FOR THE LOVE OF METAPHYSICS: FROM THE REVOLUTION IN THINKING TOWARDS THE RENEWAL OF THINKING by Karin Alina Nisenbaum A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Copyright © 2014 by Karin Nisenbaum Abstract For the Love of Metaphysics: From the Revolution in Thinking towards the Renewal of Thinking Karin Alina Nisenbaum Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 2014 One of Kant’s most original insights is the notion that we can construct a philosophical argument—a transcendental argument—whose central premise makes a first-personal appeal to our moral sentiments. Kant characterizes the epistemic force that accrues to the concepts and ideas that are justified by this form of philosophical argument as “moral belief” or “moral certainty,” and he calls the propositions that are demonstrated by such arguments “postulates of practical reason.” My dissertation has two interrelated aims. First, to exhibit the most significant repercussions of this basic Kantian insight for philosophical methodology, for our conceptions of human freedom and moral agency, and for the possibility of religious belief. Second, to show that Franz Rosenzweig’s theism is supported by what we may regard as a transcendental argument that reveals the conditions of possibility for understanding ourselves as beings endowed with ethical value. Because the repercussions of Kant’s discovery of a “moral proof” came into focus in the two decades after the publication of the first Critique, my dissertation starts by interpreting the philosophical significance of the early reception of Kant’s Critical philosophy. I argue that two of Kant’s earliest critics, Salomon Maimon and F. H. Jacobi, compelled the post-Kantian idealists to broaden the scope of Kant’s “moral proof” and transform his original insight into the idea that philosophy as a whole should be established on a practical foundation. My dissertation then examines how J.G. Fichte and ii F.W.J. Schelling appropriated Kant’s idea of a “moral proof” and transformed the idea into the more radical view that reason, as a whole, is practical. The final part of my dissertation brings the discussion about the nature of transcendental arguments to bear on topics in the philosophy of religion. I show how the metaphysical and theological framework that Schelling develops in his 1809 Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and in his 1811–1815 Ages of the World fragments grounds his conception of freedom and moral agency, and I argue that Schelling’s theology is the main source of inspiration for that developed by Rosenzweig in the Star of Redemption. iii Acknowledgments While writing this dissertation, and in the years leading up to it, I received help and support from many different people, in many different ways. I am deeply grateful to my father, Samuel Nisenbaum, for his generosity, warmth, wisdom, and emotional support. I thank my mother, Nancy Anderson, for turning my education into one of her greatest passions. I thank Emma Nisenbaum for her love and sage advice. I thank my sister, Aliza, for her joie de vivre, and for all that we have shared. And I thank David and Isabel for enriching my life with their presence. Rick Furtak read every chapter, many times. His comments expressed how he understands part of what it means to love another person: to love her as a valuing subject with an unrepeatable perspective on the world, and to aid and encourage her pursuit of the good. I thank him for this form of love, and for so much else. This dissertation is dedicated to him. For trusting in my ability to carry out a project that at first seemed far too unwieldy, and for helping me to wend through the difficult parts, I thank my dissertation committee: Paul Franks, Robert Gibbs, Ulrich Schlösser, and Sergio Tenenbaum. My indebtedness to their teaching and writing will be clear throughout the dissertation. I owe special thanks to Paul Franks for formative conversations about Rosenzweig’s work, the motivation of post-Kantian German Idealism, transcendental arguments, and varieties of skepticism. I also thank him for upholding for me in word and action an example for emulation; his example continues to schematize for me the concept of a philosopher. By serving on my area committee Lambert Zuidervaart and Rebecca Comay helped to shape the dissertation proposal. I am profoundly grateful to both for guidance iv and support during the first few years. I also thank Lambert Zuidervaart and Joyce Recker for inspiration and friendship. Soon after I joined the Collaborative Program in Philosophy and Jewish Studies, the Centre for Jewish Studies was created. It was largely through Hindy Najman’s visionary directorship of the Centre that a few graduate students from the Philosophy Department found a real home at the University of Toronto. I owe her special thanks for supporting the idea to found and edit the University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought. I