~Franz Rosenzweig
With that “sole” presupposition that it presupposes nothing, wasn’t philosophy already itself full of presuppositions, indeed presupposition through and through? And yet, thinking has again and again run down the slope of the same question: What is the world? And again and again all sorts of other more problematic realities were linked up with this question; and finally, again and again the answer to the question was sought in thinking.It is as
if this presupposition, imposing in itself, of the thinkable All
were throwing a shadow over the entire sphere of other possible
questions. Materialism and idealism, both—not just the former—
“as old as philosophy,” have an equal share in this presupposition.
That which, in the face of it, claimed independence was
either reduced to silence or paid no attention. It was reduced to
silence, the voice that claimed to possess through a Revelation
the source of divine knowledge, springing up beyond thinking.
The philosophical task has been devoted for centuries to this
debate between knowledge and faith; it reaches its goal in the
precise moment where knowledge of the All comes to a conclusion
in itself. For it must indeed be called a conclusion when this
knowledge no longer includes merely its object, the All, but also
includes itself with no remainder, with no remainder at least
according to its own claims and its own particular modalities.
This happened when Hegel enclosed the history of philosophy
in the system.
It seems that thinking cannot go any further than
to present itself visibly, that is to say the innermost reality that
is known to it, as a part of the systematic edifice, and naturally
as the part that finishes it off. And just at this moment, where
philosophy exhausts its ultimate formal possibilities and reaches
the limit set by its own nature, it seems, too, as already noted,
that the great question put to it by the course of universal
history, that of the relationship between knowledge and faith,
has been solved.
More than once, so far, it seemed that peace had been concluded
between the two hostile powers, be it on the strength of
a tidy separation of the mutual claims, or be it such that philosophy
believes it possesses in its arsenal the keys that would open
the mysteries of Revelation. In both cases, philosophy agreed to
regard Revelation as truth, a truth inaccessible to it on the one
hand, but on the other hand confirmed by it. But neither solution
was ever sufficient for long. Against the first solution, the
pride of philosophy always immediately rose up: it could not
bear to acknowledge that a door was locked to it; against the
other solution, conversely, it is faith that had to bristle up: it
could not be satisfied with being acknowledged by philosophy in
this way, passing as one truth among others.
But Hegel’s philosophy
now promised to introduce something completely different.
Neither the separation nor mere agreement was asserted,
but an innermost connection. The knowable world becomes
knowable by the same law of thinking which returns to the summit
of the system as a supreme law of being. And this one law
of thinking and being is first announced for universal history in
Revelation, so that philosophy is only to some degree the fulfillment
of that which is promised in Revelation.
And in its turn, it
does not exercise this office occasionally, solely, or as it were
only at the zenith of its trajectory, but at each moment; to some
degree, with its every breath, philosophy necessarily confirms
the truth of that which Revelation has uttered. So the old quarrel
seems settled, heaven and earth reconciled.