JJTP_f5_37-63 4/26/06 3:59 PM Page 37 JUDAISM AS A “METHOD” WITH HERMANN COHEN AND FRANZ ROSENZWEIG Gesine Palmer Über Fragen des Wie, der “Methode,” sollte man ja eigentlich immer nur nach getaner Arbeit, nicht vorher reden.”1 [on questions of How, of “method,” one should eigentlich only speak after work has been done] I love Rosenzweig’s philosophy. Hence I feel free to do the contrary of what he states with the sentence quoted as a motto. Only doing so I do what he implies with his use of the word “eigentlich.” The German word “eigentlich” has two meanings in general speaking: (1) It can be used as an attribute in order to stress the very prob- lem that has not been recognized as central yet: one would say: das eigentliche Problem is not A, but B. The real problem is not A, but B. (2) It can be used as an adverb: eigentlich müßte ich alles auf Englisch sagen, aber ich tu es nicht. Eigentlich I should say every- thing in English, but I don’t do so. Eigentlich one should talk about method only after work has been done: but this time—or: in real- ity—I make an exception. “Eigentlich” appears to be the word to mean or to point to the should-be or ought-to-be, and at the same time, with no less emphasis, to that which is. What I am going to do here is to talk from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning only about method. Eigentlich I should do so by devel- oping a new method, or making use of a well-established method that will allow me to think about method. But I don’t have any such meta-method, not even a new method of Eigentlichkeit with ques- tion marks or anything the like. Instead I try to help myself through the difficult task given by my title in the following way, which I recommend to you too: 1 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, in Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1976, 121. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 JJTP 13 JJTP_f5_37-63 4/26/06 3:59 PM Page 38 38 gesine palmer Imagine yourselves in the position of young Charles Yves, the composer of The Unanswered Question, and his father, standing on a wooden tower in the center of a big forest, watching out for and listening to several brassbands approaching this tower from several directions, playing different tunes and rhythms, marching in different tempos. Perhaps this imagination can help to trick out the speaker’s inability to spell out different elements of a structure or a fabric of meanings at the same time. I. To claim that I knew what Judaism is, I wouldn’t dare. Who would? Rosenzweig engaged a lot of arguments against the question for the essence (das Wesen). Whatsoever he may have written on Judaism, he did not intend to inform his readers about the essence of Judaism.2 [...] With respect to Hermann Cohen he said that someone who would have written only about Judaism and only about Judaism could never have made his philosophical achievements.3 What Rosenzweig himself did in his Star of Redemption, according to his own self-commentary, was not at all writing about Judaism. Rosenzweig, instead, wrote philosophy in a Jewish way. With this, he at the same time re-wrote Judaism, he made Judaism a sort of “Schrift.” In fact, he did not give it a new Schrift, he “used” it as a Schrift, he made it a Schrift, and this Schrift was his method, his metho- dos, his way, a method qualified as “das Jüdische.” In a letter to Hans Ehrenberg, written September 1921, he says: “Ich bin so wenig Spezialist für Judaica wie Max Weber (das Jüdische ist meine Methode, 2 And even Cohen wrote: “Für das Wesen und die Natur Gottes interessiert sich der Mythos.[. .] Sein [. .] (Gottes, gp) Begriff und sein Dasein bedeutet nichts Anderes, als dass es kein Wahn sei, die Einheit der Menschen zu glauben, zu denken, zu erkennen. Gott hat es verkündet. Gott verbürgt es; sonst hat er Nichts zu bedeuten, Nichts zu besagen. Seine Eigenschaften, in die man sein Wesen ent- faltet, sind nicht sowohl die Eigenschaften seiner Natur, als vielmehr die Richtungen, in welche jenes Verhältnis zu den Menschen und an den Menschen ausstrahlt,” Hermann Cohen Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907 (55). 3 Zweistromland, Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1984. .