1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,919 Okay, let's unpack this. Today we are tackling 2 00:00:01,919 --> 00:00:05,219 something, well, truly monumental. A deep dive 3 00:00:05,219 --> 00:00:07,900 into the intellectual world of two giants of 4 00:00:07,900 --> 00:00:10,740 the 20th century, Franz Rosenzweig and Martin 5 00:00:10,740 --> 00:00:12,820 Heidegger. And we're doing this through the lens 6 00:00:12,820 --> 00:00:16,300 of a really fantastic academic study by Peter 7 00:00:16,300 --> 00:00:19,199 Eli Gordon. called Rosenzweig and Heidegger, 8 00:00:19,260 --> 00:00:22,339 between Judaism and German philosophy. Right. 9 00:00:22,420 --> 00:00:25,379 And it's ambitious because you have to start 10 00:00:25,379 --> 00:00:28,140 by acknowledging the huge ethical problem here. 11 00:00:28,239 --> 00:00:30,940 You absolutely do. We're connecting Rosenzweig, 12 00:00:30,960 --> 00:00:33,820 who is one of the most important figures in modern 13 00:00:33,820 --> 00:00:36,820 Jewish thought, and who died in 1929. So just 14 00:00:36,820 --> 00:00:39,880 before. The catastrophe. Exactly. Spared that 15 00:00:39,880 --> 00:00:42,000 historical horror. And we're connecting him with 16 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:44,560 Heidegger, whose philosophy shaped a generation, 17 00:00:44,619 --> 00:00:46,820 but whose name is, well, it's forever linked 18 00:00:46,820 --> 00:00:49,659 to his support for national socialism. The tension 19 00:00:49,659 --> 00:00:52,280 there is just, it's inescapable. It's a whole 20 00:00:52,280 --> 00:00:54,359 backdrop to this conversation. Rosenzweig is 21 00:00:54,359 --> 00:00:56,299 gone. Heidegger embraces the regime. I mean, 22 00:00:56,299 --> 00:00:58,740 to even compare them feels controversial, maybe 23 00:00:58,740 --> 00:01:02,219 even wrong to some. It does. And Gordon doesn't 24 00:01:02,219 --> 00:01:05,299 shy away from that. But his whole... argument, 25 00:01:05,379 --> 00:01:08,299 his thesis, is that despite their life paths 26 00:01:08,299 --> 00:01:10,980 ending up on opposite sides of a moral universe, 27 00:01:11,260 --> 00:01:15,480 they're intellectual projects. They converged. 28 00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:18,159 They converged in this really profound way. How 29 00:01:18,159 --> 00:01:19,900 so? I mean, it wasn't like they were in dialogue, 30 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:22,519 right? Not directly, no. They were aware of each 31 00:01:22,519 --> 00:01:25,280 other, moved in similar circles, but it's more 32 00:01:25,280 --> 00:01:27,299 that they were reacting to the same thing. They 33 00:01:27,299 --> 00:01:29,319 were both responding to the total collapse of 34 00:01:29,319 --> 00:01:31,650 the Weimar intellectual world. The exhaustion 35 00:01:31,650 --> 00:01:33,810 of a certain kind of philosophy. The exhaustion 36 00:01:33,810 --> 00:01:36,709 of neo -Kantian idealism, specifically. They 37 00:01:36,709 --> 00:01:38,790 were both products of that same philosophical 38 00:01:38,790 --> 00:01:41,810 pressure cooker in Germany after World War I. 39 00:01:42,069 --> 00:01:44,450 Gordon actually gives this shared ground a name, 40 00:01:44,450 --> 00:01:46,450 which I think is so helpful. He calls it philosophical 41 00:01:46,450 --> 00:01:48,989 expressionism. Yeah, that's a key term for him. 42 00:01:49,109 --> 00:01:50,950 So what does that mean exactly? It's not a term 43 00:01:50,950 --> 00:01:53,129 you hear every day. Well, think of it as a philosophy 44 00:01:53,129 --> 00:01:55,829 that does two things at once. On one hand... 45 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:58,420 It's deeply archaic. It wants to go back to some 46 00:01:58,420 --> 00:02:01,280 kind of perceived origin, some primal truth, 47 00:02:01,459 --> 00:02:03,519 whether that's in religion or language or myth. 48 00:02:03,700 --> 00:02:05,980 A return to the source. A return to the source. 49 00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:09,439 But on the other hand, it's aggressively modernist 50 00:02:09,439 --> 00:02:12,500 in its style and its form. And both of them, 51 00:02:12,539 --> 00:02:15,460 Rosenzweig and Heidegger, they share this relentless 52 00:02:15,460 --> 00:02:19,340 focus on the same themes. Finitude, you know, 53 00:02:19,340 --> 00:02:22,199 being limited in time, isolation, and this shared 54 00:02:22,199 --> 00:02:24,689 mission to get beyond. Traditional metaphysics. 55 00:02:24,889 --> 00:02:27,449 So it's like a philosophy born from trauma looking 56 00:02:27,449 --> 00:02:29,409 backward and forward at the same time. That's 57 00:02:29,409 --> 00:02:31,509 a perfect way to put it. So that's our mission 58 00:02:31,509 --> 00:02:34,310 today. We're tracing this shared intellectual 59 00:02:34,310 --> 00:02:37,150 DNA, this common ground born out of a crisis 60 00:02:37,150 --> 00:02:40,849 that links these two figures who history placed 61 00:02:40,849 --> 00:02:43,810 on opposite sides of an abyss. And to do that, 62 00:02:43,810 --> 00:02:45,830 we have to start with what they were rejecting, 63 00:02:46,050 --> 00:02:47,750 the whole system they were trying to tear down. 64 00:02:47,949 --> 00:02:49,770 And that means we have to understand the philosophical 65 00:02:49,770 --> 00:02:52,629 world before the First World War, the Wilhelmine 66 00:02:52,629 --> 00:02:55,080 period. Because back then, academic philosophy 67 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:57,460 in Germany was just completely dominated by one 68 00:02:57,460 --> 00:03:00,419 thing. Neocontianism. Neocontianism. Specifically, 69 00:03:00,919 --> 00:03:03,360 the Marburg School, led by figures like Herman 70 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:05,719 Cohen and Paul Natorp. And you have to understand, 71 00:03:05,800 --> 00:03:08,680 this is not the kind of, you know, angsty existentialism 72 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:12,219 we think of from the 20s. This was a very dry, 73 00:03:12,419 --> 00:03:14,680 critical kind of philosophy. Oh, absolutely. 