¹ Der Stern der Erlösung is included in Rosenzweig's collected works: Rosenzweig, Franz, Der Mensch und Sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften (4 vols.; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976 Google Scholar [henceforth GS]). There are two English translations of the Star: Rosenzweig, Franz, The Star of Redemption (trans. Hallo, William; New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970)Google Scholar and Rosenzweig, Franz, The Star of Redemption (trans. Galli, Barbara E.; Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005)Google Scholar. I will cite page numbers from the German edition and the Hallo translation and will quote from the latter.

² Rosenzweig, Franz, Die “Gritli”–Briefe: Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy (ed. Rühle, Inken and Mayer, Reinhold; Tübingen: Bilam, 2002) 729 Google Scholar.

³ Rosenzweig, Franz, Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand (Düsseldorf: Joseph Melzer, 1964) 24 Google Scholar; Rosenzweig, Franz, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God (trans. Glatzer, Nahum; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) 36 Google Scholar. On Understanding the Sick and the Healthy as a prolegomena, see Amir, Yehoyada, “Rosenzweig's Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand as a Prolegomena,” in Faith, Truth, and Reason: New Perspectives on Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption (ed. Amir, Yehoyada, Turner, Yossi, and Brasser, Martin; Freiberg: Karl Alber, 2012) 37–60 Google Scholar. Throughout his translation, Glatzer deftly captures Rosenzweig's dual use of the term “gesunder Menschenverstand” as the German philosophical term “common sense” and as “healthy human understanding.” For an alternative view, see ibid., 49.

⁴ Rosenzweig, Franz, “Das neue Denken,” GS 3, 139–61Google Scholar. There are two translations of “The New Thinking”: Rosenzweig, Franz, Franz Rosenzweig's “The New Thinking” (ed. and trans. Udoff, Alan and Galli, Barbara E.; Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Rosenzweig, Franz, Philosophical and Theological Writings (ed. and trans. Franks, Paul W. and Morgan, Michael L.; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000)Google Scholar. I quote in this essay from the translation by Franks and Morgan.

⁵ There are multiple reasons why Rosenzweig's interpreters struggle to understand his thought. From Rosenzweig's perspective, the readers’ difficulties stem from a failure to appreciate the systematic nature of the work. He impresses this point upon Rosenstock–Huessy in the letter cited above and again several years later in “The New Thinking.” Recently, Rosenzweig scholars have turned the tables and have suggested that it is Rosenzweig's idiosyncratic method of argumentation that is principally responsible for the Star's obscurity. While I see little point in faulting Rosenzweig's philosophical method, I do think his writing frequently evinces a rhetorical element that can misdirect his reader. For instance, when Rosenzweig says in “The New Thinking” that Part One of the Star is a “reductio ad absurdum” of the old philosophy as well as its salvation, his readers have rightfully struggled to reconcile this diametrical assessment of the foundational part of the work in which the elements—God, World, and the Human Person—receive their distinctive forms. M. G. Piety discusses similar challenges in the work of Plato, Kierkegaard, and Leo Strauss. She suggests: “It is not necessary . . . to have precisely the same concerns as the author of a work one is trying to interpret in order properly, or at least productively, to identify what the author is trying to say. A certain sympathy with the author's temperament—for example, an ability to recognize when he is being humorous—and concerns is all that is required” ( Piety, M. G., “The Dangers of Indirection: Plato, Kierkegaard, and Leo Strauss,” in Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard [ed. Mooney, Edward F.; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008] 163–74, at 171Google Scholar).

⁶ Rosenzweig, Stern, 25/Star, 23.

⁷ In an insightful essay on Rosenzweig's notion of “factuality,” Benjamin Pollock writes: “while Rosenzweig . . . makes the centrality of the concept of factuality in his thinking abundantly clear, he leaves the meaning of this most central of concepts unclear.” He goes on to say: “Facts and factuality . . . appear, disappear and reappear in the Star in the most manifold and contradictory of guises” (“‘Erst die Tatsache in sicher vor dem Rückfall ins Nichts’: Rosenzweig's Concept of Factuality,” in Franz Rosenzweigs »neues Denken«: Internationaler Kongreß Kassel 2004 [ed. Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik; 2 vols.; Munich: Karl Alber, 2006] 1:359–70, at 359 and 361).

⁸ The single occurrence can be found at the start of Book One–Part Three. Rosenzweig, Stern 67/Star 62. See n. 66 below for a discussion of the passage. Nahum Glatzer claims that “the term ‘common sense’ is much in evidence in The Star of Redemption, particularly in the polemics against German Idealism” (Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 22/Das Büchlein, 12). I am not certain what Glatzer is referring to here but I do see hints of common sense in Star 1:2, “The World and Its Meaning or Metalogic.” Rosenzweig begins that chapter with the following: “Now what do we know of the world? It appears to surround us. We are in it, but it exists within us too. It penetrates us, but with every breath and every stirring of our hands it also emanates from us. It is for us the self-evident quantity, as self-evident as our own self, more self-evident than God. It is the evident pure and simple, the one thing specifically suited and specially commissioned to be understood, to be evident from within itself, to be ‘self-evident’” (Stern, 44/Star, 41).

