Early Life
Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel, Germany to a middle-class, minimally observant, Jewish family. He studied history and philosophy at the universities of Göttingen, Munich, and Freiburg.
Rosenzweig, under the influence of his cousins and his close friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, considered converting to Christianity. Determined to embrace the faith as the early Christians did, he resolved to first live as an observant Jew before becoming Christian. After attending Yom Kippur services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, he underwent a mystical experience. As a result, he became a baal teshuva. Although he never recorded what transpired, he never again entertained converting to Christianity. In 1913, he turned to Jewish philosophy. His letters to his friend, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whom he had nearly followed into Christianity, have been published as Judaism Despite Christianity. Rosenzweig was a student of Hermann Cohen, and the two became close. While writing a doctoral dissertation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel and the State, Rosenzweig turned against idealism, and sought a philosophy which did not begin with an abstract notion of the human.
Read more about this topic: Franz Rosenzweig
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“The painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought;... he grew tremulous and ... crying with a loud voice, “This is indeed Life itself!” turned suddenly to regard his beloved:MShe was dead!”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)