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<blockquote type="cite"><span class="citation"><b>The Emergence of
Ethical Man.(Book review).</b> Daniel Rynhold. <br>
<b><i>Religious Studies</i></b> 42.3 (Sept 2006): p364(5). </span><span
class="citation"></span>
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<p class="small"><img src="cid:part1.01070505.04010404@aishdas.org"
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vspace="" width="16"><span class="small"><b>Full Text :</b>COPYRIGHT
2006 Cambridge University Press</span>
<br>
</p>
<p>Joseph B. <span class="hitHighlite">Soloveitchik</span> The
Emergence of Ethical Man, <span class="hitHighlite">Michael</span> <span
class="hitHighlite">Berger</span> (ed.). (Jersey City NJ: Ktav
Publishing House, 2005). Pp. xxii + 214. [pounds sterling]20.00 (Hbk).
ISBN 088125 873 3.
</p>
<p>
Feted as the figurehead of the form of Judaism that became known as
modern orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik (1903-1993) gained a
reputation as one of the foremost Jewish thinkers of the twentieth
century. This status, which transcended denominational and religious
divides, was based on a relatively small number of philosophical and
theological essays. Since his death, however, a number of
Soloveitchik's unpublished manuscripts have entered the public domain
through the MeOtzar HoRav series, under the expert stewardship of David
Shatz and Joel Wolowelsky. The Emergence of Ethical Man (EEM), edited
by Michael Berger from ten handwritten notebooks, is the fifth and
possibly most significant volume of the series so far.
</p>
<p>EEM focuses on Soloveitchik's abiding interest in elucidating
'religious anthropology ... within the philosophical perspective of
Judaism' (xii), as he himself describes it in a letter excerpted in a
helpful editor's introduction. Part 1 utilizes the opening chapters of
Genesis, a text Soloveitchik returned to many times, to put forward an
account of man that emphasizes his continuity with the natural world.
Part 2 begins with the central question of how man emerges as a unique
ethical being out of these entirely naturalistic origins and continues
with an account of the corruption of the ethical personality through
sin. Finally, Part 3 deals with the rehabilitation of man through a
description of the various manifestations of what Soloveitchik terms
the 'charismatic personality' as embodied in Abraham and Moses.
</p>
<p>While naturalistic elements have always been present in
Soloveitchik's work, they appear far more marked in EEM, and he is keen
throughout Part 1 to distance himself not only from Greek and Christian
views, but also from the widely held Jewish view that insists on a
qualitative metaphysical distinction between man and nature. As Berger
notes in his introduction, the work is 'revolutionary in that it breaks
with traditional metaphysical categories that are the warp and woof of
medieval Jewish commentary and philosophy, and instead bases its
analysis purely on the categories of the natural and social sciences'
(xxi), an observation that is entirely borne out by what follows.
</p>
<p>The basic point in Part 1 is that' man may be the most developed
form of life on the continuum of plant-animal-man, but the ontic
essence remains identical' (47). Indeed, in his account of the famous
biblical idea that man is made in the image of God (tzelem elohim) he
explicitly rejects what he takes to be the metaphysical and
transcendental Christian reading of the term tzelem. Instead, in a
description that surpasses even the strongly scientific elucidation of
the term in 1965's The Lonely Man of Faith, Soloveitchik insists that
tzelem 'signifies man's awareness of himself as a biological being and
the state of being informed of his natural drives' (75-76).</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">Fascinating take on
"Tzelem Elokim." One wonders what the zayde (in this case, R' Chaim
*Volozhiner* would have had to say about this. Is there any precedent
in earlier Jewish sources for this definition?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p></p>
<p>The impression one gains that Soloveitchik's naturalism is more
pronounced here than in his published writings on Genesis is probably
in part down to the anthropological perspective from which he is
writing. Thus, in his 1964 essay Confrontation where Soloveitchik takes
his favoured typological approach, 'natural man' is derided as a
hedonically minded pleasure seeker. The contrasting anthropological
perspective of EEM means that 'natural man' is used as a descriptive
anthropological category and thus there is no call for any such
evaluative judgement. In EEM it is, for Soloveitchik, simply a true
description of the nature of man.
