The philosophical question "what is?" plays different roles in the work of Cohen and Rosenzweig. According to Cohen, it expresses the authentic meaning of the Socratic concept, which has its methodical-transcendental foundation in the Platonic Idea as answer, since it gives an account of the concept. So Cohen turns the question into an epistemological problem, because it ultimately refers to the necessary condition of knowledge. In contrast, Rosenzweig sees in the "what is?" question grounds to condemn the "old" philosophy founded (...) on the identity of being and thought. In his view, the question is the original sin of the "philosophy of the All", which has always reduced everything to something completely different by means of the altering word "is" in the "is"-question. Nevertheless, with regard to the "what is?" question, it is possible to detect a kind of agreement between the two philosophers: namely, Rosenzweig opposes a claim of ontological reduction that Cohen also rejects. (shrink)

In Franz Rosenzweig's "The Star of Redemption" the chorus comes on stage in three forms: chorus in tragedy (with its presence in ancient classical tragedy and its absence in modern one), chorus of redemption and chorus in church music. Analyzing the role of chorus is useful to study Rosenzweig's aesthetics, which is in a way a "classical" art theory, but not an idealistic "pure" aesthetics, inasmuch as art must be "applied" art. An idealistic pure art condemns us to live in (...) an hortus conclusus, far away from God and from life, while an applied art brings us near to the lost gan 'eden. (shrink)

Reiner Wiehl has always drawn scholarly attention to the more strictly philosophical aspects of Rosenzweig's work. His essays can be put beside those of Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Emmanuel Levinas. As a matter of fact his interpretation of "The Star of Redemption" is philosophically problematic, doubting and questioning, so that it has been particularly fruitful in the effects, i.e. in indicating to the scholars new hermeneutical ways.

Rosenzweig's "new thinking" can be seen, among other things, as the vanishing point of two gazes: one addressed to the "old philosophy" of the past, the other to the postmodernity of the present. The goal of the present essay is therefore twofold: on the one hand, to go back retrospectively to the relationship between critical idealism and the theoretical proposal represented by "Der Stern der Erlösung"; on the other hand, to evaluate, in a perspectival way, what the latter has to (...) say in relation to the philosophy of difference. It is thus possible to investigate the meaning of philosophizing in general and to assess the relevance of Rosenzweig's thought in particular. New thinking is all the more fruitful because it exists in a close dialectic relationship with modern rationality, grasping its "up-to-here-and-no-further" boundary; at the same time, it presents analogies with the postmodern philosophy of difference, without, however, reaching the same antirational conclusions. As for the meaning of philosophizing, Rosenzweig famously thought that the religious experience of revelation could offer a space-time orientation, which is why it was the keystone of his new thinking. However, if one wants to prescind from the "belief" element and find a meaning and orientation in the alogical and purposeless context of postmodernity, one has to yearn for a form that is present in absence: this tension finds its foundation in the up-to-here-and-no-further of critical idealism and is continually reconfigured in relation to difference, both thought-of and experienced. (shrink)

Monographic issue of "Teoria" (Vol. 36, No. 2) devoted to the so-called "applied ethics". It offers an introduction to the main studies, while providing precise theoretical proposals about them, thanks to the contributions of valid specialists.