William Kolbrener FROM MASCULINE ONTOLOGY TO FEMININE ETHICS: JOSEPH SOLOVEITCHIK AND THE DRIVE TOWARD THE ETHICAL In 1825, in the State Papers Office in London, a long and idiosyncratic tract on Christian Theology---written in Latin, with the title De Doctrina Christiana---was discovered. Previously unknown, the work was among the state papers collected by Oliver Cromwell’s Foreign Minister, John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost. 1 For scholars, the posthumous “publication” of the work has become an opportunity for reassessing Milton’s major poetic works, and also for considering the development of Milton’s theological ideas. In a distant but parallel case, Joseph Soloveitchik is a figure whose major works were not all published when first written, and have been steadily published since his death. In the past two decades, thanks to a consortium of both family mem- bers and students, his works continue to be published, adding depth and nuance to his scholarly reputation. 2 In my book, The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition, I argue for a split between Soloveitchik’s representation of Talmudic hermeneutics and ethics. 3 Where Soloveitchik, I argue, con- ceives of a timeless tradition of Talmudic interpreters with models of cognition and hermeneutics based upon conquest, his ethical works, particularly essays written in the late nineteen-fifties (collected in Out of the Whirlwind), have a this-worldly orientation and presuppose a con- ception of multiple agencies, and the toleration of different perspec- tives. 4 I suggest that for Soloveitchik, the authenticity of the ethical personality, his conception and adaptation of the ethical norm, became for him a means of his self-fashioning, allowing for a form of individ- uation unavailable to him in a Brisk tradition of halakhic men. 5 In the appropriation and transformation of the Brisk conception of hiddush, [novel interpretation], taken out of the study-hall into the realm of the self, Soloveitchik elaborates the possibilities for individuation, some- times even at odds with the interpretive tradition of halakha. A set of new works published under the title Halakhic Morality: Essays on Ethics and Mesorah, includes lectures composed between 1950 and 1953, and provides additional material for the exploration doi:10.1093/mj/kjy014 ß The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mj/kjy014/5091907 by guest on 02 October 2018