Here, for the first time, faithfully translated in their entirety, are the principal texts for which Franz Rosenzweig initiated the project that would become The Star of Redemption. Included in the volume are Rosenzweig's essay, "The New Thinking;" four important reviews of The Star of Redemption, and his 1917 letter to Rudolf Ehrenberg, the "germcell" of The Star. Barbara E. Galli 's own essay touches on the basic concepts of Rosenzweig's work, while pointing to and going beyond his scholarship. Alan Udoff's provocative closing essay situates Rosenzweig's thought in the context of modem and postmodern philosophical concerns and suggests a new direction in assessing the philosopher's theological accomplishment. This volume is a perfect guide for students of the great philosopher and for a broader general audience seeking an introduction to Rosenzwieg's ideas.

Rosensweig (1886-1929), who collaborated with Martin Buber on a new German translation of the Bible, wrote "The New Thinking" as a supplementary guide to The Star of Redemption (1921). Udoff (philosophy, Baltimore Hebrew U.) and Galli (Judaic Studies, U. of Alabama) present for the first time in translation this essay, a letter and reviews treating the Star of Redemption, and situate Rosensweig's new Jewish thought and the renewed interest in it in the modern/postmodern philosophical spectra. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Pollock argues that Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption is devoted to the philosophical task of grasping 'the All' - the whole of what is - as a system.

Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig questioned the whole of Western philosophical tradition and tried to found a "new thinking" based on the Jewish-Christian concept of Revelation. System and Revelation, the first contemporary, comprehensive analysis of Rosenzweig's thinking, describes his philosophy as it is presented in his major work, The Star of Redemption, and highlights its relevance to postmodern thinking. The Star of Redemption, first published in 1921, has as its background World War I and the bloody collapse of traditional Europe and its values. In it, Rosenzweig attempted to elaborate a vast theoretical construction that was based upon the most specific categories of Judaism but tended nonetheless to universal signification. One of the central assertions of the book was that the history of the West, a history that is itself the last avatar of universal history, unavoidably rests upon violence and war. The first part of The Star of Redemption features a critique of Western rationality, which Moses analyzes with forcefulness and clarity. In the chapters devoted to the second part of The Star, Moses describes the coming into relation of the elements (God, Man, World) isolated by the breakup of the Hegelian totality. The third part of The Star describes Judaism and Christianity in their sociological reality--mainly through the analysis of their sacred time. Finally, the last chapter addresses the one Truth that transcends both Judaism and Christianity. Emphasizing the conceptual structures of Rosenzweig's philosophy, its references to cultural and historical data, as well as the implicit tensions that undermine the systematical coherence of this thinking, Moses underlines some of the most fundamental speculative gestures in Rosenzweig's thought. System and Revelation is neither Rosenzweig's spiritual biography nor a study of the whole of his work; rather it is a look at Rosenzweig's place within the history of contemporary philosophy through an analysis that is part exposition, part commentary, and part interpretation.

Rosenzweig, one of the century's great Jewish thinkers, wrote his book in 1921 as an accessible précis of his famous Star of Redemption. An elegant introduction to Rosenzweig's "new thinking," this book puts forth an important critique of the 19th-century German Idealist philosophical tradition and expresses a powerful vision of Jewish religion.

The Star of Redemption is widely recognized as a key document of modern existential thought and a significant contribution to Jewish theology in the twentieth century. An affirmation of what Rosenzweig called “the new thinking,” the work ensconces common sense in the place of abstract, conceptual philosophizing and posits the validity of the concrete, individual human being over that of “humanity” in general. Fusing philosophy and theology, it assigns both Judaism and Christianity distinct but equally important roles in the spiritual structure of the world, and finds in both biblical religions approaches toward a comprehension of reality.

Religion, Redemption, and Revolution closely examines the intertwined intellectual development of one of the most important Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, Franz Rosenzweig, and his friend and teacher, Christian sociologist Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. The first major English work on Rosenstock-Huessy, it also provides a significant reinterpretation of Rosenzweig's writings based on the thinkers' shared insights — including their critique of modern Western philosophy, and their novel conception of speech. This groundbreaking bookprovides a detailed examination of their 'new speech thinking' paradigm, a model grounded in the faith traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Wayne Cristaudo contrasts this paradigm against the radical liberalism that has dominated social theory for the last fifty years. Religion, Redemption, and Revolution provides powerful arguments for the continued relevance of Rosenzweig and Rosenstock-Huessy's work in navigating the religious, social, and political conflicts we now face.