A Jewish moment

In his dissertation on Hegel’s conception of the State (1920), Franz Rosenzweig highlighted the role of Christianity in Hegel’s conception of the emergence of the universal. In is subsequent magnum opus, Der Stern der Erlösung (1921), a corner-stone in the history of modern Jewish thought, he is driven by the aspiration to rethink the relation between Christianity and Judaism, and to re-inscribe the Jewish historical experience into the history of world spirit. Thus he approaches the problem of the universal from a standpoint that involves a rethinking of the theological underpinning of Hegel’s system. The article explores how this is carried out through a new sense of time and temporality, epitomized through his repeated references to the temporality of the Augenblick, the “moment”. Taking his cue from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, he transforms this key concept from its Christian and existential significance, to designate a particular Jewish experience, of confessional life in exile, as a theological politics beyond the state, and even beyond history in its standard chronological sense.