⁹ Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Modern European Philosophy; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 215 Google Scholar. Wolterstorff writes: “The one thing everyone knows about Reid is that his philosophy became known as Common Sense Philosophy. It acquired that name because the phenomenon Reid called ‘common sense’ played a prominent role in his thought. But it's not what is deepest. And one lesson to be drawn from the fate of Reid's thought is that if one tries to enter through the doorway of his views on Common Sense, one will never get far. The profundity of his thought will be blocked from view by that peculiar mindlessness that talk about common sense induces in readers” (Reid and the Story of Epistemology, 1). For an alternative assessment of the role of common sense in Reid's thought, see Pakaluk, Michael, “A Defence of Scottish Common Sense,” The Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002) 564–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Wolterstorff summarizes the “way of ideas” thusly: “Assuming the tenability of the ontological distinction between mental entities and all others, the Way of Ideas held that, at any moment, that with which one has acquaintance consists at most of oneself, of one's present mental acts and objects, and of those of one's present mental states that one is then actively aware of—along with various facts, contingent and necessary, consisting of the interrelationships of these” (Reid and the Story of Epistemology, 24).

¹¹ Reid, Thomas, An Inquiry into the Human Mind: On the Principles of Common Sense (ed. Brookes, Derek R.; University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) 5 Google Scholar.

¹² Reid, Inquiry, 18. That we cannot get behind our traditional practices to analyze or defend them is evident from the following: “The evidence of sense, the evidence of memory, and the evidence of the necessary relations of things, are all distinct and original kinds of evidence, equally grounded on our constitution: none of them depends upon, or can be resolved into another. To reason against any of these kinds of evidence, is absurd; nay, to reason for them, is absurd. They are first principles; and such fall not within the province of Reason, but of Common Sense” (ibid., 32).

¹³ Kuehn, Manfred, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ On Kant and common sense, see Ameriks, Karl, “A Commonsense Kant?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 79 (2005) 19–45 Google Scholar; Guyer, Paul, “Kant on Common Sense and Scepticism,” Kantian Review 7 (2003) 1–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, Michael, “The French Revolution and the New School of Europe: Towards a Political Interpretation of German Idealism,” European Journal of Philosophy 19 (2010) 532–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stapleford, Scott, “Reid, Tetens, and Kant on the External World,” Idealistic Studies 37 (2007) 87–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mortera, Emanuele Levi, “Stewart, Kant, and the Reworking of Common Sense,” History of European Ideas 38 (2012) 122–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mosser, Kurt, “Kant and Wittgenstein: Common Sense, Therapy, and the Critical Philosophy,” Philosophia 37 (2009) 1–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brun–Rovet, Etienne, “Reid, Kant and the Philosophy of Mind,” The Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002) 495–510 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dobe, Jennifer Kirchmyer, “Kant's Common Sense and the Strategy for a Deduction,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68 (2010) 47–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Mendelssohn and common sense, see Beiser, Frederick, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Arkush, Allan, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion; Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Freudenthal, Gideon, No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn's Jewish Enlightenment (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Rosenstock, Bruce, Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Gottleib, Micah, Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn's Theological–Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., Faith, Reason, and Politics: Essays on the History of Jewish Thought (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013); Mendelssohn, Moses, Last Works (trans. Rosenstock, Bruce; Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Rosenzweig does, however, say this about Kant: “The indissoluble sediment of the world and the mystery of character have a ‘common obscure root.’ This surmise was clearly enunciated by Kant, though to be sure he could not, as Idealist, surmise its actual meaning” (Rosenzweig, Stern, 157/Star, 142).

¹⁶ Rosenstock, Philosophy and the Jewish Question, 30. Other than a single mention of reading Hume in a letter from his early years at university, Rosenzweig never refers to Hume throughout the rest of his writings. Benjamin Pollock has recently argued that Rosenzweig underwent a Marcionite phase in his early thought marked by a “world skepticism.” This, obviously, has nothing to do with Humean skepticism ( Pollock, Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig's Conversions: World Denial and World Redemption [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014])Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Moses Mendelssohn, Morning Hours, in Mendelssohn, Last Works, 71.

¹⁸ Mendelssohn gives a more balanced picture of the relationship between reason and common sense in his essay “To the Friends of Lessing”: “I assign to my philosophical speculation the task of correcting the claims of common sense and, as much as possible, turning them into rational knowledge. As long as both of them, speculation and common sense, remain on good terms, I gladly follow them wherever they lead me. But as soon as they have a falling out, I seek to orient myself and lead them both, if possible, to the point from which we started” (Moses Mendelssohn, “To the Friends of Lessing,” in Mendelssohn, Last Works, 158).

¹⁹ Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 191.

