HeyJ XLVI (2005), pp.

41–59

LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS:

HUSSERL, HEIDEGGER AND
ROSENZWEIG
GLENN MORRISON
University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia

This article explores the fundamental projects of Edmund Husserl,

Martin Heidegger and Franz Rosenzweig and how they might be
important for Levinas. An analysis of Levinas’ origins helps to unravel
the complexity of how he appropriates phenomenology, breaks up the
structure of fundamental ontology and directs his focus to ethics, justice
and eschatological messianism. In contrast to Levinas’ dialogical relation
with Husserl’s phenomenology is his defiant opposition to Heidegger’s
revival of ontology despite its major influences. With regard to
Rosenzweig, Levinas’ debt to him is uncompromising as he has steered
Levinas towards a Biblical and non-phenomenal sense of alterity.
The writings of Husserl, Heidegger and Rosenzweig together form an
invaluable source of notions and nascent ideas. Levinas has incorpora-
ted many of them by creatively enhancing and nuancing them. His
originality, in other words, is significantly dependent upon their in-
sights and developments. For example, he will use Heidegger’s thought
to free himself from Husserl’s, and Rosenzweig’s to free himself from
Heidegger’s.1 In some cases Levinas thinks otherwise than Husserl,
Heidegger and Rosenzweig; he conceives of new ideas2 with the help of
several other thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, Shakespeare, Blanchot,
Levy-Bruhl, Dostoevsky, Vassily Grossman and Haim of Volozhin.3
However, as the writings of Husserl, Heidegger and Rosenzweig have
made up the primary influences, I will limit my discussion to their
pertinent contributions.
Levinas is a philosopher in his own right and has traversed the
phenomenological tradition to reach this point. He has developed a
unique ethical metaphysics and has even used it to give some very
profound Talmud readings. However, his writings are not always
easy to understand; they are complex, enigmatic and rigoristic. It is my
hope that opening the equally difficult thought of Husserl, Heidegger and
Rosenzweig will contribute not only to the ongoing scholarship of teasing
out Levinas’ philosophy, but also to the enrichment of theology. With
this in mind, let us begin to examine Husserl’s fundamental project and
how it might be important for Levinas.

r The Editor/Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK and Boston, USA.

42 GLENN MORRISON

HUSSERL’S FUNDAMENTAL PROJECT

Husserlian phenomenology seeks to describe the meaning of truth and

being in an intersubjective world.4 Beginning with individual states of
consciousness [Erlebnisse], it uses eidetic intuition to grasp the essence of
pure consciousness. The Erlebnisse may either be imaginary or perceptual
intuition. As a result of intuiting essences [Eidos, Wesen] such as ‘colour,
materiality, perception and memory’,5 the central problems of reason
and reality are studied and solved in a revolutionary way. The act of
perceiving or imagining an essence speaks more about the truth and
knowledge of an object rather than the facticity of an object as such.
Husserl calls this an act of ideation. Intuiting the essence of an object that
is given to consciousness provides a more accurate level of self-evidence
than a naturalistic one of feeling the evidence.6
In order to intuit the essence of an object, Husserl dispenses with two
types of naturalist ontology, namely regional ontologies and formal
ontology. Regional ontologies refer to highly general essences such as
a material thing, a cat, colour, society and culture. Formal ontological
notions depend on meaning and logic and apply to all regions of objects.
Examples include states of affairs [Sachverhalt], object, property, part,
whole and relation. Regional ontologies are the locus for formal
ontology. The problem with regional ontologies is that they only focus
on what is given to consciousness rather than how it is given as given.7
The danger here is that the act of consciousness is confused with the
object itself. As a result scepticism ensues where the object itself may
indeed be argued to be a product of the imagination.
For Husserl, states of consciousness [Erlebnisse] possess an absolute or
separate existence from things. The essence of consciousness is conceived
as intentionality or ‘consciousness of something’.8 Husserl’s fundamen-
tal project demonstrates how intentionality, the relation to the object,
is consciousness itself. This is the phenomenological reduction where
consciousness itself becomes the object of investigation. Yet, how does
Husserl characterize such consciousness? He says that the material things
in the world that are only perceived from a certain angle are tran-
scendent,9 whereas the perceived object (noema) is transcendental. By
distinguishing between these two terms, the object of phenomenology can
be understood as pure transcendental consciousness.10 Husserl will go
further to suggest that phenomenology is first philosophy.
Husserl uses the terms noesis, the act of consciousness itself and
noema, the perceived object as perceived, to describe the transcendental
consciousness as a unity of apperception (representation) between the
noesis and noema. To demonstrate this complex notion, a noesis of a
noema would be exemplified by a consciousness about a green tree
(noesis) resulting in the evidence that the tree is green (noema).11
Intentionality itself liberates humankind to think of and give meaning
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 43

[Sinngebung] to things in the world. Every relation to the object produces

meaning through the freedom of self-evidence.
Two other important notions in Husserlian phenomenology are reflec-
tion and representation. Reflection is the act that studies the Erlebnisse,
the states of consciousness. Its role is to try to grasp the true state of
consciousness in its being, whether real or imaginary. Simply seeing
things directly in the world and claiming this as a form of self-evidence
falls into the danger of confusing naı̈ve realism for Being.12 To truly
return to things is to return to reflection, the act that intuitively unveils
reality as a lived experience.13 The foundation for each act that studies the
Erlebnisse is representation, the unity of apperception between the noesis
and noema. Importantly, Husserl distinguishes between the noema of
consciousness and the object presented to consciousness. The noema is
always the perceived object re-presented through reflection whereas the
object of consciousness is transcendent in the sense that it does not
depend on one’s consciousness for its existence.14
The notions of reflection and representation signify how Husserl
reduces the meaning of the existence, truth and Being of the world to
thought. Reflecting on the act of intuition, the act that grasps and re-
presents Erlebnisse through memory and imagination, further reduces
subjectivity to a relation with the transcendent object in search of
meaning. For the subject to imagine or remember an object depends not
on the object’s content, but on its meaning. We see that in Husserl’s
transcendental phenomenology that subjectivity depends upon the
object’s meaning. Again, we return to Husserl’s desire to articulate
rationally the existence of self-evidence in terms of reflection rather than
direct and naı̈ve self-evidence. By studying the notions of truth (the
meaning of existence) and Being (the conditions of possibility of having
access to objects), Husserl develops a new way of approaching the
problems associated with humanity’s experience of the world.15 It is
consciousness of an object rather than the essences of objects as such that
defines the nature of Being and the world’s existence.16
In summary, consciousness is the transcendental phenomenon of
meaning. It is also expressed as the relation to the transcendent object
or Being (intentionality). Both the notions of Being and truth are
interconnected. Husserl looks upon truth as the unconcealment of an
object’s structure through acts of consciousness [Erlebnisse]. Being is
the objective reality of what is experienced,17 namely the Erlebnisse.
Thus, ‘being given’ means being experienced.18 This leads us to the notion
of intuition, the act by which consciousness discovers the meaning of
Being through experiencing transcendentally the evidence of a thing’s
existence. Intuition in this regard is also named as intentionality in that
it seeks to return to the original or primary phenomenon of truth
and reason, namely understanding how the transcendent object
exists.19 The origin of the notion of Being is articulated as the life of
44 GLENN MORRISON