74 00:03:15,169 --> 00:03:18,030 Its main job was to establish the logical foundations 75 00:03:18,030 --> 00:03:20,830 for natural science. It was anti -metaphysical, 76 00:03:20,930 --> 00:03:23,270 anti -speculation. And the key figure here is 77 00:03:23,270 --> 00:03:27,069 Cohen. He makes this huge move with one of Kant's 78 00:03:27,069 --> 00:03:30,330 most famous ideas, the Dingensitsch, the thing 79 00:03:30,330 --> 00:03:33,629 in itself. Right. So for Kant, that was the ultimate 80 00:03:33,629 --> 00:03:36,250 reality that exists outside of our minds, but 81 00:03:36,250 --> 00:03:38,750 we can never, ever truly know it. It's the world 82 00:03:38,750 --> 00:03:41,469 as it is, not just as it appears to us. Exactly. 83 00:03:41,469 --> 00:03:43,110 And Cohen comes along and says, you know what? 84 00:03:43,150 --> 00:03:45,430 That's just metaphysical speculation. It's nonsense. 85 00:03:45,830 --> 00:03:48,349 For him, the ding and sitch is not some mysterious 86 00:03:48,349 --> 00:03:51,069 entity out there. What is it, then? He redefines 87 00:03:51,069 --> 00:03:52,930 it completely. It becomes a regulative idea. 88 00:03:53,169 --> 00:03:55,830 Or even better, a Grinsberg, a boundary concept. 89 00:03:56,110 --> 00:03:58,069 Okay, a boundary concept. So it's not an object. 90 00:03:58,129 --> 00:04:00,669 It's more like a function, a job description. 91 00:04:01,430 --> 00:04:03,990 Precisely. It's the infinite task that science 92 00:04:03,990 --> 00:04:06,840 is always pursuing but never reaches. It's the 93 00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:09,240 horizon of knowledge that's always receding. 94 00:04:09,979 --> 00:04:12,439 By making it an unreachable limit, Cohen basically 95 00:04:12,439 --> 00:04:15,280 guaranteed that the work of science, and by extension 96 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:19,379 philosophy, would never, ever end. So he secures 97 00:04:19,379 --> 00:04:21,779 philosophy's job for all time. He does. And this 98 00:04:21,779 --> 00:04:24,240 focus on method, on thought creating its own 99 00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:27,540 tasks, leads to his most extreme claim. It's 100 00:04:27,540 --> 00:04:29,899 called pan -methodism. And this is where it gets 101 00:04:29,899 --> 00:04:32,100 really interesting. And you can see why the next 102 00:04:32,100 --> 00:04:34,240 generation would rebel. He has an analogy for 103 00:04:34,240 --> 00:04:36,769 it, right? From math. He does. The infinitesimal. 104 00:04:36,850 --> 00:04:39,290 In calculus, the infinitesimal is this quantity 105 00:04:39,290 --> 00:04:41,670 that's always approaching zero. It's basically 106 00:04:41,670 --> 00:04:44,689 a concept of nothingness, of nixine. And Cohen 107 00:04:44,689 --> 00:04:46,709 argues that this is how thought works. It starts 108 00:04:46,709 --> 00:04:48,850 with this concept of nothing, and then through 109 00:04:48,850 --> 00:04:51,649 pure logic, through its own method, it generates 110 00:04:51,649 --> 00:04:54,990 all of reality. That's a pretty wild idea. He's 111 00:04:54,990 --> 00:04:57,329 saying that being, that reality itself, isn't 112 00:04:57,329 --> 00:04:58,930 something we discover. It's something the mind 113 00:04:58,930 --> 00:05:01,790 creates spontaneously, starting from zero. Yes. 114 00:05:02,250 --> 00:05:04,889 And if that's true... You can see the consequence. 115 00:05:05,209 --> 00:05:07,410 You don't need metaphysics anymore. You don't 116 00:05:07,410 --> 00:05:10,389 need to study being as some external thing. Being 117 00:05:10,389 --> 00:05:13,069 is just a premise of method. The mind is king. 118 00:05:13,329 --> 00:05:16,449 And this radical idealism, this idea that you 119 00:05:16,449 --> 00:05:21,310 can just think your way out of messy, real, time 120 00:05:21,310 --> 00:05:24,189 -bound existence. That is precisely what Rosenzweig 121 00:05:24,189 --> 00:05:25,709 and Heidegger are going to spend their entire 122 00:05:25,709 --> 00:05:28,879 careers trying to reverse. They saw that whole 123 00:05:28,879 --> 00:05:31,139 tradition from the ancient Greeks all the way 124 00:05:31,139 --> 00:05:33,939 to Cohen as a kind of flight, a way for philosophers 125 00:05:33,939 --> 00:05:36,139 to trick themselves into thinking they're immortal 126 00:05:36,139 --> 00:05:38,480 by living in this timeless realm of concept. 127 00:05:38,639 --> 00:05:42,000 To escape death, basically. And their whole project 128 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:43,939 becomes about starting philosophy, not from a 129 00:05:43,939 --> 00:05:47,199 method, but from the raw fact of existence, of 130 00:05:47,199 --> 00:05:49,000 being stuck in the world with all its limits. 131 00:05:49,139 --> 00:05:50,980 But the irony, and this is what Gordon points 132 00:05:50,980 --> 00:05:53,040 out so well, is that the seeds of this revolution 133 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:55,949 were actually sown by Cohen himself. late in 134 00:05:55,949 --> 00:05:58,769 his life right in his final big work religion 135 00:05:58,769 --> 00:06:01,069 of reason out of the sources of judaism it's 136 00:06:01,069 --> 00:06:03,769 like he opens a crack in his own perfect idealist 137 00:06:03,769 --> 00:06:06,829 system he creates what the book calls an uneasy 138 00:06:06,829 --> 00:06:10,470 truce between his ethics and this new turn toward 139 00:06:10,470 --> 00:06:12,850 religion that's right because in his ethical 140 00:06:12,850 --> 00:06:16,490 system the individual person is just absorbed 141 00:06:16,490 --> 00:06:19,279 into the universal The all height. You're just 142 00:06:19,279 --> 00:06:21,600 a symbol for all of humanity. Universal reason, 143 00:06:21,779 --> 00:06:23,980 universal morality. The individual doesn't really 144 00:06:23,980 --> 00:06:26,639 matter. Only the universal law. But then Cohen 145 00:06:26,639 --> 00:06:29,579 realizes his system can't really account for 146 00:06:29,579 --> 00:06:33,100 a specific, unique person who feels guilt. The 147 00:06:33,100 --> 00:06:36,779 Einzelmensch. Religion, he sees, has to speak 148 00:06:36,779 --> 00:06:38,879 to that person in their moment of failure, in 149 00:06:38,879 --> 00:06:41,040 their sin, in their remorse. So the individual, 150 00:06:41,180 --> 00:06:44,000 the one who messes up, who feels things. That 151 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:46,399 person becomes the remainder that this perfect 152 00:06:46,399 --> 00:06:49,639 rational system can't quite process or digest. 