Dr. Zadok Krouz, Phd, DD,DHL, CGT,
With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold…
Numbers 13:8
Abstract
The article will discuss place as dialogue between man and God. Man's place is in the middle of the universe as a living, real creation. Everything else surrounds him, including those people that he meets. This idea forces man to be within a specific time and place. Man's place refers to a specific time, the present, and a specific place, existence in the present. This makes man's place part of a dynamically moving stream of changing life-experiences, never stagnant and always flowing.
For this dynamic to occurs, man's place must be in a frame of dialogue that requires him to use the word "you," that is, the second persona singular pronoun used with a verb in the present tense. This pronoun forces man's communication to be immediate and present and quite interactive.
From this usage, a frame of dialogue develops naturally among three elements: God, man and the world. Together they create the All (Whole) through their dialogue with each other. Man's place, then, is in dialogue with God and the world.
Man’s place is midpoint in specific time and place.
In Rosenzweig’s philosophy, man’s place is at the center of the universe, as a real being. Man is not an object of the intellect1 which puts the world in order; rather, his is the center, the pivot around which everything turns: "Wherever it [a proper name] is, there is a midpoint…" (Star 218); "…on the seat of the kingdom of the world" (Naharayim 237). Natan Rotenstreich, in "The Philosophical Foundation of Franz Rosenzweig" (74-87), presents three points in support of this contention, which, in slightly expanded form, are as follows:
1. The intellect voids the personal and individual existence of man; it makes the existence of man one variation of the inclusive unity. Rationally, there is no place for singularity, and therefore in this confrontation between the inclusive unity and individuality and, in particular, when speaking about the individuality of man, a centralized intellect cannot be assumed. When man is the object of the intellect, the subject is grasped by the object, such the self-consciousness is linked with the "I" as the form and content of perception. Everything is concentrated in the "I," comprising a one-dimensional reality. The "I" is all’ consequently, the polarity of the elements God, man and the world is nullified. Polarity assumes that each of the three elements (God, man and the world), is complete in and of itself, each preserving its characteristics; the conception of "unity of the I" embraces all the elements within "I," negating the singularity of the elements. Everything results from the I. The world, man and God are not independent elements outside the I. They are united in the total "all" of the "I."
…the idea of reducing everything back to the self. The method of basing the experience of the world and of God on the experiencing self is still so much a commonplace of the contemporary philosopher that anyone who rejects this method and prefers instead to trace his experience of the world back to the world, and his experience of God to God is simply dismissed. This philosophy regards the reductive method as so self-evident that when it takes the trouble to sentence a heretic it is only because he has been guilty of the wrong variety of reduction. He is burned at the stake, either as a "rank materialist" who claimed that everything is world, or as an "ecstatic mystic" who claimed that everything is God. This philosophy never admits that perhaps someone might not want to say that everything "is" something else. (Naharayim 191)
This reality, the nullification of polarity, raises the surprising question: can there be self-immanence? (See, Introduction: Hegelian Theory and Reactions to it as Background to "The New Thinking," p.7.) The serpent which eats its tail and consumes itself in its entirety, can this yet be called reality? (Naharayim 208) "…peel them as much as you want – you will never find anything but onion and not anything ‘totally other’" (Naharayim 223). The intellect as reality of one dimension only negates the self-existence of man insofar as he is man. The intellect lacks reality; it is immanence without external links and thus an immanence which proceeds nowhere.
Self-immanence is expressed in Hegel’s teaching that the real is the intellect and the intellect is real; nature, science and art are each a realization of reason. Individual man also is the materialization of reason, and only that which is reason exists.
Self-immanence is the Hegelian conception of the world via a consolidated and rigid view, a look replete with the ideal that science will never attain the infiniteness to the world nor can it bring man to concrete reality, to the recesses of his soul.
Self-immanence is the absolute spirit of complete reason and of abstract thought; it is not considered part of actual man who lives self-reliantly in the real world with his experiences and his real problems. Self-immanence encloses man in the world of abstract concepts and the infinite, and man does not know his life’s path. Hegel, by means of the supposition of immanence from man to man which commences with his reason, turns man into a segment of the theory, a portion of the cosmic world idea system. The world and man are one unit – they are "one flesh".