consciousness itself as it tries to find the meaning of Erlebnisse in acts

of intuition. Being is thus identified with Erlebnisse, that is, with states
of consciousness.

HUSSERL’S IMPORTANCE FOR LEVINAS

Husserl provides much of the phenomenological language of Levinas’

ethical metaphysics. His project provides Levinas with both the language
and some of the analytical resources necessary to articulate such notions
as consciousness, experience, Being, truth and the Other. Husserl’s
fundamental concern is with how and why phenomena including the
phenomenon of the other are intuited or approached. In the region of
consciousness, intentional experiences [Erlebnisse] such as perception,
judgment, imagination and memory are always consciousness of some-
thing.20 We thus arrive at a transcendental phenomenology whereby the
Erlebnisse are the foundation for determining the meaning of truth and
Being in an intersubjective world.
To understand Levinas, one must see that so much of his own
fundamental project is a revolutionary development of Husserl’s thought,
especially in regard to the notion of experience as Erlebnisse. Levinas will
employ distinctive notions such as encounter, approach, enigma, illeity,
with alterity or otherness as the trace of illeity. He will write of the face,
the Saying, diachrony, immemorial past, sacrifice, the Infinite and
otherwise than Being to characterize, as he moves beyond Husserl, his
own kind of post-phenomenology. A major contrast to Husserl’s thought
will be Levinas’ emphasis on the ethical relation to alterity. Conscious-
ness instead of being consciousness of something, is for Levinas primarily
consciousness of the Other. This latter kind of consciousness is not a lived
state of experience but rather a state of being overwhelmed by the Other.
The passive or receptive character of consciousness is thus privileged
at the expense of activity. Indeed the activity of consciousness will now
be articulated as an absolute passivity. Never once does Levinas speak
in Husserlian terms about the lived experience [ve´cu] or experience
[expe´rience] of the Other, but rather, for example, as encounter or an
approach.21
So far we have touched upon Levinas’ post-phenomenological
inversion of Husserl’s thought. Consciousness of something is inverted
into an absolute passivity. Ethically speaking, it is the Other’s experience
of us that determines the meaning of truth in an intersubjective world.
Yet, before we can speak more about Levinas’ developments, the
influence of Heidegger and Rosenzweig upon his thought needs to be
evaluated. Let us proceed now to Heidegger’s fundamental project and
how his phenomenology grounded in ontology becomes an important
bridge for Levinas to traverse and even to dismantle.
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 45

HEIDEGGER’S FUNDAMENTAL PROJECT

Due to Martin Heidegger’s huge corpus and the many turns and
developments in his philosophy, I will limit my enquiry to Being and
Time, a work that had an important influence upon Levinas’ own
development and writings. Heidegger’s fundamental project in Being and
Time concerns the question of the meaning of Being in general or the
Being of entities. While he continues Husserl’s phenomenological project,
he seeks to transform phenomenology into a fundamental ontology.
The search for the meaning of Being establishes a basis for the regions
of history and nature. Like Husserl, Heidegger seeks to provide a
philosophical foundation for the natural and social sciences.22
In the course of his project, Heidegger both criticizes and develops
Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Instead of using Husserl’s
language of subject and object, for example, he characterizes the object as
related to the meaning of Being in general (the Being of entities), whereas
the subject is related to Dasein (being there23), the locus of the existential
analytic that seeks to disclose and even clarify the meaning of Being. His
notion of Dasein thus moves beyond Husserl’s noesis-noema structure of
consciousness. In acknowledging his debt to Husserl’s phenomenology,
Heidegger writes that, ‘Every disclosure of Being as the transcendens is
transcendental knowledge. Phenomenological truth (the disclosedness of
Being) is veritas transcendentalis’.24
Transcendental knowledge is an ambiguous unconcealment of Being;
for Heidegger emphasizes that the Being of entities remains hidden.
Ambiguously, Being reveals itself by disclosing or covering up itself. As a
result, there arises a forgetfulness of Being and its meaning. The problem
for Heidegger is, therefore, how to arrive at phenomenological truth.
Being and Time is his attempt to probe this enigma through an existential-
ontological analysis of Dasein – which bears the fundamental structure of
Being-in-the-world and discovers its meaning in temporality [Zeitlich-
keit]. For the most part, Dasein is realized in an inauthentic routinized
form of consciousness, dependent on what is called the ‘they-self ’, as we
will now explain:- its common sense ‘knows only the satisfying of
manipulable rules and the public norms and the failure to satisfy them’.25
With such remarks, let us now look at some key terms that Heidegger
employs in his analysis: authentic and inauthentic; falling and thrown-
ness; anxiety; care; and temporality. Heidegger distinguishes two types of
existence, inauthentic and authentic. Inauthentic existence represents the
everyday kind of Being-in-the-world of the ‘they-self’. Heidegger is highly
critical of the everyday existence of human life. For the most part Dasein’s
states of mind, understanding and discourse disclose the presence of
entities in an ‘inauthentic’ manner. Inauthentic existence is characterized
phenomenally as idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity; it results in what
Heidegger names as the movement of falling. Falling is occasioned by
46 GLENN MORRISON