153 00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:52,040 And that was a huge deal for Rosenzweig. He was 154 00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:54,699 Cohen's student, and he saw this as Cohen accidentally 155 00:06:54,699 --> 00:06:57,120 pointing the way out of idealism. Cohen showed 156 00:06:57,120 --> 00:06:59,660 the system's limit. It breaks when it meets a 157 00:06:59,660 --> 00:07:02,339 real, finite, sinning person. Which explains 158 00:07:02,339 --> 00:07:05,160 that incredible quote Rosenzweig used later about 159 00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:08,019 the Davos debate. The schoolchildren die, together 160 00:07:08,019 --> 00:07:10,810 with their schoolteacher, the master lives. Exactly. 161 00:07:10,829 --> 00:07:13,329 The schoolchildren are the neocantians who just 162 00:07:13,329 --> 00:07:17,069 kept repeating the old formulas. But Cohen, the 163 00:07:17,069 --> 00:07:20,430 master, in his final work, he glimpsed something 164 00:07:20,430 --> 00:07:23,870 new. He saw the need for a new kind of thinking 165 00:07:23,870 --> 00:07:26,370 rooted in the particularity of the individual. 166 00:07:26,709 --> 00:07:28,970 And that's what paved the way for both Rosenzweig 167 00:07:28,970 --> 00:07:31,649 and Heidegger. This departure from idealism brings 168 00:07:31,649 --> 00:07:34,470 us to Rosenzweig's own early work, his massive 169 00:07:34,470 --> 00:07:37,290 doctoral thesis, Hegel and the State, which came 170 00:07:37,290 --> 00:07:39,589 out in 1920. And you have to remember the timing. 171 00:07:40,019 --> 00:07:41,860 This is written right in the shadow of World 172 00:07:41,860 --> 00:07:45,100 War I. He is deeply, deeply disillusioned with 173 00:07:45,100 --> 00:07:48,079 German nationalism and with the very idealist 174 00:07:48,079 --> 00:07:50,420 philosophy that had been used to glorify the 175 00:07:50,420 --> 00:07:53,360 German state. His book fits right into this Hegel 176 00:07:53,360 --> 00:07:55,639 Renaissance that was happening at the time. Scholars 177 00:07:55,639 --> 00:07:57,939 were turning away from the Hegel of pure reason 178 00:07:57,939 --> 00:08:00,379 and the system. And going back to his early so 179 00:08:00,379 --> 00:08:03,100 -called theological writings. And in those writings, 180 00:08:03,199 --> 00:08:05,250 you find a very different Hegel. A Hegel who's 181 00:08:05,250 --> 00:08:08,009 obsessed with religion, with division, and with 182 00:08:08,009 --> 00:08:10,769 this really powerful concept of Schicksal, fate. 183 00:08:11,129 --> 00:08:13,610 And for the young Hegel, the Jewish people were 184 00:08:13,610 --> 00:08:15,810 the prime example of a people trapped by fate. 185 00:08:16,209 --> 00:08:19,069 He saw their belief in a transcendent, abstract 186 00:08:19,069 --> 00:08:21,529 God as something that separated them from the 187 00:08:21,529 --> 00:08:23,470 world, that kept them in a state of training 188 00:08:23,470 --> 00:08:26,769 or separation. Unlike the Greeks or Christians, 189 00:08:26,870 --> 00:08:29,170 who he thought achieved a kind of synthesis or 190 00:08:29,170 --> 00:08:31,680 unity with the world. Right. Now... Rosenzweig 191 00:08:31,680 --> 00:08:34,799 reads all this, but his focus is on what Hegel 192 00:08:34,799 --> 00:08:37,139 says about the state. He points out that for 193 00:08:37,139 --> 00:08:39,419 Hegel, the state is supposed to be the great 194 00:08:39,419 --> 00:08:42,759 achievement of freedom. It's the living actualization 195 00:08:42,759 --> 00:08:45,240 of human freedom. The moment where reason becomes 196 00:08:45,240 --> 00:08:49,500 real in history. The end goal. Yes. But Rosenzweig 197 00:08:49,500 --> 00:08:52,720 sees the terrifying paradox in that. The state, 198 00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:54,679 in trying to overcome all division and reconcile 199 00:08:54,679 --> 00:08:58,000 everything, it becomes this sublime total power 200 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:00,720 that just crushes the individual will. So the 201 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:02,419 very thing that was supposed to conquer fate, 202 00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:05,220 it becomes fate. A historical machine that you 203 00:09:05,220 --> 00:09:07,700 can't fight against. Precisely. And he calls 204 00:09:07,700 --> 00:09:10,500 this the eclipse of the political. After the 205 00:09:10,500 --> 00:09:13,159 disaster of World War I, Rosenzweig concludes 206 00:09:13,159 --> 00:09:15,259 that the state's claim to be the final meaning 207 00:09:15,259 --> 00:09:19,789 of history is just. It's con. It's a lie. The 208 00:09:19,789 --> 00:09:21,769 real meaning of life has to be found somewhere 209 00:09:21,769 --> 00:09:24,289 else. And you can see this change in his thinking 210 00:09:24,289 --> 00:09:26,929 so clearly in the published version of the book. 211 00:09:27,009 --> 00:09:29,570 He adds a second epigraph from the poet Holderlin. 212 00:09:29,730 --> 00:09:32,490 The first epigraph is very optimistic, very idealist. 213 00:09:32,669 --> 00:09:35,389 It's about ideas bearing golden fruit in history, 214 00:09:35,529 --> 00:09:37,789 you know, progress. But the second one? The second 215 00:09:37,789 --> 00:09:41,470 one is pure post -war disillusionment. It contrasts 216 00:09:41,470 --> 00:09:44,110 how narrowly bound human life is with the endless 217 00:09:44,110 --> 00:09:46,429 years of the nations. It's a statement about 218 00:09:46,429 --> 00:09:49,139 human finitude. It sets up the whole game. Our 219 00:09:49,139 --> 00:09:52,039 lives are short, the state, history, these things 220 00:09:52,039 --> 00:09:55,139 seem immortal. But any philosophy that asks us 221 00:09:55,139 --> 00:09:57,840 to sacrifice our short real life for that immortal 222 00:09:57,840 --> 00:10:00,779 abstraction. It is a flight from the truth. And 223 00:10:00,779 --> 00:10:02,940 that insight, that insistence, that meaning must 224 00:10:02,940 --> 00:10:05,159 be found within our temporal limits. That's the 225 00:10:05,159 --> 00:10:07,600 absolute foundational stone that Rosenzweig and 226 00:10:07,600 --> 00:10:10,039 Heidegger build their philosophies on. Which 227 00:10:10,039 --> 00:10:12,519 brings us to Rosenzweig's masterpiece, The Star 228 00:10:12,519 --> 00:10:15,850 of Redemption from 1921. And this book is, I 229 00:10:15,850 --> 00:10:17,769 mean, it's famous for being incredibly difficult. 