Cultural Writings of Franz Rosenzweig (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIl, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 650-652 Barbara E. Galli, ed. and tr., Cultural Writings of Franz Rosenzweig, with a Foreword by Leora Batnitzky. Library of Jewish Philosophy. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 183. In his short life, Franz Rosenzweig established himself as an important translator of the Bible (with Martin Buber) and the poems of Yehuda Halevi , as well as gaining a reputation as an eminent Jewish philosopher. In recent years, his major work, The Star ofRedemption, has received renewed attention by critics such as Paul Mendes-Flohr, Robert Gibbs, Leora Batnitzky , and Eric Santner. What had often been viewed in the past as an obscure and difficult book is about to enter the canon of modernist work on the philosophy of religion. In addition to these major achievements in philosophy, translation, and, one should add, translation theory, Rosenzweig contributed many articles to newspapers and journals. The short anthology Cultural Writings ofFranz Rosenzweig collects a few of these occasional pieces. Most of them are extremely brief (some are reviews rather than essays), but they present interesting insights and some provoking theses. "Hic et Ubique! A Word to Readers and Other People," for example, was first published in 1919 and discusses the contemporary publishing scene. Rosenzweig relates his discussion of the book trade to the rise of nationalism and the rise of the capitalist system in general. Rosenzweig deplores that "cultural as well as the religious forces . . . renounced their proud right to be all-embracing life forces and limited themselves to mere partial powers" (p. 92). Instead, Christian, Jew and pagan should speak out about who they are: "And because each of them becomes conscious of being able to be totally what he is, or not at all, so each of these three masses begins to form a closed circle, which in itself must drive forth out of the roots of his faith, or lack of faith, a whole tree of life, or the root itself will dry up for him. In their Hie it is necessary for all of them to find the Ubique" (p. 95). As a consequence , Rosenzweig calls for three different kinds of publishing ventures that would represent the Christian, Jewish, and pagan views. Rosenzweig's demand that people speak and write as Christians, Jews, or pagans turned him against the models of an integrative "GermanJewishness " that were discussed by many other critics of his time. He criticized the writings of Lessing and Mendelssohn, who served as the leading figures not only of tolerance, but also of common cultural concerns. In his "A Pronouncement for a Celebration of Mendelssohn" (1929), Rosenzweig declares that the philosopher, in calling for a German-Jewish culture, led Jews into danger without any defense, "for his own protection was the worldview of his century, of whose first germs of disease—a magnificent GALLI, FRANZ ROSENZWEIG—WEISSBERG65 1 sign for the authenticity of his philosophizing—he died" (p. 104). His notes on "Lessing's Nathan" (1919) try to disclose the emptiness of a general notion like "humanity" along the same lines: "And now you see what the moment in which we live must answer to Nathan's question: Christian and Jew are not sooner Christian and Jew than human being, but rather a Christian and a Jewish human being are more than a naked human being and a naked institution" (p. 107). While these brief talks, essays, and notes dovetail in their concern for redefining a difference between Jewish and Christian philosophy, the longest piece included in this collection is a review of music records, published in the late 1920s. "The Concert Hall on the Phonograph Record" shows Rosenzweig as a knowledgeable critic of music, though most of his comments on individual recordings may seem obscure to the general reader today . It is, however, important to recognize his delight with the mechanical reproduction of sound. Rosenzweig surveys music history, beginning with the transition from chamber music to symphony orchestras, which accompanied changes in the public sphere in the 18th century. "The physically present public is no longer a circle, no longer a community, but rather a representative of humanity" (p. 1 17), Rosenzweig comments...