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C H A P T E R 5 Eternity and Society (I): Sociology and History WHILE THE MOVE from logic to speech clearly broached the walls of pure reason with the admission of experience, the full relation of reason and empiricism in Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption requires a further step: a move into a futural verification of theology. Such a verification is not a testing of a hypothesis, but is rather a transformation of reality. The sphere for that transformation is society, because redemption will occur in the social world; the science for verification, therefore, is sociology. In Part III of The Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig produces a social theory of prescription, a theory that displays the sort of social practices which illumine the task of redemption. This chapter will examine how Rosenzweig’s social theory emerges from the need for eternity and then will clarify the relation of Rosenzweig ’s sociology to historical studies. The next chapter will then present the basic structure of his social theory: politics and art are the two ways of making eternity enter into worldly time. Rosenzweig is not unique in looking to sociology for an interpretation of religion and theology ; in interpretations following upon Durkheim and Weber, religion now often appears as a social function, emerging from specific social contexts and serving various functions, including the formation of character and the bestowal of meaning. But sociology does not usually require the concept of eternity for its work. Like several members of the Frankfurt School, Rosenzweig requires a social theory that does not merely describe historical social practices and institutions; rather, he looks for a normative process to occur in social practice—for social practice to perform redemption. The tension between what happens in some societies and what ought to happen, between the immanence of current social practices and the transcendence of what should occur, that tension is complex and hard to isolate. The Star of Redemption has been received as a kind of encyclopedia, but I am unaware that anyone has thought that Rosenzweig was actually proposing a general social theory. I will explore the methodology of the third part of The Star of Redemption, offering a reading that does not see Rosenzweig’s task as ultimately a description of the two churches (Juda- 106 • Chapter 5 ism and Christianity), as an attempt to do some sort of liturgical theology. The two communities (which Rosenzweig won’t even call religions) are distinctive societies. They define two forms of bringing eternity and society together, but they also illuminate a fuller theory of what society is and, more importantly, what it is for. Rosenzweig argues that the purpose of society is communally to overcome death and time, to bring eternity into the world. This overcoming of temporality occurs both externally, through the organization and power of the state, and inwardly, through the artistic development of the individual’s hope in the face of tragedy. While social forms in general achieve these overcomings, Judaism and Christianity are ideal types for this bringing of eternity into our lives. The partner to the linguistic turn in Part II is the sociological turn in Part III. The third part of The Star of Redemption has a unique function in the system: it is the verification (Bewährung) of the theology of Part II. This is not Popper’s verification, but is Rosenzweig’s term for the making of the whole truth appear in the present moment of experience (437/393). Just as Part I provided a structure and so a meaning to the moment of speaking and hearing, so Part III will make the whole theological sequence true by binding up the present experience with the social practices that redeem the world. This task of verifying recognizes that redemption is a social category, the forming of a truly universal community, one in which each person will sing in his or her own voice but together will constitute a grand harmony; the vivifying of the world, turning all social institutions into ways of loving. This vision of redemption requires complex social practices, and thus the method for studying redemption is social theory. For readers who are Rosenzweig scholars, I expect that the reorientation I am proposing here is both within reach but at the same time disruptive of a reading that sees Rosenzweig as a kind of dogmatic liturgical theorist. But for readers who are interested in social theory and perhaps not interested in theology and even less in...

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