230 00:10:17,850 --> 00:10:21,429 The structure, the style. It really is that philosophical 231 00:10:21,429 --> 00:10:23,750 expressionism we were talking about. The structure 232 00:10:23,750 --> 00:10:26,269 itself is a kind of argument. It's this complex, 233 00:10:26,549 --> 00:10:30,070 six -pointed star, a geometrical layout tracing 234 00:10:30,070 --> 00:10:32,769 everything from the primal elements, God, man, 235 00:10:32,950 --> 00:10:35,870 and world, all the way to redemption. Gordon 236 00:10:35,870 --> 00:10:38,289 even notes that it's weirdly similar to the six 237 00:10:38,289 --> 00:10:40,769 -part structure of Heidegger's later post -being 238 00:10:40,769 --> 00:10:43,600 and time work. And the style isn't academic prose. 239 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:46,580 It's lyrical. It's poetic. The source says he 240 00:10:46,580 --> 00:10:48,700 was really influenced by Schelling's idea that 241 00:10:48,700 --> 00:10:50,879 philosophy had to get back to the original poetry 242 00:10:50,879 --> 00:10:53,720 of humanity, back to myth. Yeah, he wasn't interested 243 00:10:53,720 --> 00:10:55,820 in just making logical arguments. He wanted a 244 00:10:55,820 --> 00:10:58,500 philosophy that spoke to you, that had the power 245 00:10:58,500 --> 00:11:01,740 of myth. He saw myths not as lies, but as these 246 00:11:01,740 --> 00:11:04,980 deep, sedimented understandings of reality. And 247 00:11:04,980 --> 00:11:06,980 he's very clear from the start. This is not a 248 00:11:06,980 --> 00:11:09,649 philosophy of religion. Right. He hated that 249 00:11:09,649 --> 00:11:12,389 kind of academic pigeonholing. He argued that 250 00:11:12,389 --> 00:11:15,190 Judaism, which he called a historical fact, and 251 00:11:15,190 --> 00:11:18,830 Christianity, an event, they weren't originally 252 00:11:18,830 --> 00:11:21,710 religions in our modern sense. They only became 253 00:11:21,710 --> 00:11:24,549 these closed off specialized things by retreating 254 00:11:24,549 --> 00:11:26,570 from the world. He wanted to talk about religious 255 00:11:26,570 --> 00:11:29,090 truth without any of that baggage. That desire 256 00:11:29,090 --> 00:11:31,450 to strip away tradition to get to an original 257 00:11:31,450 --> 00:11:33,649 truth. I mean, that sounds an awful lot like 258 00:11:33,649 --> 00:11:36,429 Heidegger's project of the destruction of metaphysics. 259 00:11:36,450 --> 00:11:38,769 It's the same impulse. And you see it on the 260 00:11:38,769 --> 00:11:41,500 very first page of the star. the famous opening 261 00:11:41,500 --> 00:11:43,700 allegory of the soldier in the trenches it's 262 00:11:43,700 --> 00:11:46,539 one of the most powerful openings in all of 20th 263 00:11:46,539 --> 00:11:49,159 century philosophy he doesn't start with an abstract 264 00:11:49,159 --> 00:11:52,440 principle he starts with a person a soldier in 265 00:11:52,440 --> 00:11:55,059 the mud terrified of dying and then comes that 266 00:11:55,059 --> 00:11:58,240 line from death from the fear of death begins 267 00:11:58,240 --> 00:12:00,659 all knowledge of the all death is the starting 268 00:12:00,659 --> 00:12:04,000 point and that is a direct attack on all of traditional 269 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:07,179 philosophy because Rosenzweig says idealism's 270 00:12:07,179 --> 00:12:10,220 whole game is to help you escape that fear, to 271 00:12:10,220 --> 00:12:12,820 escape the fact that you as a singular individual 272 00:12:12,820 --> 00:12:16,299 are going to die. It does that by offering you 273 00:12:16,299 --> 00:12:19,100 this sham constellation of immortality and thought. 274 00:12:19,299 --> 00:12:21,620 You'll live on in the timeless world of concepts. 275 00:12:22,019 --> 00:12:24,299 It's the ultimate self -deception for Mistich. 276 00:12:24,500 --> 00:12:27,100 And to really drive the point home, he takes 277 00:12:27,100 --> 00:12:30,480 the great rallying cry of idealism that Schiller, 278 00:12:30,500 --> 00:12:33,360 quote, cast off the fear of the earthly and he 279 00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:36,059 turns it on its head. He says that command, that 280 00:12:36,059 --> 00:12:38,480 tradition, is a ruinous, anonymous tradition. 281 00:12:38,799 --> 00:12:41,399 It's a flight from reality. So just like Nietzsche 282 00:12:41,399 --> 00:12:43,980 proclaimed God is dead, Rosenzweig is saying 283 00:12:43,980 --> 00:12:46,320 traditional metaphysics is dead. But he's not 284 00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:48,399 a nihilist. He's trying to figure out how to 285 00:12:48,399 --> 00:12:50,299 speak about religious truth after that death. 286 00:12:50,500 --> 00:12:52,500 Which is why he has to start from scratch. And 287 00:12:52,500 --> 00:12:55,240 he starts not with unity, like Hegel, but with 288 00:12:55,240 --> 00:12:58,600 radical disunity. He posits three primal elements, 289 00:12:58,820 --> 00:13:01,240 God, man, and the world. and they are completely 290 00:13:01,240 --> 00:13:03,379 isolated from one another. What keeps them from 291 00:13:03,379 --> 00:13:05,519 being sucked into some kind of system? Their 292 00:13:05,519 --> 00:13:08,259 irrationality. And he doesn't mean they're illogical. 293 00:13:08,340 --> 00:13:10,720 He means they resist being completely understood 294 00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:14,019 or reduced to a concept. They're opaque. So God. 295 00:13:14,220 --> 00:13:17,080 God is the metaphysical, but he's not some abstract 296 00:13:17,080 --> 00:13:20,440 principle. He remains separate, mysterious. You 297 00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:22,200 can't just define him and be done with it. And 298 00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:25,559 man? Man is defined by the absolute singularity 299 00:13:25,559 --> 00:13:28,159 of his soul, which is only revealed in his own 300 00:13:28,159 --> 00:13:30,649 unique relationship to his own death. He's not 301 00:13:30,649 --> 00:13:33,490 just an example of humanity. And the world. The 302 00:13:33,490 --> 00:13:37,269 world in its unredeemed state is just raw existence. 