temptation, tranquillizing, alienation and self-entangling. As a result

of this ‘downward plunge’ [Absturz],26 Dasein falls into the ‘turbulence’
[Wirbel] of the they-self’s inauthenticity. Heidegger names this revolu-
tionary and phenomenal unveiling of facticity as ‘thrownness’.27 This
seems to suggest that from the beginning, Dasein is already ‘thrown’ into
a mostly inauthentic existence. It is sufficient to point out that Heidegger
develops his unique vocabulary to give an existential-ontological inter-
pretation of the corruption of human nature that later forms the basis for
Dasein discovering its possibilities for authentic existence.
After describing what constitutes Dasein’s everydayness, Heidegger
proceeds by analysing what he terms, ‘anxiety’. It is defined as Dasein’s
possibility of Being and its state of mind about something, namely
Being-in-the-world itself. Anxiety is a possibility of Being in that Hei-
degger relates it to a process of individuation. As Dasein falls into the
everydayness of the they-self, anxiety ruptures Dasein’s state of mind by
making it feel uncanny or ‘not-at-home’28 in the inauthentic world. In
comparison to Husserl’s notion of Erlebnisse (lived experience or in-
dividual states of consciousness) that grasps the truth and Being of a
transcendent object, anxiety as a state of mind is associated with the term
‘encounter’. Anxiety breaks open Dasein to encounter the worldhood
of the world. As a state-of-mind, it confronts Dasein with its own
inauthentic Being of being absorbed into the world (the nothing) or being
focused on what others do. As a result Dasein notices that something is
missing – its own authentic potentiality-for-Being.29 For Heidegger, this
is only an ontological disclosure, for as yet Dasein has done nothing
existentially.30
However, through anxiety about the future,31 Dasein encounters its
possibilities of Being-in-the-world, through what Heidegger expresses as
‘care’ [Sorge].32 He writes: ‘the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-
Being-already-in-(the-world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered
within-the-world). This manner of Being fills out the signification of
the term ‘care’ [Sorge]’.33 In short, care means that Dasein has to deal
(show solicitude and concern) with everything and everyone in the
world.34 The way Heidegger proceeds to describe how everything and
everyone matters for Dasein is to describe the structure of its Being as
solicitude (being-already-in-the-world) and concern (Being-alongside
something). The Being of Dasein as care manifests the freedom to behave
authentically or inauthentically towards its possibilities. Thus, Heidegger
associates freedom with care. Dasein’s freedom with regard to its own-
most possibilities points to its character as care. This is an a priori
existential attitude and a pre-ontological way of interpreting itself.35
Compared to Husserl’s characterization of consciousness as the tran-
scendental phenomenon of meaning, Heidegger characterizes care as the
basic existential-ontological phenomenon of the meaning of Dasein’s
Being.
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 47

After indicating how Dasein interprets its Being-in-the-world pre-

ontologically, we move on to examine how this existential care is related
to temporality.36 Regarding the problem of transcendence, Heidegger
asks, ‘what makes it ontologically possible for entities to be encountered
within-the-world and objectified as so encountered?’37 In responding
to this question, Heidegger reflects upon the temporality of Dasein. In
the future (‘the character of having been’38) and in the present (‘the
‘‘ecstases’’ of temporality’39), we find an abundance of possibilities for
Dasein’s modes of authenticity or inauthenticity in the world. He describes
these possibilities as ‘the ‘‘towards-oneself’’, the ‘‘back-to’’ and the
‘‘letting-oneself-be-encountered-by’’ ’.40 In this regard, he places a priority
on the future (that ‘awakens the present’41) and as a result defines care as
‘Being-towards-death’.42 Consequently, Dasein is always future-oriented
in the hope that it can take the necessary steps to achieve its possibilities in
the present.43 For Dasein to realize its own finiteness or being-towards-
death is an important stage for authentic existence. Heidegger, however,
allows that ‘the temporal analysis of Dasein, even if we repeat it, will
remain incomplete and fraught with obscurities’.44 Any clarification
depends on having an idea of the meaning of Being in general.
Heidegger connects the concepts of Being, time and death inherent in
Dasein’s existentiality to the meaning of Being in general. The relation-
ship between Dasein’s Being and time could be compared with the unity
between the noesis (the act of consciousness itself) and noema (the
perceived object as perceived) in Husserlian phenomenology. The
phenomenon of care is closely related to the authentic time of Being-
towards-death. As a result, through care or ‘concernful circumspective
discovery’45 that death is mine [Jemeinigkeit], Dasein encounters entities
in the world as ‘being in time’.46 However, for the inauthentic they-self,
time is infinite or an endless course of nows; it can never die, for it flees
from death into the realm of the ‘nobody’.47 We uncover in this con-
nection an important difference between Husserlian and Heidegger-
ian phenomenology. Whereas Husserlian intentionality characterizes the
self or transcendental ego as outside-the-world, Heidegger’s Being and
Time places Dasein as already ‘thrown’ in-the-world and overwhelmed by
its existence.48 For example, Heidegger characterizes the world as such as
the nothing. It is this nothing or insignificance of environmental entities
that threaten Dasein. In this oppression, Dasein encounters anxiety. The
result of Being-anxious permits the world to be disclosed as world (as the
nothing) to Dasein. Anxiety thus moves Dasein away from environmental
experiences [Erfahren] to ‘its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-
world’.49 It reveals to Dasein its future, the character of having been.
We see therefore that once Dasein understands the possibility of repeating
its inauthentic existence in the they-self (the very character of having
been), then the signification of the impossibility of circumspective care
becomes ‘the possibility of an authentic potentiality-for-Being’.50
48 GLENN MORRISON

Other examples of being overwhelmed by existence include the

experience of conscience in relation to Being-guilty and responsible for
Others. Conscience acts like a stirring voice pronouncing ‘Guilty!’51 It
overwhelms Dasein with the fact of its bad conscience, of its ‘Being-evil’.52
Such a disclosure also exemplifies the experience of primordial truth. For
authentic Dasein to want to have a conscience suggests its desire for
discovering itself as the truth of existence, of its Being-in-the-world.53
However, by the end of Being and Time, Heidegger has not reached an
answer to the question of the meaning of Being in general. In his two final
questions he asks, ‘Is there a way which leads from primordial time to the
meaning of Being? Does time itself manifest itself as the horizon of
Being?’54
These questions among others leave the idea of the meaning of Being
in general ‘incomplete and fraught with obscurities’. Although Dasein’s
project is to behave in relation towards those entities ‘which it encoun-
ters within-the-world as well as towards itself as existent,’55 Heidegger
nevertheless, like Husserl, falls into solipsism. Even though Dasein’s
Being is defined as care, it remains a Being encased in itself. Even the
notion of Being-towards-Death further points to the totality and egology
of Dasein’s ultimate solipsism. The difficulty of trying to grasp the
phenomenological truth of what remains transcendent still remains. It is
instanced in the manner in which both Husserl and Heidegger retreat to
a structural analysis of consciousness, either through the transcendental
ego or the existential analytic, Dasein.

