Uplifting a Whole Community to the Next Level of Love Through the Sociology of Redemption of Franz Rosenzweig
Discussion
Otto Kroes:
"Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) pays more attention to the social problem raised by the institutionalization and realization of what he calls the revelation of a ‘new love’, commanding us to respond. His philosophy (or theology) of revelation and love deliberately finds its fulfillment in a sociology of redemption, that is, the uplifting of a whole community to the next level of love.
Rosenzweig presents his experience of revelation, and in one and the same word love, in Part Two of the Star of Redemption, which although widely considered as a work of philosophy is written under the epigraph ‘in theologos’ (Rosenzweig 1967: 103). As the conceptual approach of logic and mathematics is refuted in Part One, so the scholastic conceptual language of theology is transcended in Part Two by describing the experiences of loving and being loved. Paradigmatic for such love is the love between a man and a woman, evoked in the Song of Songs. Love is not static; it is a movement. In a sense, to love means to multiply love; the grasp of the one who reaches out to the other is turned into tenderness and care(Levinas). Love consists of this movement or this conversion. Love understood in this way is always an increase of love and leads to an interpretation of history that includes three stages at least: the time before the change, the time of the change, and the time after the change. The experience of change provides orientation for the time thereafter. In the Star of Redemption this order is reflected in the three books of creation, revelation and redemption.
It is by means of ‘prayer’ that love becomes a historically transformative power. In the prayer of the community the transformative power of love is turned into a common effort. Rosenstock-Huessy too makes this link to prayer in ‘Angewandte Seelenkunde’ (Rosenstock-Huessy 1923: 783). In this understanding prayer is a sociological category. It is the social event in which the loneliness of the initiator of love and the dualism of the partnership of love finally enters the third phase, the language of a complete community taken to the next level by the new love. In that context Rosenzweig makes an implicit reference to Nietzsche’s ‘Versuchmit der Wahrheit’, where Nietzsche announces a new type of philosopher: ‘These future philosophers might like to be known, maybe sometimes unjustifiably, by the name tempters(“Versucher”). This name itself is in the end just an attempt, and if one wants, a temptation’(Nietzsche, 1886). Truth, a true life, does not exist in itself and cannot be derived from logical principles. A true life can only be attempted: Truth comes into being by action that performs the truth and makes it real. Following that line of reasoning the sentence from the Lord’s Prayer ‘Lead us not into temptation’, according to Rosenzweig, means that we cannot avoid choosing some or other direction in order to translate the full heat of love into some form of institutionalized social life. The new love needs to become a common song between the first and the second, and finally a shared fact of life, a settled issue for all. Here Rosenstock-Huessy and Rosenzweig are in the process of discovering a new and sociological notion of prayer. It becomes the expression of a shared longing and a shared code of behavior. Whenever that takes place, part of the world is redeemed. A new level of love is institutionalized. This conception, of progress by redemption, goes beyond the much criticized (e.g. Wieland 1994) utopian naturalistic notion of progress, which is derailed by Rosenstock-Huessy when he says ‘Bombs get better all the time. But this improvement does not determine progress at all. The One progress of all of us is secured only if the bombs, though improved, are not used’ (Rosenstock-Huessy 1946: 77). This example from Rosenstock-Huessy may serve as an illustration of what Rosenzweig means by redemption.
Agreement on a common standard not to use the atomic bomb or not to use poison gas, can only come about if this is ‘prayed for’, longed for and accepted by all, and finally institutionalized (Rosenzweig 1976: 301-302). But this always brings a risk with it. We are tempted to spend the energy of our love on a wrong historical project. We may be tempted by the wrong attempt. But still we cannot avoid an answer to the question: To what form of institutionalized social life should we spend the energy of our love, in what direction should we evolve?"