303 00:13:37,990 --> 00:13:41,090 Dasein. It's just there standing against you. 304 00:13:41,389 --> 00:13:43,870 Gegensand. It's not yet meaningful. This sounds 305 00:13:43,870 --> 00:13:45,830 like a philosophy built on separation. It is. 306 00:13:45,830 --> 00:13:48,830 This is his disunity thesis. He insists against 307 00:13:48,830 --> 00:13:50,950 the entire Western tradition from Parmenides 308 00:13:50,950 --> 00:13:53,450 to Hegel that thinking and being are not the 309 00:13:53,450 --> 00:13:56,679 same. He prefers the messy disunity of real existence 310 00:13:56,679 --> 00:13:59,519 to the clean, totalizing unity of a philosophical 311 00:13:59,519 --> 00:14:01,919 system. And that preference for disunity for 312 00:14:01,919 --> 00:14:04,519 antagonism. That's where you see the deep affinity 313 00:14:04,519 --> 00:14:06,840 with Heidegger, who would later talk about the 314 00:14:06,840 --> 00:14:10,370 belonging together of antagonisms. For both of 315 00:14:10,370 --> 00:14:12,309 them, you have to start by affirming the separation. 316 00:14:13,029 --> 00:14:16,009 Unity is the great danger. So if everything starts 317 00:14:16,009 --> 00:14:18,629 in disunity, the new thinking has to be about 318 00:14:18,629 --> 00:14:20,549 how these elements relate to each other over 319 00:14:20,549 --> 00:14:23,919 time. This is what Rosenzweig calls Leben, or 320 00:14:23,919 --> 00:14:27,740 life, facticity. Yes, and that is their shared 321 00:14:27,740 --> 00:14:31,600 ground. Life, or facticity, is the absolute horizon 322 00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:33,960 of thought. You can't get behind it. It's the 323 00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:36,399 same move Heidegger makes with Dasein, being 324 00:14:36,399 --> 00:14:38,580 in the world. And they both see the old philosophy 325 00:14:38,580 --> 00:14:41,120 with its search for a timeless, eternal truth 326 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:44,299 as a kind of paralysis. A total paralysis of 327 00:14:44,299 --> 00:14:46,620 experience. Rosenzweig insists that even God 328 00:14:46,620 --> 00:14:49,360 can't be rescued from temporality. Time is real. 329 00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:51,980 It's the only stage where anything happens. So 330 00:14:51,980 --> 00:14:54,539 redemption, then, can't be about escaping time. 331 00:14:54,720 --> 00:14:57,240 No. It has to be an infusion of eternity into 332 00:14:57,240 --> 00:14:59,519 time. He calls it the eternity in the moment, 333 00:14:59,659 --> 00:15:02,259 ewigkeit im Augenblick. The present isn't just 334 00:15:02,259 --> 00:15:04,620 a point between past and future. It becomes a 335 00:15:04,620 --> 00:15:06,720 bridge that gathers all of time and unites all 336 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:09,879 of humanity, the primal we, in a moment of gratitude. 337 00:15:10,330 --> 00:15:12,909 That focus on the we, on the community, is really 338 00:15:12,909 --> 00:15:15,129 interesting. And it puts him in sharp contrast 339 00:15:15,129 --> 00:15:17,570 with later Jewish thinkers, especially someone 340 00:15:17,570 --> 00:15:19,750 like Emmanuel Levinas. Oh, a massive contrast. 341 00:15:20,450 --> 00:15:23,070 Rosenzweig's vision is very holistic. He thinks 342 00:15:23,070 --> 00:15:26,330 that ethical failure, that sin that Cohen couldn't 343 00:15:26,330 --> 00:15:28,629 figure out, is what pushes the individual back 344 00:15:28,629 --> 00:15:31,330 into the community. The we comes before the I. 345 00:15:31,509 --> 00:15:33,669 Whereas for Levinas, it's all about the face 346 00:15:33,669 --> 00:15:37,149 of the other person, the single other. who places 347 00:15:37,149 --> 00:15:39,730 this infinite demand on you. It's a very individual, 348 00:15:39,889 --> 00:15:43,129 one -on -one responsibility. It is. Levinas is 349 00:15:43,129 --> 00:15:45,809 about that infinite, almost insomniac sense of 350 00:15:45,809 --> 00:15:48,450 responsibility to the other. Roosevelt is much 351 00:15:48,450 --> 00:15:50,350 more focused on the collective, the shared reality 352 00:15:50,350 --> 00:15:52,610 of the community. But how that community gets 353 00:15:52,610 --> 00:15:55,289 formed is one of the most troubling parts of 354 00:15:55,289 --> 00:15:57,090 his philosophy. You're talking about the dreadful 355 00:15:57,090 --> 00:15:59,450 decision. The dreadful decision. Yeah. He says 356 00:15:59,450 --> 00:16:02,110 the community, the we, is formed by this terrible, 357 00:16:02,129 --> 00:16:05,610 unprecedented act of decision. And this decision 358 00:16:05,610 --> 00:16:07,789 separates the we from the you. And who are the 359 00:16:07,789 --> 00:16:10,190 you? The enemies of God. And they are cast out 360 00:16:10,190 --> 00:16:13,029 into the cold dread of the nothing. That's incredibly 361 00:16:13,029 --> 00:16:16,529 harsh language. And it sounds... dangerously 362 00:16:16,529 --> 00:16:19,149 close to the political theology of someone like 363 00:16:19,149 --> 00:16:21,269 Carl Schmitt. The sovereign is the one who decides 364 00:16:21,269 --> 00:16:24,049 on the enemy. It really does. And Gordon points 365 00:16:24,049 --> 00:16:26,330 out that even though Rosenzweig meant for this 366 00:16:26,330 --> 00:16:28,789 to be a kind of pre -political ontological act, 367 00:16:29,009 --> 00:16:31,269 it's operating in that same space that Carl Schmitt 368 00:16:31,269 --> 00:16:33,590 describes. It's a decision that happens in the 369 00:16:33,590 --> 00:16:36,750 void left by the retreat of the old god of metaphysics. 