²⁰ Kant, Immanuel, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science , in Kant, Immanuel, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 (ed. Allison, Henry and Heath, Peter; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

²¹ Kant, Prolegomena, 56 [italics in original]. Kuehn argues that the true object of Kant's attack is not Scottish common sense philosophy but its proponents among German enlightenment philosophers. Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 192. However that may be, I don't think that has much bearing for Rosenzweig's reading of Kant's Prolegomena.

²² Kant, Prolegomena, 159.

²³ Another reason to be skeptical about Rosenzweig's borrowing his conception of common sense from Kant is that common sense had fallen into desuetude by the time Rosenzweig engaged these topics and along with it any awareness of Kant's debt, direct or indirect, to Reid and his disciples. When Rosenzweig begins Understanding the Sick and the Healthy by saying, “common sense is in disrepute with philosophers,” we can take him at his word. Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 39/Das Büchlein, 28. For a clear sense of what contemporary views on common sense looked like see Ernst Cassirer's blistering criticism of Leonard Nelson's work in Cassirer, Ernst, Der kritische Idealismus und die Philosophie des ‘gesunden Menschenverstandes’ (Philosophische Arbeiten; Giessen, Germany: Alfred Töpelmann, 1906)Google Scholar. Cassirer's essay was the first to be published in the series Philosophische Arbeiten edited by Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. If Rosenzweig read the essay, Cassirer's attack on Nelson's common sense would have come with an important approbation for him. On the quick demise of common sense philosophy after Kant, see Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 234–37.

²⁴ Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task, 4–5, 118–19.

²⁵ Pollock concludes his analysis of the development of Rosenzweig's concept of “system” prior to the Star with the following observations: “that Rosenzweig's designation of his own work as a ‘system of philosophy’ is not meaningless or accidental; that Rosenzweig does not throw such philosophical terms around at random; that Rosenzweig had in fact deliberated over the nature and significance of system with the utmost seriousness in the years before his writing of the Star” (ibid., 119). Common sense is an interesting test case for Pollock's assertions about Rosenzweig's philosophical language for two reasons. First, once one becomes attuned to the importance of system in Rosenzweig's thought it can be seen throughout the Star; the same is not true with common sense, for which there is scant evidence in the Star. Second, while Rosenzweig devotes years of reflection and discussion to developing his conception of system, common sense does not receive the same treatment from Rosenzweig. While I hope my discussion will affirm Pollock's claim that “Rosenzweig does not throw such philosophical terms around at random,” the challenges of establishing that fact with regard to Rosenzweig's use of “common sense” are formidable.

²⁶ 1 November 1920 and 4 November 1920 in Rosenzweig, Die Gritli Briefe, 679–81. In the two letters, Rosenzweig gives slightly different titles to the course: “Einführung in den Gebrauch des gesunden Menschenverstands (Auszug aus der gesamten Philosophie)” and “Einführung in den gesunden Menschenverstand (Ein Auszug aus der gesamten Philosophie).”

²⁷ Rosenzweig, GS 1:2, 693. Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer describe the course as “eine Hinführung zum Gebrauch des gesunden Menschenverstandes” (Rosenzweig, GS 3, XIV).

²⁸ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 598. “For the world of redemption, absolute factuality derives from the fact that whoever be momentarily my neighbor represents all the world for me in full validity” (Rosenzweig, Stern, 263/Star, 236).

²⁹ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 598. Benjamin Pollock has recently offered a new account of Rosenzweig's near-conversion to Christianity. Whereas previous scholarship saw Rosenzweig's near-conversion entailing a movement from relativism to faith, Pollock argues that what motivated Rosenzweig's flirtation with Christianity was a transition from a world denying Marcionism to a philosophical and theological affirmation of the world. In Rosenzweig's own reflections on this experience, he states that Gen 1:1 played a pivotal role in his decision to remain a Jew. See Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig's Conversions, 58–59. Along these lines, one might then see Rosenzweig's turn to common sense after the Star as the culmination of his embrace of the world and the human activity that guides it to redemption.

³⁰ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 598. Mendelssohn also identifies Judaism with common sense in his “To the Friends of Lessing”: “When I speak of conviction based on reasonable evidence, and I assert that in Judaism such conviction is undoubtedly presupposed, I am not talking about the metaphysical arguments we are accustomed to carry on in books, nor about scholastic demonstrations that have stood the test of the most subtle refinements of critical probing, but about the dicta and the judgments of a simple common sense that looks things straight in the eye and calmly takes their measure” (Mendelssohn, “To the Friends of Lessing,” 157). See also Mendelssohn, Moses, Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism (trans. Arkush, Allan; Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983) 97 Google Scholar.

³¹ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 598.

³² As Yehoyada Amir points out, Rosenzweig's and Kant's prolegomena have much in common in terms of the motivations which led their authors to produce accessible introductions to their philosophical views and in their efforts to specify who the intended readers of these prolegomena are (Amir, “Rosenzweig's Büchlein,” 54f).

³³ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 39/Das Büchlein, 28.

³⁴ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 55/Das Büchlein, 50.

³⁵ Glatzer replaced Rosenzweig's “cheese” for “butter,” a curious translation decision for 1950’s America.

