Is the Human Being Redeemable? A Self-Defeating Question

Abstract

Rosenzweig’s pathos with respect to an ultimate redemption raises the question of the desirability of a state in which so much has to be undone in order to retain nothing but the One, the All, the Eternal, and the True. Similar doubts arise concerning Rosenzweig’s portrayal of the ways that this state of redemption is anticipated in life: through prayer, love of neighbor, the communal hymn of the We. How accessible are these to “the human being” as such? Rather than arguing against what appears as a grand remnant of the urge for totality, I invoke here two figures whose concepts of redemption partly resemble Rosenzweig’s, but depart from him in ways that make all the difference: Benjamin and Kafka.