370 00:16:36,990 --> 00:16:39,929 It shows how easily these concepts, forged in 371 00:16:39,929 --> 00:16:43,610 this really intense post -war climate, can slip 372 00:16:43,610 --> 00:16:46,610 from ontology into a kind of brutal political 373 00:16:46,610 --> 00:16:49,289 logic. It's a real danger. And it leads us to 374 00:16:49,289 --> 00:16:51,169 maybe the most controversial concept in the whole 375 00:16:51,169 --> 00:16:54,809 book. The community of blood. Gemeinschaft des 376 00:16:54,809 --> 00:16:56,549 Bluts. Okay, we need to be really careful here. 377 00:16:56,610 --> 00:16:58,830 Given the historical context, that phrase is 378 00:16:58,830 --> 00:17:01,649 obviously loaded. Extremely. But we have to understand 379 00:17:01,649 --> 00:17:04,549 how Rosenzweig is using it. He defines it ontologically, 380 00:17:04,829 --> 00:17:07,990 not racially. For him, blood is the thing that 381 00:17:07,990 --> 00:17:10,329 allows the Jewish people to experience eternity 382 00:17:10,329 --> 00:17:12,490 within time. How does that work? What does he 383 00:17:12,490 --> 00:17:14,829 mean by that? He argues that the Jewish people 384 00:17:14,829 --> 00:17:17,049 have a unique, self -sufficient relationship 385 00:17:17,049 --> 00:17:20,730 to time. The blood community... gives them a 386 00:17:20,730 --> 00:17:23,349 kind of permanence, a rootedness in one's own 387 00:17:23,349 --> 00:17:26,609 self that other nations who rely on land or a 388 00:17:26,609 --> 00:17:30,009 state don't have. So their continuity through 389 00:17:30,009 --> 00:17:32,829 generations, the bloodline, is what grounds their 390 00:17:32,829 --> 00:17:35,789 identity, not a piece of territory. Exactly. 391 00:17:35,890 --> 00:17:37,890 It makes them independent of the cycles of history 392 00:17:37,890 --> 00:17:40,509 that destroy nations and states. It's a state 393 00:17:40,509 --> 00:17:43,970 of rooted unrootedness. Exile becomes their natural 394 00:17:43,970 --> 00:17:46,390 self -grounded state of being. Their eternity 395 00:17:46,390 --> 00:17:49,519 is internal. And this idea of an internal self 396 00:17:49,519 --> 00:17:52,099 -sustaining temporality, this brings us right 397 00:17:52,099 --> 00:17:54,339 back to the core connection with Heidegger. We're 398 00:17:54,339 --> 00:17:56,819 comparing Rosenzweig's redemption with Heidegger's 399 00:17:56,819 --> 00:17:59,440 authenticity. And structurally, they are almost 400 00:17:59,440 --> 00:18:01,539 identical. They are both exceptional ways of 401 00:18:01,539 --> 00:18:03,819 being human that are revealed to you in a moment 402 00:18:03,819 --> 00:18:06,859 of crisis. For Rosenzweig, it's the Angst des 403 00:18:06,859 --> 00:18:09,640 Erischen, the fear of earthly things. For Heidegger, 404 00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:12,849 it's just angst. Anxiety. And both of these states 405 00:18:12,849 --> 00:18:15,430 reveal a fundamental condition of being unheimlich 406 00:18:15,430 --> 00:18:18,089 uncanny or not at home in the world. Homeless. 407 00:18:18,269 --> 00:18:20,490 And for both, the way out is not to escape, but 408 00:18:20,490 --> 00:18:24,269 to lean into it. Yes. Both argue that an authentic 409 00:18:24,269 --> 00:18:27,829 life, a redeemed life, only happens when you 410 00:18:27,829 --> 00:18:31,190 fully accept your finitude. That acceptance allows 411 00:18:31,190 --> 00:18:34,150 you to take ownership of your past, your heritage, 412 00:18:34,230 --> 00:18:36,710 and project it forward into your own most being, 413 00:18:36,890 --> 00:18:40,650 your das eigenste. In a way, Heidegger's authenticity 414 00:18:40,650 --> 00:18:42,829 is just redemption with the theological language 415 00:18:42,829 --> 00:18:45,670 stripped out. It's the same structure. If finitude 416 00:18:45,670 --> 00:18:48,750 was the common ground, then language was the 417 00:18:48,750 --> 00:18:51,269 shared battlefield. Which brings us to the Buber 418 00:18:51,269 --> 00:18:53,410 -Rosenzweig Bible translation they started in 419 00:18:53,410 --> 00:18:56,549 1926. This wasn't just about finding better words. 420 00:18:56,650 --> 00:18:59,069 It was a philosophical act. A deeply philosophical 421 00:18:59,069 --> 00:19:01,670 act. Their goal was to shatter the tradition 422 00:19:01,670 --> 00:19:04,210 of Martin Luther's German Bible. They felt Luther 423 00:19:04,210 --> 00:19:06,269 had smoothed over the text, imposed a Western 424 00:19:06,269 --> 00:19:09,130 narrative logic on it. Buber and Rosenzweig wanted 425 00:19:09,130 --> 00:19:11,009 to get back to a primordial sense of revelation. 426 00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:13,819 So they use all these weird, archaic words and 427 00:19:13,819 --> 00:19:16,980 neologisms. The goal was literally to speak Hebrew 428 00:19:16,980 --> 00:19:19,019 and German, to make the German language itself 429 00:19:19,019 --> 00:19:21,619 feel foreign, dislocated. They wanted to shock 430 00:19:21,619 --> 00:19:24,180 the reader, to make you feel the raw power and 431 00:19:24,180 --> 00:19:26,380 otherness of the original text, to force you 432 00:19:26,380 --> 00:19:28,259 to confront its claims directly, without the 433 00:19:28,259 --> 00:19:30,539 comfort of familiar language. And there's no 434 00:19:30,539 --> 00:19:32,579 better example of this than how they translated 435 00:19:32,579 --> 00:19:37,569 God's name in Exodus 3 .14. This verse was a 436 00:19:37,569 --> 00:19:39,930 huge deal for German philosophy. Absolutely. 437 00:19:40,130 --> 00:19:42,390 How you translated it showed your whole philosophical 438 00:19:42,390 --> 00:19:45,549 hand. Luther went with a future tense, easy by 439 00:19:45,549 --> 00:19:48,029 design, I will be. The philosopher Mendelssohn 440 00:19:48,029 --> 00:19:50,910 gave the classic idealist translation, I am the 441 00:19:50,910 --> 00:19:53,990 essence that is eternal. He used the word sign. 442 00:19:54,490 --> 00:19:58,309 Being, capital B, pure, abstract, timeless essence. 