HEIDEGGER’S IMPORTANCE FOR LEVINAS

Levinas first encountered Heidegger and his work, Sein und Zeit, while
studying at the University of Freiburg. Immediately, the work began to
influence Levinas’ doctoral dissertation on ‘The Theory of Intuition in
Husserl’s Phenomenology’.56 However, the event that remains of ultimate
significance for Levinas’ own project was Heidegger’s ‘unthinkable’57
relationship with Hitlerism, beginning in 1933. In the wake of Heidegger’s
intimate involvement with Nazism, Levinas began to see how his mentor
started to manipulate his philosophy for the cause of Germany’s spiritual
destiny. Levinas’ polemic against Heidegger’s work began to take form
before (in 1935, with his essay, ‘De l’évasion’)58 and during his years of
captivity during World War Two. Shortly after the war in 1947, Existence
and Existents and Time and the Other appeared.
If Heidegger was concerned with the ‘spiritual destiny’ of Germany,
Levinas was concerned with the ‘ethical-eschatological destiny’ of
European civilization. The impact of the horrific events from 1933–
1945 profoundly affected Levinas’ judgment of Heidegger’s whole
project. These events and Heidegger’s involvement in them inspired
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 49

Levinas’ project to go beyond Heidegger’s notion of Being. For example,

in the programmatic work, Existence and Existents, Levinas defines the
meaning of Being in General (‘the idea of the cause of existence’)59 as
anonymous Being or the there is [il y a]. As a result of Being’s anonymity
and strangeness as it seeks us out like the night’s ‘suffocating embrace’,60
there is no answer to the questioning of the meaning of Being in General.
No response is possible. Being remains ‘alien’.61 Instead, Levinas directs
us away from the phenomenological truth of Being towards the horizon
of the Platonic notion of the good, namely the good beyond Being.
However, despite Levinas’ break with Heidegger, he nevertheless takes
with him several key Heideggerian influences. A comparatively unex-
plored area in this context is Heidegger’s notions of encounter [Begegnen]
and his treatment of experience as Erlebnis and Erfahren.62 In Being and
Time, Heidegger developed the notion of encounter [Begegnen] by seek-
ing to overcome the problems inherent in the notions of Erfahren/
experience63 and Erlebnis/Experience. We have, then, some indication of
how Heidegger sought to find a way into the question of the meaning
of Being in General, firstly through Dasein and then through the noth-
ing. We note that Erlebnisse, the perception of lived experiences, fails
to provide Dasein with the opportunity to encounter its Being in its
potentiality and as care [Sorge]. Erfahren, the active experience of en-
vironmental entities, results in the same outcome as they are insignificant
in themselves. However, Erfahren is paradoxically necessary for it also
points to the nothing, namely the worldhood of the world, the world as
such or an oppressive, anonymous Being that ‘stifles one’s breath’. When
Dasein allows itself to be encountered by the nothing in the form of
anxiety, the possibility exists for it to overcome its ontical ‘they-self’
nature. Ontologically, Dasein is now in a position of Being-free for its
authentic existentiell possibilities.
This suggests that the passive element of Heidegger’s notion of
encounter is an essential part of Dasein in its understanding of its Being as
care. Encounter is therefore also a vital structure, like time, in the horizon
of Being. Let us look more closely at Heidegger’s notion of encounter. In
Being and Time, we see it also at work in the third and most crucial
characteristic of states-of-mind [Befindlichkeit]. It is described as letting
something be encountered within-the-world. The passive nature of
encounter is further exemplified as ‘circumspective concern’ (Being-
alongside the ready-to-hand) and as ‘becoming affected in some way’
[Betroffenwerdens].64
It could be suggested that Erfahren (what is both present at hand in the
world and insignificant for human purposes) could be paralleled with
Levinas’ notion of anonymous Being, the ‘there is’, as it points to the
nothing. The question then turns on the extent to which Heidegger’s
usage of encounter in its passive form and his understanding of Erfahren
and Erlebnis contribute to Levinas’ notions of encounter and the there is
50 GLENN MORRISON

[il y a]. Is there a parallel between Heidegger’s discussion of Erfahren as

expressing an oppressive, anonymous Being,65 and Levinas’ notion of the
there is [il y a]? Admittedly, his interpretation of anonymous Being is
debatable. However, when Levinas states that the there is refers to Being
in General, a certain parallel is quite conceivable: Heidegger speaks of the
world oppressing us especially through anxiety. Levinas will acknowledge
the importance of the notions of anxiety, the nothing and existence for
understanding Heidegger’s phenomenological method.66 It seems likely
that Levinas was influenced by Heidegger’s notions of encounter
[Begegnen] and experience/Experience [Erfahren and Erlebnis].
But differences remain. Whereas both Levinas and Heidegger reject
lived experiences as foundational, the latter highlights the oppressiveness
of the nothing. For Levinas, however, the oppressiveness of the world
is not to be overcome through care for one’s existentiell possibilities, but
by the path of responsibility for the Other. Furthermore, Levinas has
developed the idea of encounter in respect to alterity, an Otherness that
exceeds the conatus of Being in a Heideggerian sense.
Now let us turn to Rosenzweig’s fundamental project as the final,
major influence upon Levinas’ own thought.

