Transcending Time: Elements of Romanticism in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchk

I

There is by now a fairly large secondary literature on the thought of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. For very good reason, scholars speak of Neo-Kantian and Existentialist phases or dimensions of his theological writings. Thus, Halakhic Man shows the influence of Neo-Kantianism on R. Soloveitchik—hardly surprising, since he wrote his dissertation on that school of thought. Later writings, such as Lonely Many of Faith, and many others, bear a profoundly Existentialist imprint. What I shall argue here is that the impact of yet another movement in Western intellectual and literary history finds its expression in R. Soloveitchik's writings, especially in his sermons, in those intellectual essays which share sermon-like qualities, and in his eulogies. That movement is Romanticism, and my contention is that R. Soloveitchik, the man and his writings, can be better understood if they are examined not only from Neo-Kantian and Existentialist perspectives, but from the Romantic perspective as well.

For much of the remainder of this article I shall spell out those elements in his writings which may be said to reflect strands within the Romantic tradition. Before I do so, however, I wish to make several prefatory comments. First, it is fair to ask if R. Soloveitchik ever specifically mentions Romanticism, or explicitly draws upon its main proponents. The answer to this question is threefold, and I shall lay the answers out in what I believe is an ascending order of importance. First, in fact R. Soloveitchik does indeed refer to the school of thought, favorably.¹ Second and more important than these explicit references, however, is the deeper and less self conscious way in which ideas can find their way into the thinking of an intellectual. A man of R. Soloveitchik's broad education would have encountered such thinkers as Rousseau, as well as the German Romanticists Schleiermacher, Shelling and Schlegel, whom he cites explicitly or by whom he seems to have been influenced.² He would surely have read such classics of Romantic literature as the works of Goethe, had frequently spoken of Peretz,³ and indeed was exposed by his mother from his early childhood to the works of Pushkin and Lermontov.⁴ These texts may have resonated deeply within him, consciously or not, influencing his way of looking at the world, because they reflected aspects of his own personality, character, and experiences.

Third and finally, one might argue that the whole question of origins is misbegotten, in that R. Soloveitchik's Romanticism may have come from within rather than from without. Even if—counter-factually as it happens—R. Soloveitchik had never even encountered a single Romantic writer or thinker, and even if he never consciously thought of himself as a Romantic—and I doubt that he did—he might still have deep Romantic sensibilities. This is because he might well have been, as it were, born a Romantic, or by virtue of his early experience evolved a Romantic sensibility. R. Soloveitchik's reading of Romantic literature and philosophy may have helped provide him with certain conceptual categories, formulations or elements of a literary style, but that is not the same as claiming that he became a Romantic because of that reading. Did Keats or Shelley become Romantics because they read Romantic poetry, or were they Romantics because they were who they were, Keats and Shelly? This may be very difficult to sort out with precision, but in the etiology of their Romantic sensibility there may be no difference between Keats and Shelley on the one hand and R. Soloveitchik on the other.

In any case, an acceptable definition of Romanticism is notoriously elusive, as it means many things in many contexts, and scholars cannot even agree on whether or not there is a common definition applicable to all forms of Romanticism. Some speak of a Romantic sensibility, a phrase I have used above, rather than a formal school of thought, and this characterization may indeed be most apt for R. Soloveitchik. In any event, that R. Soloveitchik does possess this sensibility should not be altogether...