443 00:19:58,470 --> 00:20:01,450 The god of Plato and Aristotle. The god of the 444 00:20:01,450 --> 00:20:04,089 philosophers. And that is exactly the god that 445 00:20:04,089 --> 00:20:06,910 Rosenzweig and Buber wanted to destroy. That 446 00:20:06,910 --> 00:20:09,970 concept of God as static, eternal sign was the 447 00:20:09,970 --> 00:20:12,349 enemy of the new thinking. So their choice was? 448 00:20:12,630 --> 00:20:16,230 Ich bin da. I am there or I am existing. And 449 00:20:16,230 --> 00:20:19,009 they use the word da as in da sign. The philosophical 450 00:20:19,009 --> 00:20:21,890 explosion in that choice is immense. By using 451 00:20:21,890 --> 00:20:24,410 da sign being there in a specific time and place, 452 00:20:24,470 --> 00:20:26,549 they are ripping God out of the abstract heavens 453 00:20:26,549 --> 00:20:29,009 and planting him directly in the immediate, factical 454 00:20:29,009 --> 00:20:31,970 human moment. My now as Rosenzweig called it. 455 00:20:31,970 --> 00:20:34,150 They're emphasizing that God's revelation is 456 00:20:34,150 --> 00:20:37,630 an event. a happening, not a static truth. And 457 00:20:37,630 --> 00:20:40,009 by using the word Dessin, they're bringing the 458 00:20:40,009 --> 00:20:42,150 Bible directly into conversation with Heidegger. 459 00:20:42,950 --> 00:20:45,809 The central term of Jewish revelation becomes 460 00:20:45,809 --> 00:20:49,089 the central term of German existentialism. It's 461 00:20:49,089 --> 00:20:52,049 a stunning convergence. It shows that both traditions, 462 00:20:52,250 --> 00:20:55,549 in their attempts to break with idealism, landed 463 00:20:55,549 --> 00:20:58,930 on the very same conceptual territory. God is 464 00:20:58,930 --> 00:21:02,069 no longer abstract being. God happens in relation 465 00:21:02,069 --> 00:21:05,410 to our concrete temporal existence. And this 466 00:21:05,410 --> 00:21:07,970 shared obsession with language led them to a 467 00:21:07,970 --> 00:21:10,650 similar theory of translation itself. Yeah, they 468 00:21:10,650 --> 00:21:13,309 both basically argue that all language is already 469 00:21:13,309 --> 00:21:15,130 a form of translation. The moment you try to 470 00:21:15,130 --> 00:21:16,789 put a thought into words, you're translating 471 00:21:16,789 --> 00:21:18,990 it and something is always lost. There's an inner 472 00:21:18,990 --> 00:21:20,970 opacity. But they both kind of cheated on that 473 00:21:20,970 --> 00:21:22,710 theory, didn't they? They held on to this idea 474 00:21:22,710 --> 00:21:25,369 of a perfect original language. They did. It's 475 00:21:25,369 --> 00:21:28,430 a kind of romantic, nostalgic fantasy. For Rosenzweig, 476 00:21:28,430 --> 00:21:31,549 it was a pure, untranslated Hebrew. For Heidegger, 477 00:21:31,589 --> 00:21:33,890 it was pre -Socratic Greek. It shows that for 478 00:21:33,890 --> 00:21:35,890 all their modernism, there was still this archaic 479 00:21:35,890 --> 00:21:38,250 longing for an original truth that existed before 480 00:21:38,250 --> 00:21:40,589 philosophy went wrong. This whole intellectual 481 00:21:40,589 --> 00:21:42,789 revolution finally comes to a head in public 482 00:21:42,789 --> 00:21:46,569 in 1929, just before Rosenzweig's death, the 483 00:21:46,569 --> 00:21:50,190 famous Davos Disputation. Yes, this public debate 484 00:21:50,190 --> 00:21:53,230 between Ernst Kasserer, who was the great heir 485 00:21:53,230 --> 00:21:56,109 of neocanteanism, and Martin Heidegger, the new 486 00:21:56,109 --> 00:21:59,039 voice of existential ontology. And everyone at 487 00:21:59,039 --> 00:22:01,619 the time saw it for what it was, an encounter 488 00:22:01,619 --> 00:22:04,500 between two ages. The old guard versus the new. 489 00:22:04,940 --> 00:22:07,279 Kasserer defends the power of the human mind, 490 00:22:07,359 --> 00:22:09,779 the ability to rise above our messy existence 491 00:22:09,779 --> 00:22:13,539 into a world of pure form, of freedom. And when 492 00:22:13,539 --> 00:22:16,299 Heidegger brings up anxiety and finitude, Kasserer 493 00:22:16,299 --> 00:22:19,559 pulls out the classic idealist trump card. He 494 00:22:19,559 --> 00:22:22,279 quotes Schiller. Cast off the fear of the earthly. 495 00:22:22,890 --> 00:22:25,789 The answer to existential dread is to philosophize 496 00:22:25,789 --> 00:22:27,549 your way above it. And Heidegger's response is 497 00:22:27,549 --> 00:22:30,269 basically, no. Absolutely not. He calls that 498 00:22:30,269 --> 00:22:32,869 metaphysical evasion. He insists that true freedom 499 00:22:32,869 --> 00:22:35,630 isn't escaping your finitude. It's becoming free 500 00:22:35,630 --> 00:22:38,029 for the finitude of dashing. He says you have 501 00:22:38,029 --> 00:22:40,410 to be thrown back into the hardness of his fate. 502 00:22:40,549 --> 00:22:42,329 You have to embrace your own nothingness. It 503 00:22:42,329 --> 00:22:44,529 sounds so bleak, embrace your nothingness. It 504 00:22:44,529 --> 00:22:47,069 is. But for Heidegger, it's the only path to 505 00:22:47,069 --> 00:22:49,970 an authentic life. He's replacing the old norm 506 00:22:49,970 --> 00:22:52,329 of transcendence with a new norm of authenticity, 507 00:22:52,549 --> 00:22:54,730 which you only achieve by confronting the void. 508 00:22:55,069 --> 00:22:57,650 It's a philosophy that demands you stare into 509 00:22:57,650 --> 00:22:59,950 the abyss. And watching all of this from afar 510 00:22:59,950 --> 00:23:03,470 is Rosenzweig. And he writes this final, incredible 511 00:23:03,470 --> 00:23:07,069 essay called Exchanged Fronts. He sees Heidegger's 512 00:23:07,069 --> 00:23:09,950 victory at Davos as the ultimate proof that the 513 00:23:09,950 --> 00:23:12,829 revolution he had been describing was real. And 514 00:23:12,829 --> 00:23:15,650 the irony he points out is just perfect. He argues 515 00:23:15,650 --> 00:23:17,930 that Heidegger, this outsider, this Catholic 516 00:23:17,930 --> 00:23:20,970 scholastic, is the true heir of the last Cohen, 517 00:23:21,150 --> 00:23:23,630 the master who lived. The Cohen who had already 518 00:23:23,630 --> 00:23:26,049 seen the importance of finitude and the individual 519 00:23:26,049 --> 00:23:28,890 soul. Exactly. Whereas Casserer, Cohen's most 520 00:23:28,890 --> 00:23:31,029 brilliant and loyal student, was defending a 521 00:23:31,029 --> 00:23:33,210 tradition that was already dead. The philosophical 522 00:23:33,210 --> 00:23:35,390 fronts had been swapped. The person who looked 523 00:23:35,390 --> 00:23:37,630 like the enemy was actually the ally, and the 524 00:23:37,630 --> 00:23:40,240 heir was defending a corpse. So Rosenzweig saw 525 00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:42,319 his own project being confirmed by Heidegger, 526 00:23:42,420 --> 00:23:44,460 just in a different non -theological language. 