Thus, due to self-immanence, man is comparable to a miniature world; he loses the connection to a real and vital actuality. It is not the self-immanence of reason which brings man to concrete and true consciousness; instead, it is the specific, fundamental experience of the existing elements themselves.
Rosenzweig defines thinking as follows: "…thinking" means thinking for no one else and speaking to no one else (and here, if you prefer, you may substitute "everyone" or the well-known "all the world" for "no one") (Naharayim 200).
The inclusivity, or the unity of all, voids the connections, the links of the elements, and turns them into unity. Therefore, there is no connection to another. All human reality is swallowed up in unity, and the result is the absence of individuality, and of the futility of existence and ultimately the denial of death. [In opposition to this view, Rosenzweig considers the death and life of man to be the main point of the existential philosophy of man and not the "I" in the idealistic version, in which man serves as a point of reference for the problems of ethics, just as in science it is only the event.] Star of Redemption begins with the sentence "All cognition of the All originates in death, in the fear of death" and ends with the words "INTO LIFE." The inclusive intellect denies and mocks the existence of fear, which is the essence of man in his surroundings. "…[I]n death…originates all cognition of the All…fear of death…roars Me! Me! Me!...Only the singular can die and everything mortal is solitary…death is not what is seems, not Nought, but a something from which there is no appeal, which is not to be done away with…And man’s terror as he trembles before this sting ever condemns the compassionate lie of philosophy’s cruel lying" (Star 45). The fear results from man’s reality—his being, encompassing the possibility of the end ("toward the end"). In his fear of death, man is made independent. Death is revealed as the special possibility of man as individual to be himself solely, without a trace of generality. Heidegger even reached the substantiality of death, which makes man live in his surroundings to the point that the living feed from death, since death is a possibility belonging to the reality of man.2
Rosenzweig attack on the method of the intellect can be summarized as follows: The intellect as that which brings order to the world is a poor alternative to the truth of multiplicity,3 an alternative which sees the essence of man as an adorned segment of the world or the Almighty, disguised, revealed in man as unity. And man becomes unity or the "All" rather than being an element, independent and authentic, unaltered, a theoretical, conceptual unity. "Philosophy was accused of an incapacity or, more exactly, of an inadequacy which it could not admit, since it could not recognize it" (Star 49). The intellect preferred understanding to man, since, for existential man, "speaking means speaking to some one and thinking for some one. And this some one is always a quite definite some one, one who has not merely ears, like "all the world," but also a mouth" (Naharayim 231).
2. Historically, the intellect has an anti-religious or anti-theological tendency, because the intellect has given understanding precedence to the data understood by it. Therefore, it prefers understanding to fundamental data, including the fact of the existence of God. Can it be that the "I" creates the world within it? A world not dependent on a transcendental being contradicts the religious faith in the act of creation, which depends upon a transcendental being (Naharayim 225-6).
3. The intellect tends toward unity and monism. It prefers the homogonous to the heterogeneous. This tendency creates a false impression of a unified world; whereas, by its nature, the world is not unified. The intellect summarizes the belief that there is one source for all the natural – both material and spiritual – phenomena, that all of reality is explained by one principle alone (Naharayim 223).
These three points loosely summarize the basic reasons Rosenzweig did not adhere to the intellectual approach: that man is the object of the intellect which sets the world in order. The place of man, according to Rosenzweig, is in the center of the active universe as an actual being. Rosenzweig holds that man, as the center, orders the external world pursuant to his experience, and which experience enables man to see light (Naharayim 223; Star 218). The experience enlightens everything, whereas an objective matter is distant and receding. His entire vision is founded on the subjectivity of the human experience, and from this view—and only from it—is revealed "everything" in the communicative network. Man is the lord of creation,4 according to Rosenzweig, "in the chair of the kingdom of the world" (Naharayim 237).