³⁶ Hilary Putnam expands and updates Rosenzweig's discussion to great comic effect in his introduction to the most recent edition of Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (Hilary Putnam, “Introduction,” in Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 5).

³⁷ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 52–3/Das Büchlein, 48. Rosenzweig shares more with Reid here than his reliance upon our common belief forming practices, he also shares the comic tone that Reid utilizes to undermine the philosophical positions of his opponents. There are countless examples of this in Reid's works, for instance: “Therefore, as Plato required certain previous qualification of those who entered his school, I think it would be prudent for the doctors of this ideal philosophy to do the same, and to refuse admittance to every man who is so weak, as to imagine that he ought to have the same belief in solitude and in company, or that his principles ought to have any influence upon his practice: for this philosophy is like a hobby-horse, which a man in bad health may ride in his closet, without hurting his reputation; but if he should take him abroad with him to church, or to the exchange, or to the play-house, his heir would immediately call a jury, and seize his estate” (Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, 36). For an example of Reid's humorous attacks on his opponents where his antagonist ends up in the sanitarium like Rosenzweig's, see ibid., 170. On the philosophical contribution of humor in Reid's thought, see Johnson, Daniel M. and Pelser, Adam C., “Foundational Beliefs and Persuading with Humor: Reflections Inspired by Reid and Kierkegaard,” Faith and Philosophy 31 (2014) 267–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grandi, Giovanni B., “Reid on Ridicule and Common Sense,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 6 (2008) 71–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 55/Das Büchlein, 50. The following passage from Mendelssohn's Morning Hours helps to distinguish Rosenzweig's and Mendelssohn's approaches to common sense: “For example, the more often we observe that an object, as far as what it looked like, how it felt, and how it tasted, resembled bread, and also on every occasion had the effect of nourishing our body, the more confident we become that we can expect this effect from any sensible object that resembles bread, even if we have not yet tested it with all our senses as in the previous cases” (Mendelssohn, Morning Hours, 14). Mendelssohn thus endorses the exact procedure that Rosenzweig finds ridiculous.

³⁹ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 42/Das Büchlein, 32.

⁴⁰ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 57/Das Büchlein, 53. Rosenzweig goes on to argue that these philosophical positions “neglect the fact of names. Consequently all these isms fail to conciliate thought and action, which is, after all, the one thing desired. They fail precisely because they are isms, whether ‘idealisms’ or ‘realisms’” (Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 57/Das Büchlein, 53).

⁴¹ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 53/Das Büchlein, 49. Nicholas Rescher says of common sense: “To use and construe words in their established meanings is of the very essence of common sense. If we cannot trust people in matters of language we cannot trust them at all” ( Rescher, Nicholas, Common-Sense: A New Look at an Old Philosophical Tradition [The Aquinas Lecture, 2005; Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2005] 103 Google Scholar).

⁴² Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 74/Das Büchlein, 78.

⁴³ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 74/Das Büchlein, 77–78. Mendelssohn makes a similar point in Morning Hours: “Without thinking beings, the world of bodies would be no world, would constitute no whole, but would consist of nothing more than isolated singularities” (Morning Hours, 99).

⁴⁴ Rosenzweig, Stern, 132/Star, 119.

⁴⁵ On the status of the world as existence in need of being see Rosenzweig, Stern, 134/Star, 120. Rosenzweig describes this process in the following terms: “We seek an infinite life, we find a finite one. The finite life that we find is thus simply the not-yet-infinite. The world must become wholly alive. It must become alive as a whole instead of becoming individual foci of life like so many raisins in a cake. Experience must be alive at all its points” (Rosenzweig, Stern, 249/Star, 223). Martin Kavka addresses these issues and states that “without an incomplete creation, the empirical motor of Rosenzweig's thinking loses all of its power” ( Kavka, Martin, Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004] 143 [italics in original]CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁴⁶ To complicate matters, in “The New Thinking” Rosenzweig affirms the direct perception that is the hallmark of Reid's common sense philosophy. Rosenzweig writes: “It is nothing but a prejudice of the last three hundred years that, in all knowing the ‘I’ must be present; thus that I could not see a tree unless ‘I’ saw it. In truth, my I is only present if it—is present; for instance, if I have to emphasize that I see the tree because someone else does not see it, then, certainly, the tree is in connection with me in my knowing. But in all other cases I know only of the tree and nothing else; and the usual philosophical assertion of the I's omnipresence in all knowing distorts the content of this knowledge” (Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” 120–1/GS 3, 147). Compare this to Reid: “When I look at the apple-tree which stands before my window, I perceive, at the first glance, its distance and magnitude, the roughness of its trunk, the disposition of its branches, the figure of its leaves and fruit. I seem to perceive all these things immediately. The visible appearance which presented them all to the mind, has entirely escaped me; I cannot, without great difficulty, and painful abstraction, attend to it, even when it stands before me” (Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, 167). For further discussion of Reid and his tree, see ibid., 168, 172, and 215. Mendelssohn also endorses direct perception of trees: “Here is a tree! We know this by means of our senses, and so it is a sensibly cognized truth: a tree actually exists here” (Mendelssohn, Morning Hours, 121).