527 00:23:44,700 --> 00:23:47,380 What were the specific connections he drew between 528 00:23:47,380 --> 00:23:50,160 that late Cohen and the early Heidegger? Gordon 529 00:23:50,160 --> 00:23:52,460 lays them out really clearly. First, both of 530 00:23:52,460 --> 00:23:55,299 them see man as a specifically finite being who 531 00:23:55,299 --> 00:23:57,640 can't be saved by some consolation of eternity. 532 00:23:58,019 --> 00:24:01,960 Second, both of them see reason not as the master 533 00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,440 creative force, but as something derivative, 534 00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:07,180 something that comes out of existence, not the 535 00:24:07,180 --> 00:24:09,940 other way around. Existence comes. Before essence. 536 00:24:10,079 --> 00:24:13,279 That's the core of it. Third, they both junk 537 00:24:13,279 --> 00:24:16,099 the old idealist language and pull new concepts 538 00:24:16,099 --> 00:24:18,859 out of religious sources. Cohen's idea of correlation 539 00:24:18,859 --> 00:24:21,980 between God and man, Heidegger's Dasein. And 540 00:24:21,980 --> 00:24:24,339 finally, and this is crucial, they both say that 541 00:24:24,339 --> 00:24:27,039 any kind of ethical going beyond has to happen 542 00:24:27,039 --> 00:24:29,920 with infinitude. For Rosenzweig, it's about the 543 00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,140 concrete commandment in the here and now. For 544 00:24:32,140 --> 00:24:34,019 Heidegger, it's about confronting nothingness. 545 00:24:34,490 --> 00:24:36,470 So at the end of the day, Heidegger's victory 546 00:24:36,470 --> 00:24:38,869 at Davos was the public announcement that the 547 00:24:38,869 --> 00:24:41,630 new thinking had won. Philosophy was no longer 548 00:24:41,630 --> 00:24:43,990 about transcendence. It was about practice, about 549 00:24:43,990 --> 00:24:46,650 time, about being stuck in the world. It was 550 00:24:46,650 --> 00:24:50,009 a huge moment of validation for Rosenzweig. It 551 00:24:50,009 --> 00:24:52,289 showed that his work wasn't just some niche Jewish 552 00:24:52,289 --> 00:24:55,210 philosophy. It was a central response to the 553 00:24:55,210 --> 00:24:58,490 crisis of European modernity. And it proved that 554 00:24:58,490 --> 00:25:00,950 the fundamental questions of the age were being 555 00:25:00,950 --> 00:25:04,029 asked in parallel across these seemingly separate, 556 00:25:04,390 --> 00:25:07,069 intellectual worlds. This has been such a journey 557 00:25:07,069 --> 00:25:10,430 through some really difficult but really fascinating 558 00:25:10,430 --> 00:25:13,789 intellectual history. We started with the ethical 559 00:25:13,789 --> 00:25:16,549 problem of even putting Rosenzweig and Heidegger 560 00:25:16,549 --> 00:25:18,509 in the same sentence. And that problem doesn't 561 00:25:18,509 --> 00:25:21,170 go away. It doesn't. But after going through 562 00:25:21,170 --> 00:25:24,109 Gordon's analysis, you can't deny the core conceptual 563 00:25:24,109 --> 00:25:27,769 bond, this shared absolute commitment to finitude, 564 00:25:27,829 --> 00:25:30,569 this joint project of rejecting metaphysics as 565 00:25:30,569 --> 00:25:32,829 a flight from time and from death. The template 566 00:25:32,829 --> 00:25:35,130 is the same. You strive for an exceptional state 567 00:25:35,130 --> 00:25:37,289 of being. Call it redemption. Call it authenticity. 568 00:25:37,930 --> 00:25:40,650 It's revealed to you through anxiety. And it 569 00:25:40,650 --> 00:25:42,829 depends on a radical acceptance of your own earthly 570 00:25:42,829 --> 00:25:45,150 limits. Heidegger's project really does feel 571 00:25:45,150 --> 00:25:47,410 like Rosenzweig's theological structure, just 572 00:25:47,410 --> 00:25:49,650 translated into the language of ontology. And 573 00:25:49,650 --> 00:25:51,569 it's so striking that both of them claimed their 574 00:25:51,569 --> 00:25:54,980 work was apolitical. Rosenzweig makes his theological 575 00:25:54,980 --> 00:25:57,559 turn right after writing about the state. And 576 00:25:57,559 --> 00:25:59,539 Heidegger always claimed philosophy was above 577 00:25:59,539 --> 00:26:01,980 politics. Yeah, you can see how that played out. 578 00:26:02,619 --> 00:26:05,240 Rosenzweig's insistence on separating his community 579 00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,980 of blood from the state might have kept him from 580 00:26:07,980 --> 00:26:10,460 seeing the dangerous political implications of 581 00:26:10,460 --> 00:26:14,160 his own ideas. Yeah. And Heidegger, well, he 582 00:26:14,349 --> 00:26:16,970 let his philosophical ideas about fate and destiny 583 00:26:16,970 --> 00:26:19,750 bleed directly and catastrophically into his 584 00:26:19,750 --> 00:26:22,339 political reality. So we're left with this. deeply 585 00:26:22,339 --> 00:26:25,000 uncomfortable fact, that two lives that ended 586 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,759 in such morally opposite places shared an almost 587 00:26:27,759 --> 00:26:29,980 identical philosophical blueprint, a blueprint 588 00:26:29,980 --> 00:26:32,099 drawn up in the ruins of Weimar Germany. And 589 00:26:32,099 --> 00:26:33,940 it leaves you, it leaves all of us with a really 590 00:26:33,940 --> 00:26:36,339 difficult question to think about. If a philosophy 591 00:26:36,339 --> 00:26:38,619 is built on being radically honest about our 592 00:26:38,619 --> 00:26:42,000 existence, about time, about our finitude, and 593 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:43,559 that's the truth at the heart of both of their 594 00:26:43,559 --> 00:26:46,000 projects, does that pursuit of truth necessarily 595 00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:49,019 risk a kind of detachment from ethical and historical 596 00:26:49,019 --> 00:26:51,500 responsibility? The brilliance of the philosophical 597 00:26:51,500 --> 00:26:54,119 insight versus the potential for political blindness. 598 00:26:54,619 --> 00:26:57,720 That tension is the legacy of this entire generation 599 00:26:57,720 --> 00:26:59,700 of thinkers, and it's a reminder that we always 600 00:26:59,700 --> 00:27:02,720 have to connect the abstract idea to the concrete 601 00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:03,819 historical reality.