Yet, with all the singularity of Rosenzweig’s personality and teaching, his philosophy is neither singular nor unusual. It is a part of a more inclusive spiritual movement, whose beginnings were inherent in the period of post-Hegelian thought in Germany. The core of such thought was not longer the abstract method, nor the concept in its independent movement, but rather actual man, vital man, fettered with his existential problems.
…to know God-man-world means to know what they do or what is done to them in these times of substantiality – do this to this and is done to this by this (Naharayim 230)…[the approach of "the New Thinking"] knows only what experience attempts – but this it knows concretely, without paying heed to philosophy which denounces it as knowledge beyond any possible experience. (Naharayim 240)5
Rosenzweig writes that "the goal of our philosophy is not to be philosophers but people, and, therefore, we must give to our philosophy a dimension of our humanity" (Briefe 718). The human, living, real existence is the action center of the entire structure whereby the actual human existence, the entirety in its reality, is given to man by actual revelation; the theological turning point becomes clear from the central position of the human being also in theology. Living man, as a real individual being with his real existential problems, anguished in body and soul, has forever been the subject of theology. Philosophy and theology each deal with the center of the life of man. "As opposed to the Copernican revolution of Copernicus…the Copernican change of Kant compensates him by seating man on the chair of the kingdom of heaven in a much more real manner that Kant himself thought" (Naharayim 237).
This is the focus of Rosenzweig’s philosophy, which commences and terminates in individual man. The man about whom he writes is a real, everyday man, not the abstract man who is the subject of many philosophical theories. Possibly Rosenzweig was influenced, inter alia, by the Biblical story, for within the story of creation of the world stands precisely the story of the creation of individual man. Clearly, the story of the creation aspires and leads to Day Six, to the description of the creation of man, for that is the main object. Our Sages expressed this in their commentaries and even graphically (Bereshit Raba I). Why, it was asked, was the world created with the Hebrew letter Beth? The response was that Beth is closed on three sides. That is, you, man, do not look behind or to the sides, but in front of you to see the path you are taking. This is the purpose: to see where you are going and not to demand the more wondrous than you. When the Hebrew letter Aleph attacked, asking why the world was not created with it, it was told that the Ten Commandments begin with Aleph, and the entire world was created only for the Ten Commandments. That is, guidelines for the way one should live. They are commandments to man located in the center. "Wherever it is, there is a midpoint… For it demands a midpoint in the world for the midpoint, a beginning for the beginning of its own experience" (Star 218). This also appears in Ps. 8:6, which completes the story of Creation: "for thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and thou crownest him with glory and honor." Man is the midpoint of the world, demanding the midpoint in the world and being "seated on the chair of the kingdom of the world" (Naharayim 237).
Everything else surrounds man, including the other with whom he meets. A meeting or conversation between two beings is a fulfillment of one of a multitude of possibilities available to man. This anthropocentric idea requires man to be at a specific time and place, for his individuality cannot be forever without time and place:
…[The I or the Thou] is its own category....Rather it carries its here and now with it. Wherever it is, there is a midpoint and wherever it opens its mouth, there is a beginning.... In keeping with its creation as man and at the same time as ‘Adam,’ the ‘I’ is the midpoint and beginning within itself. For it demands a midpoint in the world for the midpoint, a beginning for the beginning of its own experience....Thus both the midpoint and the beginning in the world must be provided to experience by this grounding, the midpoint in space, the beginning in time.... The ground of revelation is midpoint and beginning in one. (Star 218-19)
The place of every person is the place and time in which he finds himself physically. In addition to man, time and place to Rosenzweig are a beginning and a way to the "ahistorical" concept in which the Jewish religion is included and in which man serves a central role (Star 323-356). Man must first walk the long path of history and understand its process in time and place. for this purpose he chooses for himself the symbol of "The Star of Redemption," the "Star of David" with its six points, symbolizing God, the world and man on the one hand, and the creation, revelation and redemption, on the other. These symbolize, according to Rosenzweig, the historical process in time and place, which, by their realization by man in singular place and time, are no longer concepts or forms or pure reason as understood by Kant, but actual reality (Star 397-431). Kant asserts that our cognition applies to the phenomenon alone, whereas the thing itself disappears from it. In other words, we only know that which is given to us by experience in two stages: 1) in observation which arranges our cognition in space and time, and 2) via the intellect which supplies the categorization, with whose assistance that which is observed becomes an object of thought. Kant, as noted, ignores the actual reality resulting from the relationship of man with his surroundings.6 According to Rosenzweig, time and place have polar significance, for Judaism does not link its fate with factors of time and place nor with its national language, thus it could exist also without a country and without language, and all the external, historical factors do not comprise Judaism’s essence. "We alone relied on the blood and abandoned the land" ("Wir allein vertrauten dem Blut und liessen das Land") (Star 329). The people existed because of the closeness of the people’s relationship and association with God, which is measured in the time present and place – the world. However, on one hand, independence in this external life, gains eternal life for the people. On the other hand, Rosenzweig does not yield on time and place in the meeting between man and God and the earthly possessions; Holy land and holy language, in which the Jewish people are linked in its sectarian life. This dual polarity, of time versus not of time, finality versus endlessness shows that "Israel is the symbol of eternity in time" (Rotenstreich, MaHashavah 2:240).
