Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
268Levinas finds a very Hebrew awareness of the ever-present face of the other. But
he admires Rosenzweig for refusing to subjectivize nature in the post-Kantian
mode, and thus for respec ting the inalienable otherness of the other. Cautious of
the mere posit of God as the parent who authorizes or commands our respect for
one another, Levinas sees a trace of divine transcendence in the sheer alterity of
the other, a trac e that he c onnec ts with the Biblic al dic tum that one c annot see
God’s fac e and with the Maimonidean gloss that when Moses was allowed to see
God’s “bac k,” it was a “t rac e” of God – here understood as the ethic al demand of
alt erit y – that he was vouc hsafed to know, and thus to enshrine in the Law.
Pausing now to sum up what it is that the philosophers we have c onsidered
have in c ommon – since I think it best to ask the question empiric ally here, rat her
t han t o beg it presc ript ively – we find that the exponents of Jewish philosophy in
every period share the prophetic c onc ern. That is, they c ontinue to interpret the
et hic al soc ially and t he soc ial et hic ally. T hey share t he Mosaic int erest in c osmology
and in the metaphysic s of divinity, even when they fight shy (as Moses did) of
efforts to bring God to terms in fanc iful narratives or bring him to his knees in the
graven images of theory. They, remain sensitive to the absoluteness of t he Mosaic I
AM, whic h c ontrasts vividly against the ground of Parmenides’ sheer affirmation of
being (esti). For in the I AM, whic h will bec ome the one item of the Dec alogue that
all Israel must hear for themselves, God speaks to us in the first person and in a
language that does not negate appearanc es but invites our humanity, our
ac c eptanc e of c reation and of one another. Objec tivity does not exc lude but
presupposes subjec thood, and subjec thood does not entail but exc ludes the mere
subjec t ivit y of self or ot her.
All of the philosophers we have c onsidered are in touc h with their
surroundings. None speaks a language too remote to be translated or uses an idiom
that the others c annot c atc h, or trusts in c ategories inc ommensurate with those of
humanity at large. Their philosophies are neither the symptoms of a Zeit geist nor
apologetics for a Volksgeist but produc t s of reflec t ion, enlivened by a t radit ion of
c rit ic al t hought and disc ourse. T hat reflec t ion is made c rit ic al in part by it s
openness to the larger philosophic al world, t he world of Plat o, Arist ot le, t he St oic s
and Epic ureans, the Neoplatonists and Muslim philosophers and theologians, the
work of Thomas or the Renaissanc e humanists, of Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, the
phenomenologist s, exist ent ialist s, and postmodernists. Among these voic es, the
exponents of Jewish philosophy have been prominent and original partic ipants, just
as Josephus is among hist orians, or Saul Bellow among novelist s. T heir st anc e is
creative, not merely (as Hitler thought) “parasitic ” or reac t ive. T heir c reat ivit y is
fostered by the wealth of their own traditions and by the crosstalk of their
philosophic al milieu.
In every period there are certain Jewish thinkers, or thinkers of Jewish origin,
whose work c annot be c lassed as a c ontribution to Jewish philosophy. One thinks of
those who suc c umbed to c onversionary pressures in the medieval or the modern
age and of those who internalized the anti-Jewish host ilit ies t hey felt. More broadly,
certain major thinkers, whose ideas are inspired by Jewish sourc es, are not
partic ipants in the c onversation of Jewish philosophy. Marx and Freud must be
numbered among these. They paid a pric e for their c osmopolitanism, in terms of
the free or forced abandonment of orientation toward their Jewish roots when they
entered the mainstream of Western culture. Spinoza is a crucial case. His
philosophy is deeply immersed in t he great problemat ic s of t he West ern t radit ion