ROSENZWEIG’S FUNDAMENTAL PROJECT

Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption is a complex work,

interweaving epistemological, ontological and theological concerns. It
explores the realms of politics, aesthetics and religion from pagan and
Jewish-Christian perspectives. The book interrelates the three primordial
elements, God, the world and humanity, and connects these with the three
‘dimensions of temporality,’67 Creation, Revelation and Redemption.
With each of these topics signifying a point on the star, together they
form the ‘Star of Redemption’. Central to the book is the chapter on
Revelation. Anticipating existential developments, Rosenzweig begins his
treatment of Revelation with an analysis of death.68
Death represents the connection between Creation and Revelation. It
points beyond Creation to the revelation of the creature’s authentic life as
an image of God. The theme of creation is concerned with the relation
between God and the world. Such a relation is dramatically represented
in the creature’s search for ‘authentic revelation’69 concerning its exist-
ence [Dasein]. The challenge for the creature is to be conscious that
its existence lacks Being and truth70 and even lacks what is beyond
Being, namely consciousness of death as the prelude to a life of ra-
dical otherness.71 As a result, the creature wrestles with the reality of
its own facticity and finiteness whilst being probed by God’s word in
the soul: ‘Let us make humankind in our image . . . it was very good’
(Gen 1:26, 31).72
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 51

In the enigma of the creature’s search for the meaning of its own exist-
ence lie the notions of eternity and preservation. Although Rosenzweig
does not seem to have been familiar with Husserl’s phenomenology,
some form of intentionality is implied.73 Wrestling with the difficulty to
find a context whereby existence and life coincide, Rosenzweig states:
Compared to the ‘phenomena of existence, living beings are truly ‘beings’.
Cognition of existence is the recognition of its transformations. Cognition of
life, however, would be the recognition of its preservation.74

These words suggest the interrelationship between Creation, Revela-

tion and Redemption in this way: any knowledge of things that are given
to consciousness, such as love and death, for example, depends on re-
cognizing the role of the Infinite or Providence in them. This results in
the Creature’s transcendence of momentary existence to the realm of
revelation. In such a transformation, God speaks prophecy to the soul
of the creature, namely that ‘Love is strong as death’.75 Further, such
knowledge enables the recognition of the way life is preserved or held in
being through God’s love for the world, and the love of the neighbour.76
This revelation of God’s prophecy and knowledge in us, ‘to do justice and
to love mercy’,77 opens the horizon to which the creature may perceive the
Star of Redemption.
However, to do this ‘the bridge of eternity’78 must be crossed, in
order to go beyond both the boundaries and temptations of politics
and aesthetics. Rosenzweig is attempting to break with the totality of
Hegelian and Kantian Idealism. He refuses the reduction of God and
the Being of the world to the rational thought of the transcendental
subject, and seeks a new form of idealism. Consequently, Rosenzweig
speaks of a transcendent realm wherein existence and life coincide.
Emerging towards the end of The Star of Redemption, such a messianic
(transcendent) realm is discussed under the heading of the ‘place and time
of truth’.79
Rosenzweig’s goal is to search for truth and eternity. It implies an indi-
vidual life of what he calls verification [Bewährung]. Verification, in this
sense, bespeaks of a life rooted in the witness of God’s revelation in us.
However God’s revelation in us cannot be experienced [erlebt]; it must be
perceived as when perception receives its light from Being. Rosenzweig
writes: ‘it is God who experiences while man merely watches’.80 Thus
human existence participates in the truth of God passively, even if it is
always on the way to truth. It is continually called to verify the perception
of eternal truth (the very Star of Redemption) in God. Let us now explore
this crucial relationship between eternity, truth and redemption.
Rosenzweig’s notion of eternity is quite original and eschatological
in tone, as it embraces both Jewish and Christian usages. The life of
messianic alterity is made possible through these very two faiths. Judaism
is defined as ‘the eternal life’ and Christianity as ‘the eternal way’. The
52 GLENN MORRISON

Jewish people are named as the ‘eternal people’ because they are a people
denied a political life in time. At this point, it seems Rosenzweig tries to
give an eschatological meaning to Jewish suffering. Being outside world
history without a homeland and common language, the Jewish people are
rooted in the time of the Torah and liturgical year. They dream of a Holy
Land to unite all people, of a sacred language for all to communicate and
of a common law that reconciles humanity.81 This suggests a connection
between the notion of eternal life and the ambiguity of ‘presence-
absence’.82
The Jewish people’s verification of God in the world reflects an
important tension between politics and the Reign of God. Politics
remains for the individual a form of personal salvation. Rosenzweig
understands the Jew to be the archetype of peace. The idea of war, even a
holy war, has been abandoned in favour of liturgical life.83 Possessing an
‘inner unity of faith and life’,84 the eternal people (the Jewish people) are
the foundation of hope for redemption, the reconciliation between
humanity and the world. They alone symbolize the ‘fire’ of the Star of
Redemption that nourishes the Star’s ‘rays’, namely the ‘eternal way’ of
Christianity.
In this symbolic language, an important connection between the
eternal truth of Judaism and Christianity is expressed. Rosenzweig
reflects: ‘The fire burns through and in itself, and sends forth rays which
shine out into the world and illumine it; the fire is not aware of the rays,
nor does it have need of their light for itself. It burns silently and
eternally’.85 Rosenzweig did not explicate this connection further – except
to stress that Judaism and Christianity are the sole two paths towards
redemption. He depicts the Christian as a homo viator, journeying on the
eternal way. Forming a part of history and the fate of society,86 the
Christian’s role is specifically one of mission. Unlike the Jew who lives in
communion with ‘eternal life’, the Christian is on the way of living in
communion with eternal life. Whereas for the Jew, the preservation of
eternal life is through procreation, for the Christian it is witnessing about
Christ and his parousia through the freedom that the Church creates.87
Rosenzweig further describes such Christian consciousness in paschal
terms as the way of the Cross.88
In the way that politics proves a temptation for the Jew, so art in all its
depictions of the tragic and comic offers the Christian an egoistic form of
salvation. Moreover, art in its aesthetic categories competes with the
paschal mystery to console humanity.89 Rosenzweig states that aesthetic
experience imprisons the human soul in ‘the mythical reality of God, the
plastic reality of the world, the tragic reality of man’.90 The mystery of the
Cross and the whole liturgical year, however, motivates the Christian to a
compassionate life of ‘eternal suffering and eternal joy’. In the state of
such kenotic alterity, the soul realizes eternity as the verification of God’s
truth witnessing through it.91
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 53

