A User's Guide to Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption (Routledge Jewish Studies Series) [Hardcover]

Norbert M. Samuelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0700710639 | ISBN-13: 978-0700710638

This user-friendly guide will help students of the 'Star' to be able to discuss at a basic level what, at least conceptually, Rosenzweig intended to say and how all that he says is interrelated.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'A valuable addition to the continued interest in Rosenzweig's philosophy throughout the 1990s. The author succeeds in clarifying the meaning of the original work using diagrams in places to aid his cause. I found the layout of the book particularly helpful The author had set himself a difficult task, viz. 'to present the PASHAT (simple meaning) of the text, and not REMES (what the text alludes to), DeRASH (how the text may be applied to contemporary situations) or SOD (what the text may mean at a deeper conceptual or spiritual level)'. I believe that Samuelson has succeeded in this admirable aim on a philosophical classic more suited to the latter.' - J.W. Phelan, Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations

'This commentary will serve effectively as a teacher’s manual. It deserves a place in any serious collection of modern Jewish thought.' - Religious Studies Review, Vol 30

Product Details

• Hardcover: 386 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (April 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700710639
• ISBN-13: 978-0700710638
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,354,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Guide for the Perplexed, December 18, 2011

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Geoff Puterbaugh (Chiang Mai, T. Suthep, A. Muang Thailand) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A User's Guide to Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption (Routledge Jewish Philosophy) (Paperback)

If you want to understand Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption (Modern Jewish Philosophy and Religion), then two books will help you along that path: Nahum Glatzer's Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought and this "User's Guide."

The "User's Guide" was developed through a series of high-level seminars. Professor Samuelson and a small group of high-level graduate students would meet for one two-hour seminar each week. Consulting the original German and the English translation, they would work together to provide a clear prose explanation of Rosenzweig's meaning -- at least the plain surface meaning. Then Samuelson would go and type the results into his computer, and a mere twenty years later (!!) he was finished.

Frankly, I wouldn't have a prayer of understanding "The Star of Redemption" without the guidance of this book, and you may find yourself in the same situation. So far, I have managed to understand that Rosenzweig finds the origin of philosophy in the very human fear of death, and then demonstrates that, by the time of Hegel, that very human fear had been written out of philosophy (at least, Hegel's philosophy) because it was called a "Nothing" rather than a "Something." Schopenhauer and especially Kierkegaard put the vanished individual back in center stage, and then Nietzsche overturned everything by abandoning systematic philosophy and turning philosophy into a matter of his own individual thoughts and feelings.

In this process, philosophy lost sight of man, the world, and God.

Perhaps not for the faint-hearted, but fascinating reading.