⁴⁷ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 90/Das Büchlein, 100.

⁴⁸ There is some precedence in Rosenzweig's thought for his imprinting his systematic philosophy onto generic terms. Consider how in the following comment about revelation Rosenzweig claims that revelation, properly understood, just is his philosophical system: “In the authentic idea of revelation, the three ‘actual’ elements of the All—God world man—emerge from themselves, belong to one another, and meet one another, and this idea is in the final analysis effective in opposing the assertion of the caprice of the Creator” (Stern, 127/Star, 115).

⁴⁹ Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” 110/GS 3, 140. Rosezweig is here referring to the important history of philosophy written by Friedrich Überweg and updated by Max Heinze. The work testifies to Rosenzweig's claim that common sense had fallen out of favor. See Ueberweg, Friedrich, History of Philosophy from Thales to the Present Time (trans. Morris, George S.; 2 vols.; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1874) 2:131 Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” 123/GS 3, 149.

⁵¹ Rotenstreich, Nathan, “Common Sense and Theological Experience on the Basis of Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 5 (1967) 353–60Google Scholar.

⁵² Ibid., 355. See also Rotenstreich, Nathan, Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times: From Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968) 175 Google Scholar.

⁵³ Rotenstreich, “Common Sense and Theological Experience,” 354.

⁵⁴ “In short, we may say that if the purpose of common sense is to serve as a basis for a philosophical system, without the mediation of reason on the one hand or revelation on the other, then the understanding of the theological experience is to indicate the transition from the basis to the real contents of the system because this system rests on the idea of events or happenings” (Rotenstreich, “Common Sense and Theological Experience,” 357).

⁵⁵ Ibid., 356. Rotenstreich gives the following account of why Rosenzweig sought to extend common sense by joining it to theological experience: “In this matter Rosenzweig wished to follow the Kantian or neo-Kantian line, that is, to rely not only on common sense that is safe from all criticism, but also on what may be called the autonomous province of a particular experience which qua experience is beyond criticism. Kantian critical philosophy is not based on experience; its purpose is rather to explain it. Along Kantian lines Rosenzweig established the nature of theological experience parallel to psychological and biological experience. He thus attempts to liberate his true subject matter from the coils of rational theology and to present a philosophical system capable of explaining theological experience and its basic assumptions by means of definite categories, such as creation, revelation and redemption.” It is important to note that Rotenstreich acknowledges the difficulties of interpreting Rosenzweig's thought. The above quotation concludes with the duly humble admission, “This is one way of understanding Rosenzweig's concept of theological experience” (ibid., 356).

⁵⁶ Rosenzweig, Stern, 13/Star, 12.

⁵⁷ Rotenstreich, “Common Sense and Theological Experience,” 353. Rotenstreich begins to address these issues by asking why it is that Rosenzweig sets God, World, and the Human Person as the content of common sense: “The first and most obvious answer to this question is that Rosenzweig, for systematic reasons altogether independent of his own methodological basis, was interested in establishing a secure foundation for these three contents and in using them to construct the framework as well as the inner content of his system. By means of formal assumptions as may be found in Kant, or material ones as may be found in Hegel, he attempted to give his system a methodological ad hoc basis” (ibid., 359).

⁵⁸ Ibid., 359.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 360.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Cohen, Richard A., “Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption and Kant,” The Philosophical Forum 41 (2010) 73–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bruce Rosenstock has also reflected on the relationship between Mendelssohn's and Rosenzweig's use of common sense. Rosenstock claims that Mendelssohn appeals to common sense as a response to skepticism. Common sense then has an antirational element for Rosenstock (Rosenstock, Philosophy and the Jewish Question, 30–1). This comes to bear on Rosenzweig when Rosenstock argues that Rosenzweig's philosophical and religious views mirror Jacobi's in the famous Pantheism Controversy (ibid., 132). See also Bontas, Alin V., Franz Rosenzweig's Rational Subjective System: The Redemptive Turning Point in Philosophy and Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² Cohen, “Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption and Kant,” 80.

⁶³ Rosenzweig's attempt to articulate God, the World, and the Human Person in their positivity has the result that the book has its true beginning not in Part One but rather in Part Two “beyond philosophy” and “beyond reason” (ibid., 81).

⁶⁴ Ibid., 86. “Rosenzweig has a ‘system,’ for which he claims the ‘method’ of ‘narration.’ Unfortunately narration is not phenomenology, not science, and lacks a legitimizing reason. That Rosenzweig lacks a phenomenology or something equivalent to a phenomenology, a legitimizing method, a science of some sort, means that the way he has packaged his thought, as it were, his alleged ‘system of philosophy’ with its double triads, distorts and ultimately undermines the best insights of his ‘new thinking’” (ibid., 90).

⁶⁵ Ibid., 89.