By seeking to draw out an eschatological vision of Redemption though

Judaism and Christianity, Rosenzweig provides an understanding of
truth as eternity. Both Judaism and Christianity express ‘the desire for
eternity’.92 It is a desire for redemption unconcealed by the epiphany of
divine love and re-concealed by the ‘enduring beginning of creation’.93
Thus truth in the form of revelation and redemption merges back into its
ultimate form as ‘created truth’.94 As images of God, we find ourselves
under the power of God’s creativity. For Rosenzweig, the metaphor par
excellence for God’s creativity in us is the face.
In his final chapter, to which I will turn in more detail in the next
section, Rosenzweig uses the imagery of the face to define humanity’s
place in eternal truth.95 Through recognizing the countenance of God’s
divine face and walking in this light, God’s words are heard, namely ‘to
do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God’ (Micah
6:8). However, there is no other way for God’s face to turn towards us
than by the face of the other whose eyes reveal God’s countenance and
whose mouth utters God’s word.96

ROSENZWEIG’S IMPORTANCE FOR LEVINAS

Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption has played an important role for

Levinas especially by helping to shape his departure from Heidegger’s
thought. Also decisive for Levinas are the rejection of the Idealistic,
pagan world of thought and the consequent totality of Being for a
messianic and eschatological idealism based on Judaism and Christianity.
There is an important movement away from the totality of God, Man and
the World (where ‘God appears to be concealed, man secluded, the world
enchanted’97) to their reciprocal interrelationships signified by the
theological notions of Creation, Revelation and Redemption. Here
we see a ‘shattering of Being’98 where the primordial elements (God, the
world and humanity) are set free from their Western cultural milieu and
the consequent temptations of paganism, politics and aesthetics.
However, what Rosenzweig fails to see is that he replaces one system of
totality for another, namely a messianic theory of Redemption.
Levinas strives to re-work many of the elements in Rosenzweig’s new
system of Idealism and totality. His writings take on both a Jewish and
Christian perspective in the Rosenzweigian sense. By advocating an
eschatological and messianic vision that encompasses all humanity, he
overcomes Rosenzweig’s dualism between the ‘eternal life’ of Judaism
and the ‘eternal way’ of Christianity. Whilst for Levinas the Jewish people
are still the eternal people and the ones who par excellence live out the life
of alterity, all people bear an irrefragable and pre-original responsi-
bility.99 Perhaps Levinas sees himself, like Rosenzweig, as a Biblical
prophet trying to awake the consciousness of the West to its pagan and
54 GLENN MORRISON

totalizing behaviour that too often conceals God with thinking, secludes
humanity by the darkness of violence and war, and enchants the world
through the temptations of politics and aesthetics.
Levinas’ writings owe a great debt to Rosenzweig as the preface to
Totality and Infinity attests: ‘We were impressed by the opposition to the
idea of totality in Franz Rosenzweig’s Stern der Erlösung, a work too
often present in this book to be cited’.100 The influence of Rosenzweig’s
work resonates throughout the Levinasian oeuvre. We see this not just in
the rejection of totality, but significantly in Rosenzweig’s notion of the
face, which Levinas develops in a post-phenomenological way. Similarly,
Rosenzweig’s criticism of art and its aesthetical categories is taken over
and deepened in Levinas’ emphasis of alterity over eros. Furthermore,
Rosenzweig’s openness towards Christianity whilst remaining Jewish
is itself a moment of joyful hope in Levinas’ thought, for he himself
continues a path of reconciliation between Jews and Christians, especially
in the aftermath of the Shoah, at the very moment where all was lost. Like
Rosenzweig, Levinas nurtures a deep appreciation for Christianity whilst
remaining Jewish.
Significantly, Rosenzweig has contributed to Levinas’ thought a sense
of the non-phenomenal despite the fact that he did not adopt any explicit
phenomenological presuppostions.101 Let me be clear by what I under-
stand to be Levinas’ conception of the non-phenomenal. It signifies the
testimony to God’s Word beyond Being and knowing. In other words
the sense of the non-phenomenal is that of alterity or otherness. To bring
this out, let us look more closely at Rosenzweig’s reflection on God’s
countenance:

The truth is this shining of the divine visage alone. It is not a figure of its own,
hovering freely, but solely the countenance of God, shining forth. But for him
whom he lets his visage shine upon, to him he also turns his visage. As he turns
his visage to us, so may we recognize him. And this cognition does not
recognize figuratively. Rather it recognizes the truth as it is, that is as it is in
God: as his countenance and part. By no means does it become a figurative
truth because this countenance is turned towards us, God’s portion imparted to
us; for even as literal and most literal truth it would be none other than –
portion and countenance. In the Star of Redemption, then, in which we saw
divine truth become figure, there shines forth none other than the countenance
which God turned shiningly towards us. Yea, we now recognize the Star of
Redemption itself, as it has at last emerged as figure for us, in the divine visage.
And only in this recognition is its cognition consummated.102

It is evident that Rosenzweig has introduced the idea of the face as the
locus in which God comes to mind. He specifically emphasizes that God’s
countenance or face is not figurative in the sense that it cannot be reduced
to phenomenal experience. In the previous section, I have already
observed how Rosenzweig emphasizes that to walk in the light of God’s
countenance is to follow God’s words of doing justice and loving mercy
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 55

(Micah 6:8). This suggests that any cognition of God’s transcendence is

like having an extreme passivity towards God’s Word, a passivity beyond
knowledge and thought. However, it is also a passivity that coincides with
the activity of alterity.
Such a coinciding of passivity and activity is the signification of God’s
face or truth. If we put the ideas of God’s face, non-figurative truth and
the recognition of revelation together, we have what seems to be an
embryonic account of the non-phenomenal. It would therefore not be
surprising to conceive that what Levinas’ idea of the non-phenomenality
of the face signifies, namely alterity (otherness or the trace of illeity), has
been influenced by Rosenzweig’s idea of God’s face also signifying
alterity.
For Levinas, the encounter with the face of the Other signifies ethical
responsibility that cuts through any attempt to represent and thematize
the Other. The Other’s face is the signification of the trace of illeity, a
signification that makes the word of God be heard beyond knowing and
Being. Levinas’ idea of the trace of illeity, that is to say the depths of God
in the Other’s face, seems to parallel Rosenzweig’s idea of the Star of
Redemption. After all, Rosenzweig states that in the Star of Redemption,
God’s countenance turns towards humanity. Further, when Rosenzweig
emphasizes the consummation of cognition through recognizing the
Star of Redemption, there seems also to be a parallel to Levinas’ idea of
having a sense in Being, that is, to live as an image of God. Such kenotic
life for Levinas is found by responding to the trace of illeity in the Other’s
face. In the same way for Rosenzweig, the consummation of cognition
(the life of alterity) is found by responding to, or recognizing, the Star of
Redemption in God’s face.

