Synopses & Reviews
Franz Rosenzweig, one of the century's great Jewish thinkers, wrote his gem of a book in 1921 as a more accessible precis of his famous
Star of Redemption. An elegant introduction to Rosenzweig's "new thinking,"
Understanding the Sick and the Healthy was written for a lay audience and takes the form of an ironic narrative about convalescence. With superb simplicity and beauty, it puts forth an important critique of the nineteenth-century German Idealist philosophical tradition and expresses a powerful vision of Jewish religion. Harvard's Hilary Putnam provides a new introduction to this classic work for a contemporary audience.
"Today, more than three-quarters of a century after it was written, the critique of philosophy in this book is what makes it of such great interest. Critique of philosophy has been a central theme of twentieth-century philosophy, and many philosophers have attacked some of the targets that Rosenzweig attacked in his little book. Yet this early attack by a profound religious thinker is far more powerful and far more interesting than most."
--From the new introduction by Hilary Putnam
Review
Today, more than three-quarters of a century after it was written, the critique of philosophy in this book is what makes it of such great interest. Critique of philosophy has been a central theme of twentieth-century philosophy, and many philosophers have attacked some of the targets that Rosenzweig attacked in his little book.Yet this early attack by a profound religious thinker is far more powerful and far more interesting than most. Like the later Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig contrasts the pretensions of philosophy with the ways in which language ('names of things') is used in the stream of life? Hilary Putnam, Harvard University
Review
Rosenzweig's Understanding the Sick and the Healthy is a rare gem of a book. The importance of Rosenzweig's work-like that of Walter Benjaminis only now beginning to emerge. Like Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig explicitly undertakes to provide a therapy that will liberate the reader from philosophical questions as they arise. Three features of Rosenzweig's little book now seem ahead of their time: first, his desire not to eliminate the wonder with which philosophical questioning begins; second, his insistence on reconceiving and thus preserving the traditional subject-matter of metaphysics; and third, his seminal thought that wonder within that nexus could be expressed within a life lived according to the liturgical calendar of Judaism, with its alternation between profane and sacred time? Paul Franks, Indiana University, Bloomington
About the Author
Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) taught philosophy at the University of Frankfurt and is the author of Hegel and the State and The Star of Redemption.
Table of Contents
Introduction,1999
Introduction
Preface to the "Expert"
Preface to the Reader
1. THE ATTACK OF PARALYSIS
2. VISIT Al' THE SICKBED
3. DIAGNOSIS
4. THERAPY
5. A PROFESSIONAL EXCHANGE OF LETTERS
6. THE CURE: FIRST WEEK
7. THE CURE: SECOND WEEK
8. THE CURE: THIRD WEEK
9. CONVALESCENCE
10. BACK To WORK
Epilogue to the "Expert"
Epilogue to the Reader
Notes
Acknowledgments
Chronology and Works