Hermann Cohen in Disguise—Review of Dov Schwartz, Religion or Halakha: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

As with other profound thinkers, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's writings lend themselves to a variety of competing interpretations. Some scholars highlight tensions and ruptures in his thought and in those of his archetypes, while others focus on unity and integration. Some view Soloveitchik's use of philosophy as essential, while others view it as an external garb designed to make ideas more palatable. But alone among Soloveitchik scholars stands Dov Schwartz—professor of philosophy at Bar-Ilan University—who, in the singularity and uniqueness of his understanding of Soloveitchik's classic work, Halakhic Man, places himself outside of the usual interpretive battles. Schwartz has set forth his unusual reading of Halakhic Man in his comprehensive monograph Religion or Halakha: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,¹ a reading which, if correct, would mark a titanic shift in how to understand the figure of halachic man, a shift that has no analogue in Soloveitchik scholarship.

To put it simply, Schwartz's central claim is this: Contrary to the numerous statements in Halakhic Man which describe him as a composite of homo religiosus and cognitive man, Schwartz asserts that halachic man is to be identified exclusively with cognitive man. So how are we to understand repeated statements by Soloveitchik describing halachic man as multidimensional, as a hybrid of both archetypes? To account for these statements, Schwartz relies on a startling interpretive move: Halakhic Man is, in fact, an esoteric work. Soloveitchik wants the common reader to think that ideal halachic man is in part constituted by homo religiosus, and that halachic man longs for transcendence and desires nothing more than the realization of the Halacha in the midst of the concrete world. But the true doctrines hidden in Halakhic Man are meant for the discerning reader, who can pierce through the veil of his complex literary style and apparent contradictions and discover the real nature of halachic man, who is not, according to Schwartz, a religious figure as that term is traditionally understood. Halachic man is, rather, cognitive man— uni-dimensional, harsh, stoical, and "almost inhuman."²

Schwartz pursues his thesis relentlessly, bringing to bear an impressive array of primary arguments and secondary themes that are all meant to reinforce this unique interpretation. Original discussions of mysticism, of prophecy, of Halakhic Man's relation to other works by Soloveitchik, and many other topics are all marshaled to support his interpretation.

What makes Schwartz's thesis so daring and paradigm-shifting is that in his exclusive identification of halachic man with cognitive man, Schwartz essentially says that halachic man has no religious longings, no desire for transcendence or even to actualize the Halacha,³ and is not essentially a religious figure who subordinates himself completely to a transcendent God, for all of those features belong to the spiritual make-up of homo religiosus, not cognitive man. That is the meaning of the title of his book: Religion or Halakha. On the one side stands religious longing for transcendence and a yearning for redemption, i.e., Religion; and on the other stands Halacha, or more precisely, the cognition of the theoretical Halacha—austere, wholly self-sufficient, pointing to nothing beyond itself. Halachic man banishes "religion" from his true self and focuses exclusively on the cognition of the theoretical law.

Schwartz is quick to warn us that we should not mistake Soloveitchik himself for ideal halachic man.⁴ Soloveitchik, according to Schwartz, paints his self-portrait in U'bikashtem mi-Sham, which describes the struggles of a soul whose make-up consists of both homo religiosus and halachic man. The tradition of Brisk in which Soloveitchik was reared was one that did not cultivate, and even shunned, the religious longings of homo religiosus. While Soloveitchik himself could not wholly identify with halachic man, he was obviously drawn to this admirable, if austere, ideal type, embodied most fully in his grandfather, R. Chaim of Brisk. Furthermore, in his studies of Hermann Cohen's neo-Kantian philosophy, known as epistemic idealism, Soloveitchik believed that he had found an almost perfect analogy for...