CONCLUSION: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

It remains that Rosenzweig’s philosophy is original and far-reaching. In a

sense, it represents a prototype for theology and Jewish thought to enrich
each other. Whilst Levinas never attempted to mirror this attempt to
construct a twofold Jewish and Christian path towards redemption and
eternal truth, he does also seem to take from Rosenzweig Christianity’s
missionary dimension. Levinas’ ethical metaphysics and Talmudic
writings are emphatic in the sense of awaking Western consciousness
to a life of alterity and reiterating such a state of ‘difficult freedom’ as
the practice of Judaism. In spite of this, Rosenzweig’s relationship with
Christian theology has at least awoken Levinas to the possibility of
addressing Christian theological themes.
Rosenzweig’s initiation of a Jewish-Christian theology and his
commanding influence upon a following generation of thinkers, above
all on Levinas, provides a foundation for doing a theology rooted in
56 GLENN MORRISON

Judaism, Christianity and modern continental thought. This signifies a

new relationship between philosophy and theology, one that departs from
the direct influences of Husserl and Heidegger. Throughout the twentieth
century, both the writings of Husserl and Heidegger have been used to
enrich and review theology. However for Levinas, their writings are
testament that any attempt to begin to theologize phenomenologically
and ontologically will reduce the sacred to a violent idolization of
experience and thought. If Levinas’ philosophy is to be utilized for the
benefit of Christian theology or another discipline, then it needs to be
approached carefully in a way that argues how it can possibly be applied.
Like Jean-Luc Marion’s attempt to utilize phenomenology,103 I consider
that using Levinas’ thought to enrich theology is a prolegomenon, and
that working out a method to use his thought could take generations of
reflection.

Notes

1 Cohen writes: ‘Heidegger’s ontology permits Levinas to see beneath the representational
character of Husserl’s phenomenology, true, but the ethics and justice of Rosenzweig’s ‘Star’
permit him to see through the ontological character of Heidegger’s regrounding of
phenomenology’ (The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas [Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1994], pp. 236–237).
2 Such as the there is, illeity and beyond Being.
3 I.e., Plato’s idea of the Good and myth of Gyges, Descarte’s idea of the Infinite,
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Blanchot’s idea of the neuter, Levy-Bruhl’s notion of participation,
Dostoevsky’s The Karamazov Brothers, Grossman’s Life and Fate and Haim of Volozhin’s
Nefesh ha’Haim.
4 Emmanuel Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, translated by Richard A. Cohen
and Michael B. Smith (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p. 30.
5 Ibid., p. 4.
6 Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, Second
Edition, translated by André Orianne (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998),
p. 15.
7 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, pp. 6–7; Barry Smith and David Woodruff
Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (eds.), The Cambridge
Companion to Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 28–9.
8 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, p. 13.
9 David Woodruff Smith, ‘Mind and Body’, in Smith and Smith (eds.), The Cambridge
Companion to Husserl, p. 338.
10 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, pp. 16–17.
11 Ibid., pp. 22–23.
12 Ibid., pp. 94–95.
13 Ibid., pp. 19–20.
14 Ibid., p. 25; and Levinas, The Theory of Intuition, pp. 54–55.
15 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, pp. 49–50.
16 Levinas, The Theory of Intuition, p. 93.
17 Ibid., p. 62.
18 Ibid., p. 68.
19 Ibid., pp. 84, 89.
20 Smith, ‘Mind and Body’, pp. 328–329.
21 See Levinas’ two essays, ‘Is Ontology Fundamental?’ pp. 7–10 and ‘Enigma and
Phenomenon’, pp. 65–77 in Emmanuel Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, edited by Adriaan
T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996).
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 57
22 Robert J. Dostal, ‘Time and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger’, in Charles
Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), p. 152.
23 Da-sein: literally Being-there or ‘the ‘‘there’’ (Da) where being (Sein) shows itself’. See
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 27; Robert Dostall, ‘Time and Phenomenology’, in
Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, p. 152.
24 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 62.
25 Ibid., p. 334.
26 Ibid., p. 223.
27 Ibid., pp. 210–224.
28 Ibid., p. 233.
29 See Michael Inwood, The Heidegger Dictionary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999), pp. 17,
144, 145.
30 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 311.
31 This seems to suggest that whereas Husserl’s emphasis on phenomenology is essentially
ontical, that is related to the reality of the transcendental subject, Heidegger’s project is
existential-ontological, focused on the search into the Being of Dasein in order to understand the
meaning of Being in general or in other words, why is there something rather than nothing?
32 Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 225–237.
33 Ibid., p. 237.
34 See Stephen Mulhall, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time
(London: Routledge, 2001), p. 111.
35 Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 239–241.
36 Ibid., pp. 377, 418.
37 Ibid., pp. 417–418.
38 Ibid., p. 377.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., p. 378.
42 Ibid.
43 See Inwood, Heidegger Dictionary, p. 77; and Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 306.
44 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 382.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., p. 477.
48 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, p. 85. Heidegger points out that existence
is understood in terms of authentic existence. He writes, ‘ ‘‘Existence’’ means a potentiality-
for-Being – but also one which is authentic’ (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 276).
49 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 232.
50 Ibid., p. 393.
51 Ibid., p. 336.
52 Ibid., p. 336.
53 Ibid., p. 343.
54 Ibid., p. 488.
55 Ibid.
56 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, translated by
Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), p. 39. In reply to Philippe
Nemo’s question about Sein und Zeit, Levinas replies, ‘The work that I did then on ‘‘the theory of
intuition’’ in Husserl was thus influenced by Sein und Zeit, to the extent that I sought to present
Husserl as having perceived the ontological problem of being, the question of the status rather
than the quiddity of beings. . . . In Sein und Zeit’s analyses of anxiety, care and being-toward-
death, we witness a sovereign exercise of phenomenology’.
57 Ibid., p. 38.
58 Adriaan Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 1999), p. 2. Peperzak points out that in ‘De l’évasion’ Levinas’
‘central question of his later work can be recognized in it: Is it possible to transcend, in thinking,
the horizon of Being?’
59 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), p. 17.
58 GLENN MORRISON

