Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy

Pollock argues that Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption is devoted to the philosophical task of grasping 'the All' - the whole of what is - as a system.

Benjamin Pollock (Author)

9780521517096, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 March 2009

354 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.69 kg

'Going against the grain of a number of dominant strands in the interpretation of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, especially in the last twenty years, Benjamin Pollock returns to the way in which a number of Rosenzweig's contemporaries and, Pollock claims, Rosenzweig himself understood the task of the Star: as a systematic attempt to know 'the All.' Lucidly written and meticulously researched, this book will enliven discussion not only about Rosenzweig's Star but also about the charge of philosophical thinking, broadly understood.' Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University

Benjamin Pollock argues that Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption is devoted to a singularly ambitious philosophical task: grasping 'the All' - the whole of what is - in the form of a system. In asserting Rosenzweig's abiding commitment to a systematic conception of philosophy, this book breaks rank with the assumptions about Rosenzweig's thought that have dominated recent scholarship. Indeed, the Star's importance is often claimed to lie precisely in the way it opposes philosophy's traditional drive for systematic knowledge and upholds instead a 'new thinking' attentive to the existential concerns, the alterity, and even the revelatory dimension of concrete human life. Pollock shows that these very innovations in Rosenzweig's thought are in fact to be understood as part and parcel of the Star's systematic program. But this is only the case, Pollock claims, because Rosenzweig approaches philosophy's traditional task of system in a radically original manner.

Introduction: The Star of Redemption as 'system of philosophy'
1. System as task of philosophy: 'the oldest system-program of German idealism'
2. 'A twofold relation to the absolute': the genesis of Rosenzweig's concept of system
3. Alls or nothings: the starting-point of Rosenzweig's system
4. 'The genuine notion of revelation': relations, reversals, and the human being in the middle of the system
5. Seeing stars: the vision of the all and the completion of the system
Conclusion: the all and the everyday.

Subject Areas: Judaism: mysticism [HRJX], Judaism [HRJ], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Philosophy [HP]