On Faith (review)

Book Reviews 187 On Faith, by Nathan Rotenstreich, edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 169 pp. $35.00 (c); $15.00 (p). Among the many worthy contributions that Paul Mendes-Flohr has granted to the area of Jewish scholarship is the presentation of texts that might have been overlooked. Hence his editing and preparing for posthumous publication ofNathan Rotenstreich's last philosophical work, On Faith, accords with Mendes-Flohr's years ofdedication to the field of Jewish Studies. Although Rotenstreich, who died in 1993 at the age of 79, was clearly not a Jewish thinker of the stature of Martin Buber or Franz Rosenzweig, in his long career at Hebrew University he contributed to philosophical thinking, including thinking on areas of Judaism. Hence Mendes-Flohr's editing of his last philosophical work might have added new and important insights that Rotenstreich did not have a chance to publish. Unfortunately, I would not state that such is the case. On Faith only tangentially relates to Judaism. It is an attempt to clarify and present the essence of faith. As Rotenstreich puts it, he wishes "to articulate and to expose the particular attitude defining faith" (p. 1). To do so, he isolates faith from cognition and from religion; he holds that faith is an attitude while religion is a structure or an institution. Thus, already in the first pages of this learned study we face a major problem. Is Rotenstreich's approach to faith correct, is his defming faith as an attitude accurate? I believe that this approach is faulty. It certainly would be rejected by all those-including the Hebrew prophets and Jesus-who believed faith to be a way of life and not merely an attitude. I return to this problem. What kind ofattitude is faith? Rotenstreich relates to "faith and beliefas an attitude ofreferring to something that is not perceived and cannot be perceived but still contains the element of assertion and credence" (p. 6). When a person has faith he holds a position "not based either on perception or on the syllogistic act of drawing logical conclusions" (p. 7). What we see here, in these simple definitions, is that from the beginning Rotenstreich approaches faith using the Cartesian model with its subjective-objective attempt to explain and elucidate human existence and the world. Indeed, these two citations could fit very well into the text of "Discourse on Method." Note that Rotenstreich , who was very well read, was not unaware ofMartin Heidegger's description of Dasein as Being-in-the-world, a description which firmly rejects the Cartesian model. Nor was he unaware ofBuber's important study on faith, "Two Types ofFaith," which also goes beyond the Cartesian model. Yet already in his first definitions of his topic, faith, he deliberately ignores the findings of these thinkers and reverts to a Cartesian model. This point is worth stressing. In the course of his discussion on faith, Nathan Rotenstreich does not refute or reject Heidegger's Being-in-the-world and Buber's descriptions ofthe two types offaith. He simply ignores the existence oftheir thinking and the implications of their writings for clarifying the phenomenon offaith. Rotenstreich's deliberate ignoring ofimportant thinkers repeats itselfin the course of the book. Thus he discusses creation and revelation in chapter five without men- 188 SHOFAR Winter 2001 Vol. 19, No.2 tioning Franz Rosenzweig's Star ofRedemption, in which these topics are discussed at length and with wisdom. Nor does Rotenstreich ever consider the dialogical aspects of faith as presented in Buber's I and Thou, which is studied around the world as a basic work on faith. Why does a famous and acknowledged scholar and thinker write a book on faith in which he deliberately ignores the writings and the wisdom of some of his most important contemporaries? I do not know. What are the implications ofsuch an ignoring of other thinkers for the book On Faith? I will offer a partial answer. As already suggested, it is very sad that Rotenstreich, the scholar and a founding member of the Israel Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, totally ignored the writings of his contemporaries. But this sadness...