60 Ibid., p. 23.
61 Ibid.
62 John Macquarrie translates Erfahrung and erfahren as ‘experience’ and Erlebnis as
‘Experience’. See footnote in Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 72.
63 Inwood points out that er-fahren has an active sense (‘In active experience, we ‘‘go forth’’
(e-fahren) to look for something, whereas Erfahrung (defined by Heidegger as ‘‘any experience’’
[Being and Time, 72, ftn.10] ) is at first passive: we come across something without going in search
of it’ (Inwood, ‘Experience’ in A Heidegger Dictionary, pp. 62–64).
64 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 176.
65 Heidegger states, ‘What oppresses is not this or that, nor is it the summation of
everything present-at-hand; it is rather the possibility of the ready-to-hand in general; that is to
say, it is the world itself’ (ibid., p. 231).
66 See Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, pp. 40–41.
67 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Foreword,’ in Stéphane Mosès, System and Revelation: The
Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, translated by Catherine Tihanyi (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1992), p. 15.
68 The work of The Star of Redemption seems to bear a similarity with Heidegger’s Being
and Time. The question remains as to whether Heidegger was even aware of Rosenzweig’s work
in composing his own. Both Rosenzweig and Heidegger are concerned about conceiving of
Dasein’s authentic existence, despite the fact that for the most part it lives in a state of
inauthenticity. However, their main difference lies in the different paths for searching for
Dasein’s state of authenticity. Whilst Heidegger searches in the pagan world, Rosenzweig has
found his way in a movement away from pagan existence to the truth of Judaism and
Christianity. Such a movement would signify the hope of finding the ‘gate’ that reveals ‘the Star
of Redemption’.
69 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, translated from the Second Edition of 1930
by William W. Hallo (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), p. 120.
70 Ibid., pp. 120–121.
71 Ibid., p. 155.
72 Rosenzweig writes: ‘The created death of the creature portends the revelation of a life
which is above the creaturely level. For each created thing, death is the very consummator of its
entire materiality. It removes creation imperceptibly into the past, and thus turns its into the
tacit, permanent prediction of the miracle of renewal. That is why, on the sixth day, it way not
said that it was ‘‘good’’, but rather ‘‘behold, very good!’’ Very, so our sages teach, very – that is
death’ (ibid., p. 155).
73 In regards to the possibility of a phenomenology in Rosenzweig’s work, Richard Cohen
would seem clearly to deny even an embryonic form: ‘Phenomenology is neither present nor
present in absentia in Rosenzweig’s work – it is totally absent’ (Richard A. Cohen, The Height of
the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994], p. 232).
Despite his careful and clear analysis of the connections between Husserl, Heidegger,
Rosenzweig and Levinas, I think Cohen is too hasty to rule out even the presence of an
original, embryonic phenomenology in Rosenzweig. Could not a pure and even passive form of
(post)-phenomenology interwoven with being seen by the Eternal be conceived in terms of
‘recognition’ and later, as will be explained, in terms of Rosenzweig’s use of the notion of
‘verification’? Has in fact the focus of phenomenology upon the subject’s thought and Being,
namely what is given to my consciousness, been a possible limitation? Rather, could not a
phenomenology that seeks eternal truth be conceived in the state of ‘being seen in God’? See
Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 394.
74 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, pp. 222–223.
75 Ibid., p. 156.
76 Ibid., p. 346.
77 Ibid., p. 424.
78 Ibid., p. 347.
79 Ibid., p. 394.
80 Ibid., p. 394.
81 Mosès, System and Revelation, p. 183.
82 Ibid.
83 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 331. Rosenzweig states: ‘As against the life of
the nations of the world, constantly involved in a holy war, the Jewish people has left its holy war
behind in its mythical antiquity. Hence, whatever wars it experiences are purely political wars. . . .
 LEVINAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS 59
In the whole Christian world, the Jew is practically the only human being who cannot take war
seriously, and this makes him the only genuine pacifist. For that reason, and because he
experiences perfect community in his spiritual year, he remains remote from the chronology of
the rest of the world’.
84 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 331.
85 Ibid., p. 335.
86 Mosès, System and Revelation, p. 232.
87 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, pp. 341–344.
88 Ibid., p. 347.
89 Ibid., p. 377. Rosenzweig writes: ‘Art teaches man to overcome without forgetting. . . .
Art indeed appears to replace the cross in the fullest measure. Why should the soul still need the
cross if it finds perpetuation and renovation within itself?’
90 Mosès, System and Revelation, p. 237.
91 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 379.
92 Mosès, System and Revelation, p. 262.
93 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 417.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid., p. 418. Rosenzweig writes: ‘The Eternal had become figure in the truth. And the
truth is none other than the countenance of this figure. Truth alone is its countenance . . . The
truth is this shining of the divine visage alone. It is not a figure of its own, hovering freely, but
solely the countenance of God, shining forth. But for him whom he lets his visage shine upon, to
him he also turns his visage. As he turns his visage to us, so may we recognize him . . . Yea, we
now recognise the Star of Redemption itself, as it has at last emerged as figure for us, in the divine
visage’.
96 Ibid., p. 423 and Mosès, System and Revelation, p. 285.
97 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 391.
98 Mosès, System and Revelation, p. 53.
99 Cohen writes, ‘But Levinas’s though is also, from Rosenzweig’s perspective, Christian,
centrifugal as well as centripetal, a loving of others inspired by being loved, a global mission as
well as an eternal people. Indeed, for Levinas, who nowhere expresses Rosenzweig’s exclusionary
commitments, these two moments are inseparable. Irreplaceable election of the self and
responsiveness to the incomparable alterity of the other person are two aspects of the same
ethics’ (Elevations, p. 299).
100 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by
Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1996), p. 28.
101 Levinas, ‘Foreword’, p. 18.
102 Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, p. 418.
103 See Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomena to Charity, translated by Stephen Lewis (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2002).