also gratefully acknowledge Michael Della Rocca’s support of my project: in particular, I thank him for probing comments on the first three chapters of the dissertation and for the invitation to participate in his seminar on monism at Yale during the spring of 2012. Sebastian Gardner served as the external examiner for my dissertation defense. I am sincerely grateful for his very generous and encouraging report, and I thank him for questions that will help me turn the dissertation into a publishable monograph. Many friends and colleagues commented generously on parts of the dissertation. I benefitted greatly from conversations with the following people: Myriam Bienenstock, Anthony Bruno, Samuel Caldwell, Olivia Casanueva, Benjamin Crowe, Sol Goldberg, Alex Green, Matthew Handelman, Michael Morgan, Paul Nahme, Michal Pagis, Sarah Pessin, Julia Peters, Benjamin Pollock, Jessica Radin, James Reid, Christine Rooks, Shane Ryan, Simon Schuez, Sue Sinclair, Ronen Steinberg, Eran Tal, Daniel Telech, Owen Ware, Norbert Waszek, Claudia Welz, Daniel Whistler, Ynon Wygoda, and Stephen Zylstra. Never could I have imagined the community of fellow Schellingians that I found at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the Bavarian Academy of Humanities and Sciences. I am profoundly grateful to Thomas Buchheim, Thimo v Heisenberg, Axel Hutter, Alois Wieshuber, and Arne Zerbst for unforgettable conversations, institutional support, and friendship. For financial support, I gratefully acknowledge the Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto; I also thank the Leo-Baeck Institute and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Last, but not least, I thank Margaret Opoku-Pare for her patience, kindness, and help solving all sorts of practical issues. I still remember how surprised I was the first time that I called the University of Toronto Philosophy Department and found a person so willing to answer all of my questions about the program. That call assured me that I was going to the right place. vi “So, this is how the matter truly stands: first Critical Philosophy undermines metaphysics theoretically, for the love of science; then, since everything now tends to sink into the wide open, bottomless, abyss of an absolute subjectivity, it undermines science practically, for the love of metaphysics.” __________________________________ F.H. Jacobi vii Contents Introduction 1 Part I 1 The Legacy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Restoring Human Reason in its Full Measure 11 2 The Legacy of Salomon Maimon: Philosophy as a System Actualized in Freedom 51 Part II 3 The Deduction of Freedom as a Model for Philosophical Methodology: The Performative and First-Personal Aspect of Transcendental Arguments 111 4 The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: A Theoretical Puzzle, or a Practical Demand? 152 Part III 5 Why Is There a Realm of Experience at All? Love and Defiance as the Two Forms of Human Individuation 186 6 The Star of Redemption as a System of Philosophy: The Human Word as a Response to the Word of God, and Human Words and Actions as the Means for the Unification of God 223 Conclusion 270 Bibliography 275 Author’s note Abbreviations used in the notes are explained in the bibliography viii INTRODUCTION In a 1923 open letter to Martin Buber discussing the attitude of the Jew towards the particular laws and practices observed in the Jewish tradition, Franz Rosenzweig writes: “From Mendelssohn on, our entire people has subjected itself to the torture of this embarrassing questioning; the Jewishness of every individual has squirmed on the needle point of a ‘why.’”1 My dissertation is motivated by an interest in Rosenzweig’s response to that question. Yet anybody who studies Rosenzweig’s works in order to understand anew the significance of leading a Jewish life must come to terms with the fact that when The Star of Redemption was published in 1921, Rosenzweig was profoundly disappointed by the reception of the book that was the culmination of his lifetime engagement with philosophy: The Star of Redemption was initially read as a “Jewish book”2 showing the way back to the old law. However, in 1925 Rosenzweig wrote “The New Thinking,” an essay responding to the amicable “echo” that the book aroused during the first few years of its publication, which explained the content and structure of the Star in terms that would be more accessible to the layman. In this essay, Rosenzweig argues that the Star is not, at least in any straightforward sense, a “Jewish book,” and he says that it does not “claim to be a philosophy of religion.”3 Instead, Rosenzweig insists that we should understand his magnum opus as a “system of philosophy.”4 By making this claim, Rosenzweig situates his greatest work at the end of a trajectory that begins with Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”5 1 DB, 703; TB, 78.