From Relativism to Religious Faith The Testimony of Franz Rosenzweig's Unpublished Diaries BY PAUL R. MENDES-FLOHR AND JEHUDA REINHARZ On the evening of 7th July 1913 Franz Rosenzweig, author of a recent doctoral dissertation on Hegel and an unabashed agnostic in matters of religious faith, engaged in a heated discussion with Eugen Rosenstock, a young lecturer at the University of Leipzig and a deeply believing Christian. Their discussion that evening was the culmination of months of intent debate in which Rosenzweig defended the relativism sponsored by the regnant philosophical and historical perspectives, while Rosenstock affirmed the absolute grounding of human ex- istence provided by religious faith. In the end Rosenzweig conceded the strength of his friend's position. On that July evening he parted from Rosenstock resolved to adopt a faith in God who reveals himself to man, a faith in the sovereign Lord of Creation who manifests an abiding concern for man and who enters human time to speak to man in agapeic love. Thus Franz Rosenzweig began to turn from Kulturgeschichte to theology, initially considering the Church as the only possible modality for his newly acquired piety, but soon he sought to establish that piety in his ancestral Judaism. He discovered within Judaism - and not only for himself but for many Western Jews estranged from the tradition of their fathers - the possibilities of a deeply meaningful life of theocentric faith. Rosenzweig's dramatic volte-face from modern agnosticism to Offenbarungs- glaubigkeit — faith based on revelation — has become the subject of legend. Legend, however, suggests the extraordinary, the atypical, indeed, the ahistori- cal. While Rosenzweig's affirmation of faith may have been atypical, this affir- mation emerged from a dilemma that he shared with modern, secular men of his age and culture. Rosenzweig's unpublished diaries, 1 the subject of this essay, poignantly indicate his struggle with the relativism and subjectivism that plagued German thinkers from Goethe to Nietzsche; it is this relativism that lies behind his eventual adoption of Offenbarungsgldubigkeit. The unpublished diaries of Franz Rosenzweig offer a rich tapestry of aphor- isms and short disquisitions, recording the reflections of a gebildeter young man. 2 x The diaries are deposited in the Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. A type- written transcript is also found in the Franz Rosenzweig Archive in Boston. The latter manu- script was made available to us through the kindness of Professor Nahum N. Glatzer, to whom we would like to express our sincere gratitude. *Excerpts from the early sections of the diaries with brief comments are given in N. N. Glatzer, 'Frank Rosenzweig in his Student Years', in Paul Lazarus Gedenkbuch. Beitrdge zur Wiirdigung der letzten Rabbinergeneration in Deutschland, ed. by Schlomo Riilf, Jerusalem 1961, pp. 143-153. Citations from the diaries are also found in Franz Rosenzweig. His Life and Thought, presented by N. N. Glatzer, 2nd, revised edn., New York 1961, pp. 1-31, passim. 161