STE ́PHANE MOSE`Sconsummation of philosophy, the definitive closure of the history of Western
metaphysics.
After it [reason] has thus taken up everything within itself and has proclaimed its
exclusive existence, man suddenly discovers that he, though he has long been digested
by philosophy, is still there.... ‘‘I, who am indeed dust and ashes.’’ I, a completely
common private subject, I with my first and last name, I dust and ashes, I am still
there. And I philosophize, i.e., I have the insolence to think philosophy, that sover-
eign mistress of all.^6A few lines further on, Rosenzweig summarizes that intuition in the following formu-
lation: ‘‘Man has a twofold relation to the Absolute, one where it has him, but still a
second where he hasit.’’^7 In the wake of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Rosenzweig subverts
the Hegelian thesis of the end of philosophy from top to bottom. If everything has become
philosophy, each individual should be able to begin philosophizing on his own. Against
the background of the historical catastrophe of European civilization, it is this reposses-
sion of the subject by itself that the introduction toThe Star of Redemptioncomes to
proclaim.
It is the primordial autonomy of man as subject in his own right that Rosenzweig
qualifies as ‘‘meta-ethical.’’ This meta-ethical dimension refers back to the root of his
ipseity, the original self-sufficiency of his identity. From this point of view, the primary
foundation of the ego is in a sense beyond good and evil, an elementary affirmation of
self preceding all morals, which Rosenzweig associates with the idea of an ‘‘intelligible
character’’ in Kant,^8 that is, with an ‘‘anamnesis of the concept of freedom,’’ setting out
from which it will be possible to ‘‘discover thenuevo mondoof Revelation.’’^9 This meta-
ethical root of the ego, characterized by an original form of perseverance in being, is
illustrated in the history of Western culture by the hero of Greek tragedy. He represents
for Rosenzweig man in his elementary separation, in his pure self-affirmation. Closed up
in his tragic solitude, he does not succeed in truly communicating, either with other men
or with the gods. In this sense, he incarnates the nexus of inviolable narcissism on which
the identity of each of us rests. This faithfulness to oneself, this stubbornness of the ego
in affirming itself in spite of everything, is very far from morality conceived of as a sub-
mission to the Law. Yet it appears in Rosenzweig to be the necessary condition for the
inner revolution that will let man accede to true humanity.
This revolution, which parallels the one accomplished in the history of Western civili-
zation by the passage from paganism to Judaism and then to Christianity, is accomplished
when the meta-ethical ego breaks out of its elementary narcissism and opens itself to the
double reality of the neighbor and God. The exit from self, which is preeminently a break
from ipseity, a renunciation by the ego of self-sufficiency to the benefit of the other, is
nonetheless simultaneously a measure of faithfulness to oneself, in which the originary
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