⁶⁶ The suggestion that Rosenzweig is indebted to Kant for his turn to common sense is at odds with Rosenzweig's single reference to common sense in the Star. Rosenzweig writes: “Of man—do we really know nothing even of him? The knowledge by the self of itself, self-consciousness, has the reputation of being the most assured knowledge of all. And normal common sense bristles almost more vigorously yet than scientific consciousness if the foundation of knowledge, to him truly and literally ‘self’-evident, is to be pulled out from under him. And yet this occurred, albeit at a late date. It remains one of the most amazing achievements of Kant to have turned this most self-evident quantity, the I, into the most questionable object, into the problem par excellence” (Stern, 67/Star, 62). For a discussion of the passage, see Disse, Jörg, “Die Philosophie Immanuel Kants im Stern der Erlösung: Ein Kommentar ,” in Rosenzweig als Leser: Kontextuelle Kommentare zum “Stern der Erlösung” (ed. Brasser, Martin; Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004) 245–71, at 258–59Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Cohen, “Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption and Kant,” 92.

⁶⁸ Moshe Schwarcz suggests that the theologian Karl Heim was an influence on Rosenzweig's views on common sense ( Schwarcz, Moshe, Language, Myth, Art [Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1966] 37, 42 Google Scholar). While Schwarcz may well be correct, Rosenzweig's discussion of Heim in his letters offers ambiguous support for Schwarcz's conjecture. Rosenzweig praises Heim's work in multiple letters, but at the same time he sees serious philosophical shortcomings in Heim's thought. The most positive assertion is Rosenzweig's claim in a letter to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy that from his reading of Heim “he brings to bear a deeper concept of truth” (15 December 1917, GS 1:1, 489). In a much later letter to Buber, Martin, Rosenzweig says that “Heim is surely good, however philosophically burdened [belastet]” (31 July 1925, GS 1:2, 1056 Google Scholar). Rosenzweig never mentions the term “common sense” in his discussions of Heim. For his part, Heim appears to only refer to common sense once in his work Glaubensgewißheit ( Heim, Karl, Glaubensgewißheit: eine Untersuchung über die Lebensfrage der Religion [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrischs'sche Buchhandlung, 1920] 62 Google Scholar).

⁶⁹ For an introduction to Schelling's influence on Rosenzweig see Paul Franks’ and Michael Morgan's introduction in Franz Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, 31–43. See also Mendes-Flohr, Paul, “Franz Rosenzweig and the German Philosophical Tradition,” in The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig (ed. Mendes-Flohr, Paul; Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1988) 1–19 Google Scholar; idem., “Franz Rosenzweig's Concept of Philosophical Faith,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989) 357-69; Freund, Else-Rahel, Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy of Existence: An Analysis of “The Star of Redemption” (ed. Mendes-Flohr, Paul; trans. Weinstein, Stephen and Israel, Robert; The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Schwarcz, Moshe, From Myth to Revelation (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1978)Google Scholar; Mosès, Stéphane, System and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig (trans. Tihanyi, Catherine; Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Casper, Bernhard, Religion der Erfahrung: Einführungen in das Denken Franz Rosenzweigs (Studies in Judaism and Christianity; Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004)Google Scholar; Schmied-Kowarzik, Wolfdietrich, Rosenzweig im Gespräch mit Ehrenberg, Cohen und Buber (Freiburg: Alber, 2006)Google Scholar; Myriam Bienenstock, “Auf Schellings Spuren im ‘Stern der Erlösung,’” in Rosenzweig als Leser (ed. Brasser), 273–90; Fricke, Martin, Franz Rosenzweigs Philosophie der Offenbarung: Eine Interpretation des Sterns der Erlösung (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003)Google Scholar; Schmidt-Biggermann, Wilhelm, “Eine Wiedergeburt des Judentums aus dem Geist des Christentums: Schellings und Rosenzweigs spekulative Philologie der Unverfügbarkeit,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Boustan, Ra'anan S. et al.; 2 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) 2:1307–34Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 12. See also ibid., 234. Mirroring Reid's propensity for philosophical ridicule, Hegel says of common sense in the Phenomenology: “In place of the long process of culture towards genuine philosophy, a movement as rich as it is profound, through which Spirit achieves knowledge, we are offered as quite equivalent either direct revelations from heaven, or the sound common sense that has never labored over, or informed itself regarding, other knowledge or genuine philosophy; and we are assured that these are quite as good substitutes as some claim chicory is for coffee. It is not a pleasant experience to see ignorance, and a crudity without form or taste, which cannot focus its thought on a single abstract proposition, still less on a connected chain of them” ( Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit [trans. Miller, A.V.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977] 42 Google Scholar). For Hegel's rejection of common sense see Pinkard, Terry, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 160 Google Scholar. For a nuanced discussion of Hegel's views on common sense in his encounter with Jacobi, see Halbig, Christoph, “The Philosopher as Polyphemus? Philosophy and Common Sense in Jacobi and Hegel,” International Yearbook of German Idealism 3 (2005) 261–82Google Scholar. John Laughland argues that Schelling turns to Aristotle to mount his critique of Hegel and that this imparted a realist sensibility to Schelling's later thought that is compatible with the concerns of common sense philosophy ( Laughland, John, Schelling versus Hegel: From German Idealism to Christian Metaphysics [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007] 134–36Google Scholar).

