Скачать или смотреть Divine Commandments, Laws of the World: Franz Rosenzweig and the Critique of Legal Theology

Lecture by Dennis Baert (Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp)
Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp
17 November 2022

Does the observance of "Halacha" (Jewish law) have any relevance for an authentically Jewish life in (post-)modern times? Almost a century ago Franz Rosenzweig wrote the essay "Die Bauleute" ("The Builders") to make the case that it does. Or at least, that’s what everyone since then has thought he was doing. At the center of this talk is an attempt to radically subvert this reading of "The Builders" as halachic apologetics. Dennis Baert shows how Rosenzweig in this essay is actually engaging in a very different project altogether: namely, a radical critique of the way that the Judaism(s) of the modern era – despite superficial enmity – all subscribe to the same problematic understanding of the relationship between revelation and halacha, between ethics and law. Taking this new approach to Rosenzweig as a critique of legal theology as a vantage point, Baert shows how it allows us to take a fresh and enlightening look at some of the most fraught issues in such diverse fields as the sociology of contemporary Judaism (the spiritual crisis of Halachic Orthodoxy, the ethical poverty of Jewish
Progressivism) and the existential crisis of liberal-democratic legal theory and practice.

Dennis Baert is an affiliated researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Jewish Studies of the University of Antwerp. His research looks at the way Jewish-German intellectuals of the interwar period – who stood outside either the Zionist or Marxist traditions – drew upon the resources of theology, philosophy, legal theory, and literature to radically rethink the very meaning and essence of politics. The focus of this project is a reading of the thought of Franz Rosenzweig as first and foremost a form of political theology, one which allows us to disentangle some of the theoretical and practical aporias plaguing our (post-)liberal political order. His most recent article, “Thinking
Through Identity: The Marranic Epistemology of Franz Rosenzweig”, was published in "The Marrano Way: Between Betrayal and Innovation" (De Gruyter, 2022).