The place of man relates to a particular time, the present, and a particular place; existence is in the present. Everything which is grasped by man is grasped instantly at the time. There is adherence to a reality with a structure counted by time. Time is expressed actively. The action is called "Zeitwort"7 in German and is the fundamental subject of existential man. In 1925, Rosenzweig wrote the article "The New Thinking," which was published in October of that year in the Jewish monthly Der Morgen. This important article is included in the short writings of Rosenzweig. This article, an important explanation of Star, teaches the importance of time in the new thinking. Contrary to Spinoza, according to whom there is no time, but only a false resemblance to it, and Kant, who holds that time is a subjective form of observation, and Schopenhauer, who agrees with Kant and Hegel, Rosenzweig demands that the philosopher reconcile with the world as it is, and that, initially, he relate seriously to time as occurring essence. In time we examine the remuneration in daily life-renewal. Speech, conversation and dialogue require time and are nourished by time. "…but the verb is the word of time. For time is made entirely real in it. Not in time does every event occur, but it, time, itself occurs" (Naharayim 228). The place of man is concrete; thus, time in man is actual and concrete. Time is connected also to the movement of the skies, which gives time its absolute reality. For "local time" is measured pursuant to agreement, which states that the moment the sun passes the local meridian will be fixed as 12:00. The passing of time between two successive passings of the meridian is one sun day. In astronomy, time receives a more actual dimension: the meridian is the great circle in the heavens which passes via the zenith and the nadir of its southern and northern points. The sun and the other heavenly bodies arrive at the meridian in their daily movements at the highest point above the horizon, and at that moment the astronomical skylight fades.
Time is not, as Newton or Kant thought, simply an abstract dimension in which things occur; rather, time itself occurs, and what happens cannot be separated from the temporality. Sir Isaac Newton (642-1727), devised the foundations of classical physics, whose influence was crucial to the industrial and scientific development of the world. He was the first to explain, in his book Principia, the movements of all the heavenly components. Newton believed that "time" is absolute size and, owing to his religious beliefs, believed in the existence of systems of reference at rest. According to him, God was not in motion, for the only place that can contain God is the one that is determined by the eternal need of nature. On the contrary, Rosenzweig holds that time itself occurs and is not absolute size lacking movement. Kant presented a summary of his new theory from another perspective. All sense impressions, maintains Kant, appear and follow when they have been arranged previously in a framework of space and time. Time is a homogeneous item, all of whose parts are contained within it; therefore, it should be seen as a resemblance of observation and not as Rosenzweig holds, as an event occurring in itself (Naharayim 228; Star 231). Kant claims that we can imagine space or time empty of everything, but not that they do not exist. From this assertion it is clear that Kant believes in the conception of absolute time and space, a sort of permanent coordinate system, in which are set particulars and occurrences. In Kant’s view, there is no independent being which functions as occurrence by itself, but rather a form of a priori perception of our spirit, which we impose on our many feelings.8 Temporality is the background upon which everything acts, and just as one cannot begin a conversation from the end, or just as one cannot commence a war with a covenant of peace, or life with death, nothing can be estranged from its temporality. The tenses of reality, the present, past and future, cannot be interchanged. They are not indifferent parts of the indifferent path of time, for there is a special weight attached to the future for which we hope.