⁷¹ 30 June 1922, Rosenzweig, GS 1:2, 800. The diary entry is terse and requires some exegetical guesswork. For an alternative reading of the passage that emphasizes the kabbalistic elements rather than the topics of Schelling and common sense, see Horwitz, Rivka, “From Hegelianism to a Revolutionary Understanding of Judaism: Franz Rosenzweig's Attitude Toward Kabbala and Myth,” Modern Judaism 26 (2006) 31–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷² This may well be the only reference to Schelling's “theory of the potencies” in Rosenzweig's collected works. For Schelling's view that a proper conception of time is only possible through the positive philosophy see Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 274. Schelling conceives time as a sequence that begins with creation but which allows connections between past, present, and future (ibid., 275). Similarly for Rosenzweig, true time is the proleptic experience of redemption in the present. See for instance Rosenzweig, Stern, 250/Star, 224.

⁷³ The extent to which Rosenzweig was familiar with Schelling's later works remains an open question. For Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik's view that The Star of Redemption “without reference to Schelling's late philosophy would be inconceivable,” see Schmied-Kowarzik, Rosenzweig im Gespräch, 50. See also, idem., “Hans Ehrenbergs Einfluß auf die Entstehung des Stern der Erlösung,” in Rosenzweig als Leser (ed. Brasser), 71–117, at 93–99. For a skeptical view see Myriam Bienenstock, “Auf Schellings Spuren im Stern,” 275 n. 8.

⁷⁴ Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 119.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 147.

⁷⁶ Rosenzweig, GS3, 161. Rotenstreich's comments on Rosenzweig's “absolute empiricism” also suggest a Schellingian interpretation: “In short, from the standpoint of system, Rosenzweig attempted to proceed in two parallel paths: What he called ‘absolute empricism’ is nothing more than an interpretation of the facts of consciousness and experience in order to find in them the seeds of religious faith. Rosenzweig's purpose, as against religious or anti-religious constructionism, was to keep faith within definite limits by insisting on the given fact of religious experience as an ultimate fact from which there is no recourse. He considers the basis of faith as valid as any other creative sphere of human activity. The relationship of faith helps us understand that experience as bridging the gaps between things, and to the nature of religious experience as a living encounter; experience enables him to impart to the religious relationship an assurance derived from the given, hard fact that cannot be ignored” (Rotenstreich, Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times, 180). See also the helpful footnote on “absolute empiricism” by Paul Franks and Michael Morgan in their translation of Rosenzweig's “The New Thinking”: “Similarly, by ‘absolute empiricism,’ Rosenzweig means a philosophy that bases knowledge on experience but does not limit the objects of experience to the relative or conditioned objects of the senses, leaving room for the possibility of experience of the absolute, unconditioned, supersensible, or divine” (Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” 138 n.48).

⁷⁷ Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 259.

⁷⁸ Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” 135/GS 3, 158 [italics in original]. Rosenzweig continues: “The concept of the verification of truth becomes the basic concept of this new epistemology, which takes the place of the old epistemology's noncontradicoriness-theory and object-theory, and introduces, instead of the old static concept of objectivity, a dynamic concept” (“The New Thinking,” 135/GS 3, 158–59). On the connection between Rosenzweig's notion of verification and Schelling, see Schmied-Kowarzik, Wolfdietrich, Franz Rosenzweig: Existentielles Denken und gelebte Bewährung (Munich: Karl Alber, 1991) 61, 86–90 Google Scholar, 113–20. For a critique of Rosenzweig's views on verification, see Kavka, Martin, “Verification (Bewährung) in Franz Rosenzweig,” in German-Jewish Thought Between Religion and Politics: Festschrift in Honor of Paul Mendes-Flohr on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Wiese, Christian and Urban, Martina; Judentums, Studia Judaica Forschungen zur Wissenschaft des; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012) 167–83Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 25/Das Büchlein, 16. 15 August 1921, GS 1:2, 717.

⁸⁰ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 3–44.

⁸¹ Ibid., 34. I am here using Pollock's translation of the passage (Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy, 47).

⁸² Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 254.

⁸³ Rescher, Common-Sense, 30. Hegel makes a similar point in the Phenomenology: “when philosophizing by the light of nature flows along the more even course of sound common sense, it offers at its very best only a rhetoric of trivial truths” (Phenomenology of Spirit, 42).

⁸⁴ Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 90/Das Büchlein, 100. Rosenzweig's “common sense” view is closely connected to his establishing the elements—God, World, Human Person—as irrational objects. Stern, 21/Star, 19.

⁸⁵ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 810. In his translation and commentary on the poems of Judah Halevi, Rosenzweig says this: “But it is the last thought that human thinking can grasp, and the first that Jewish thinking grasps: that the faraway God is none other than the near God, the unknown God none other than the revealed one, the Creator none other than the Redeemer” ( Galli, Barbara, Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi: Translating, Translations, and Translators [Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995] 204/GS 4:1, 69 Google Scholar).

