohen and Rosenz-weig attempt to overcome division between pagan philosophy and revealed religion by adopting a Platonic-Maimonidean approach to messianic ideal that undoes opposition between reason and faith, nature and revelation, articulated by Paul's messianism and transmitted to modernity through Christian theology.The third thesis of article is that both Cohen and Rosenzweig work out their idea of messianism in an explicit confrontation with Paul's antinomianism. Current post-Marxist thinkers like Badiou, Agamben or Zizek have theorized their radical conceptions of emancipatory politics by appealing to Paul's antinomian messianism, comparing favourably with respect to messianic politics which is believed to entail an exclusivist form of cosmopolitanism. The interpretation of Cohen's and Rosenzweig's messianic thought offered here suggests that theirs may be more radical form of cosmopolitanism because is founded on priority of a natural rule of law associated with peoplehood over conventional rule of concrete state orders associated with nationhood.It is well known that Cohen and Rosenzweig were both critics of Zionism. The dilemma inherent in their critiques was clearly expressed by Rosenzweig in a fragment from 1920 entitled Der Jude im Staat: since on account of messianic ideal the state cannot be in Jew, then it is necessary that Jew be in state.5 For Cohen and Rosenzweig, state in question was German one, and had to be lived in under conditions of rising nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments, exacerbated during World War I, which would eventually bring Hitler and National Socialism to power. Thus, in both Cohen and Rosenzweig a sort of compromise or symbiosis had to be made, not only with German state, but also with German philosophy, from Goethe and Kant through Hegel and Nietzsche, that had accompanied development of this state until age of Bismarck. …