Man is the pivot surrounded by God and those others with whom he converses: "Those present, whether man or God, must not speak in a concealed language, here there is place only for hearing and speaking" (Naharayim 230-231): "…in place of the method of thought…comes the method of speaking" (Naharayim 231). This conversation is connected to time and nourished by it. Reality is not being, but is occurrence, and each event must occur in time; otherwise, the absence of time denies the substance of the occurrence, which is presented as thought or spiritual essence, minus the earthly sphere to which man is linked. Existential man in conversation with others must be considered in time, involved with, and, indeed, a part of time (Naharayim 228; Star 231). The existence of man in the language of this conversation can only be stated one after the other; it cannot be stated together: "…‘speaking’ means speaking to some one and thinking for some one" (Naharayim 231). In order for this speaking and thinking to be understood, one must be present as when man speaks to his friend and each understands the other, for they do not say everything simultaneously, but each idea, each word, follows and combines as speech reality occurring between man and man as man. Temporality of existence is more accurate than metaphysical world time. "Not in time occurs that which takes place, rather it, time, occurs" (Naharayim 228). "Just as each event in the present and the future belongs to it, and without which it cannot be understood or confirmed, such is reality. It also has a past and future, a past which existed forever and an infinite future" (Naharayim 230). "Cognition is also linked from each moment to this moment and God cannot make the past not-past nor the future not-future" (Naharayim 229). Cognition is dependent on time; cognition deals in time.
Martin Heidegger’s explanation is opposed to this one: again, one is not requested to meld time into a conceptual consciousness, but in particular to make the conceptual consciousness dependent on time. Time is the horizon and not a vessel in which we are located, but is the manner in which we live.9
In time we find, on the one hand, its components passing and disappearing, and on the other hand, movement, since because there is a passing and disappearing, we move of necessity to a new time (Naharayim 233). With the beating of time, we move onto something new. Man’s place renews itself from moment to moment (Star 196,), on the one hand, because it is anchored in what we begin, the place of commencement, and on the other hand, because it is anchored in an interpretation beyond that which is given, since the occurring reality is wound up in time and it has forever also a deviation from the present, current time to the future.
From that which is presented above, one sees in time (as a category of occurrence) the true dimension of the active, dynamic place of man in his meeting with his surroundings. It must be emphasized, however, that time is not understood as a given and previously defined dimension, of the type which enables its sequential appearance (as Kant holds). Rather, time itself is defined and gains meaning by means of the occurring experience of man’s interaction with others. An analogy may be drawn between time as the horizon of the understanding of human existence according to Heidegger and time as horizon of the understanding of the world of belief according to Rosenzweig. In this matter, as in many others between the two philosophers, each is influenced by Schelling and Kierkegaard ("Heidegger and Rosenzweig"; "Investigation" 24-29).
How does man’s place occur in time? How does time past, present and future define itself in relation to the place of man? The answer is, as the entire reality turns into a program of the occurrence of man’s interaction with others (God and the world), the great epochs which the Torah defines as "creation" and "redemption" are created. Man exists in the present, and this present characterizes the dynamic reality and the actuality of the place of man as an occurring action, for actions occurring in the past no longer exist and the future has not yet taken place. Therefore, the present is raised to a level of time dimension of occurrence in man, both in his place and in relation to his surroundings. Man’s place is an occurrence in concrete time; it exits its essential past and enters its living present (Star 195). Man is thus found within his closely defined private area, his four handbreadths, 10 and this makes him a living God, a God in the present: "…[for] within revelation he at once becomes manifest" (Star 192).
The place of man is linked and tied to the occurrence in which the language of dialogue plays a crucial part. The language of dialogue knows man is involved in time in a most active manner.