⁸⁶ See Fisher, Cass, “Divine Perfections at the Center of the Star: Reassessing Rosenzweig's Theological Language,” Modern Judaism 31 (2011) 188–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Speaking Metaphysically of a Metaphysical God: Rosenzweig, Schelling, and the Metaphysical Divide,” in German-Jewish Thought Between Religion and Politics (ed. Christian Wiese and Martina Urban) 151–66; idem., Contemplative Nation: A Philosophical Account of Jewish Theological Language (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012) 192–95.

⁸⁷ Schelling, The Ages of the World (fragment) from the Handwritten remains Third Version (c. 1815) (trans. Jason M. Wirth; Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2000) 53. In his lectures on Philosophy of Revelation, Schelling states that “The Old Testament revelation postulates a perpetual tension. The entire religious system substantiates the acknowledgment of the reality of contrary principles” (Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 279). And slightly further on he adds “The successive positions of the potencies is the certain key for the ideas of the Old Testament” (ibid., 281).

⁸⁸ The biblical translations in this paragraph are from the 1917 JPS edition. Rosenzweig, GS 3:617.

⁸⁹ In the Star, Rosenzweig speaks of these opposing elements within the divine and argues that Jewish religious life “smelts the blazing, flashing contradictions more and more into a unitary, still glow.” Rosenzweig, Stern, 448/Star, 403. In a course entitled “Science of God” that Rosenzweig taught in the winter of 1921 he attributes to Jewish law the power to unify God: “The Law is the road on which the world, hurled out in the Creation, finds its way back and God can be united again with Himself” ( Rosenzweig, Franz, God, Man, and the World: Lectures and Essays (ed. and trans. Galli, Barbara; Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998) 51/GS 3, 627 Google Scholar). For Schelling's views on the human task of unifying God see Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 200f.

⁹⁰ Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” 122/GS 3, 148–49.

⁹¹ 12 February 1921, Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”–Briefe, 729–32.

⁹² On Rosenzweig's critique of philosophy in Understanding the Sick and the Healthy see Del Prete, Michele, “Über die Wahrheit des gesunden Menschenverstandes: Zu Rosenzweigs theologia naturalis ,” in Faith, Truth, and Reason (ed. Amir, Yehoyada, Turner, Yossi, and Brasser, Martin) 481–92Google Scholar.

⁹³ Rosenzweig says in the Star: “The mystery of the elements cannot be brought out into the open except by and at the curvature of the orbit. Only this curvature leads out of the merely hypothetical of the elements into the categorical of visible reality. And if the elements were more than mere ‘hypotheses,’ it remains for their capacity for constructing a visible orbit to prove as much” (Stern, 91/Star, 83).

⁹⁴ Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, 136 and 251. Rotenstreich makes a similar point: “The remote God may even be subject to demonstrative proof, but the indwelling God is the object of faith and concepts do not apply to Him. Revelation, then, may be regarded as the mediating latch or bolt of faith” (Rotenstreich, Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times, 193).

⁹⁵ Rosenzweig, Stern, 424/Star, 381. It is important to balance this seemingly apophatic claim with Rosenzweig's claim in “The New Thinking” that God, World, and Human are equally transcendent (“The New Thinking,” 118/GS 3, 145).

⁹⁶ Galli, Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi, 200/GS 4:1, 57–58.

⁹⁷ Rosenzweig, GS 3, 615.

⁹⁸ Fricke, Franz Rosenzweigs Philosophie der Offenbarung, 162.

⁹⁹ Bruce Rosenstock agues: “Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Wittgenstein share a faith in the common practices of a linguistic community to restore the health of a reason sickened with skepticism, frustrated in its quest for unattainable epistemological and metaphysical certitudes” (Rosenstock, Philosophy and the Jewish Question, 31). I don't think this view properly captures the systematic nature of Rosenzweig's thought. Gideon Freudenthal offers an alternative reading of Mendelssohn such that “it is sound reason that determines truth; metaphysics is called upon only to further buttress the judgments of common sense” (Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry, 13). Given the fact that much of what Rosenzweig identifies as common sense originates in his metaphysical system, I don't think Freudenthal's reading of Mendelssohn could be extended to Rosenzweig.

¹⁰⁰ Rosenzweig, GS 1:2, 1091f.

¹⁰¹ Alston, William, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Plantinga, Alvin, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Practices of Belief: Selected Essays, Vol. 2 (ed. Cuneo, Terence; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

¹⁰² Rosenzweig, Stern, 170/Star, 153.

¹⁰³ Elsewhere he says that God's creation via the word is “the great justification of common sense.” Rosenzweig, GS 1:2, 1041. See Rotenstreich, Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times, 176.

¹⁰⁴ Rosenzweig's brief but suggestive comments on perception in “The New Thinking” also resonate with contemporary appropriations of Reid's work by analytic philosophers. See n.46 above.