Franz Rosenzweig

Diagnoses

Personal

Vocation

Notable

German Jewish theologian, philosopher, and translator, whose major work is The Star of Redemption (1921). It is a description of the relationships between God, humanity, and the world, as they are connected by creation, revelation and redemption. If one makes a diagram with God at the top, and the World and the Self below, the inter-relationships generate a Star of David map. He is critical of any attempt to replace actual human existence with an ideal. In Rosenzweig's scheme, revelation arises not in metaphysics but in the here and now. We are called to love God, and to do so is to return to the world, and that is redemption. Rosenzweig, unimpressed with the impersonal learning of the academy, founded the House of Jewish Learning in Frankfurt in 1920, which sought to engage in dialogue with human beings rather than merely accumulate knowledge. The Lehrhaus, as it was known in Germany, produced many prominent Jewish intellectuals. Rosenzweig suffered from the muscular degenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). He died on the night of 10 December 1929, in Frankfurt, aged 42. Link to Wikipedia biography