Franz Rosenzweig's and Emmanuel Levinas's Critique of German Idealism's Pseudotheology

Abstract

Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption opens with an outspoken critique of German idealism's rejection of the body's (i.e., the individual person's) independence from the body politic. Even though he first referred to philosophy in general and has often been said not to distinguish between ancient Greek and modern German thought, in the course of the introduction to The Star he did, indeed, mark Hegel and Kant as a break within Western metaphysics. On the battlefields of World War I, Rosenzweig emphasized that, rather than trying to escape any kind of fetters (irgendwelchen Fesseln entfliehen)-as philosophy sets out to convince usman... wants to remain, he wants to-live.' To be sure, he did not see any causal connection that would tie a philosophical dualism between immanence and transcendence-or, between belief and knowledge-to the carnage perpetrated in World War I. On the contrary, blood had been shed in order to increase a nation's economic and political influence. However, Rosenzweig saw, behind this nationalist aggrandizement, a pseudotheological conflation of the immanent with the transcendent. Instead of being aware of the gulf that lies between these two entities, nationalist politicians set out to deify the immanent notions of nation and Volk.