</p>
<p>With the naturalistic context in place, Part 2 turns to the
emergence of ethical man. Firstly, in order to experience the ethical
norm, external divine intervention is necessary. Only through the
divine command can man transcend his natural biological self and
experience the ethical. This is because the ethical imperative has to
be 'experienced as both a must and as something that may be resisted or
ignored' (81), and this normative pull cannot derive from nature since,
as Soloveitchik notes, 'biological motivation is neutral as far as
ethical standards are concerned' (87). So, on the one hand Soloveitchik
retains a fact/value distinction such that an 'ought' can never arise
from an 'is'. He can only conceive of value emerging from a realm
beyond the natural and given the religious framework of his thinking,
God is naturally the source of value. Yet Soloveitchik insists on
retaining his naturalism at the human level, concluding Part 2 by
saying that 'the ethical personality is not transcendent. It only
reconsiders its own status in a normative light, conceiving the natural
law as identical with the moral law' (144). So man remains a biological
rather than metaphysical being, but man's unique ethical perspective
emerges through his encounter with the divine imperative.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">"Natural law" sounds to
me like Rousseau. Is RYBS suggesting that human beings are "naturally"
ethical? It seems that he is saying more than that: That to be ethical
is also not connected to being transcendent - viz., a person who
attempts to transcend this world is a priori "unethical." Is this Ba'al
Mussar's (!!!) deriding Chassidim/Mekubalim?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p></p>
<p>What is most important about this divine imperative is its role as
a
condition of the freedom necessary for the emergence of the ethical
personality. The divine imperative does not play a Euthyphro-like role
of defining the good. Instead, we find in more Kantian fashion talk of
the divine imperative as a necessary condition of freewill and the
normative 'must'. Indeed, the echoes of Kant are unmistakable in much
of what he has to say about 'universal natural morality' (154), whether
when referring to the charismatic man who 'refuses to obey an external
authority ... [but] discovers the ethos himself' (153), or when writing
that 'the postulate of freedom is necessary ... for the legitimation of
the very essence of the ethical experience' (77, emphasis added).
</p>
<p>The further stages of the emergence of the ethical similarly
revolve
around the 'postulate of freedom'. Thus, Soloveitchik's second stage
requires that man conceive of himself as separate from nature, and
through this consciousness of otherness, as a subject standing against
an object, he understands that he is a free being (78). And in an
interesting parallel with much contemporary Jewish thought from Buber
through to Levinas, the full emergence of the free ethical personality
requires the third stage of confronting the 'thou' through the creation
of the other. Interestingly for Soloveitchik scholars, though Buberian
elements have long been detected in Soloveitchik's writings, EEM is the
first work to explicitly reference his works, albeit not in relation to
this particular issue.
</p>
<p>Soloveitchik goes on in Part 2 to give an account of 'the Fall'
and
consistent with the naturalism of Part I, 'Man's sin consisted in
betraying nature.... Naturalness is moral, unnaturalness is sin' (141).
A close reading of the Genesis text yields for Soloveitchik the idea
that sin arose as a result of the seduction of humanity by pleasure,
causing a split in a once harmonious personality. In what is more than
a nod to Kierkegaard, Soloveitchik describes how pursuing an unbridled
hedonism that respects no boundaries causes man's ethical self to split
from his esthetic self. This schism in man's personality means that
repentance is achieved through the ' rebirth of a harmonious
personality by returning to God and eo ipso to one's own selfhood'
(136-7). EEM's detailed working out of his view of sin supplies us with
a natural corollary for the similarly naturalistic view of repentance
familiar from Soloveitchik's other works.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">Olam hafuch ra'isi.
Shouldn't that be: "Morality is natural, sin is unnatural?" What is the
different connotation of RYBS's formulation?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p></p>
<p>It is in Part 3 of the book, probably its most original section
for
those familiar with Soloveitchik's writings, that we find him return to
a more typological approach in his account of the rehabilitation of the
ethical personality through 'charismatic man'. The 'charismatic
personality' achieves the restoration of the human personality to its
original unity through realizing the covenant with God in history.
Soloveitchik traces his development through an analysis of the biblical
personalities of Abraham, and in particular Moses, who moves through a
number of stages of development. At this point, though no less rich and
suggestive, the thread of the argument becomes more difficult to follow
and it seems less completely developed to this reviewer. Though this
can only be pure speculation, given that we are reading a work that
Soloveitchik never published, one wonders whether this section of the
text had been less worked through.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">Charisma: <b>cha·ris·ma</b> (kə-rĭz'mə)
<!--BOF_HEAD-->n. <!--EOF_HEAD-->
<!--BOF_SUBHEAD--><i>pl.</i> <b>cha·ris·ma·ta</b> (-mə-tə)
<!--BOF_DEF--></p>
<ol type="1">
<li>
<ol type="a">
<li>A rare personal quality attributed to leaders who arouse
fervent popular devotion and enthusiasm.</li>
<li>Personal magnetism or charm: <i>a television news program
famed for the charisma of its anchors.</i></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li><i>Christianity</i> An extraordinary power, such as the ability
to perform miracles, granted by the Holy Spirit.</li>
</ol>
<i>The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition</i>. Retrieved January 13, 2007, from Dictionary.com website.<br>
<br>
How does this definition fit with RYBS's usage? Surely he means
something else by "charisma." But what? <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p></p>
<p>What is abundantly clear, though, is the characteristically
Soloveitchikian conflict that we find in the attempt to realize the
covenant, which is thwarted by a natural reality that does not simply
yield to a covenantal teleology. In parallel to the redemption of the
individual, therefore, the realization of the covenant requires that
two orders, this time the natural human and the charismatic historical,
are brought into harmony. And it fell to Moses, in his guise as the
apostolic personality, to begin the process of redeeming the tension
between the two. And again in characteristic style, we find man in this
world at the centre of this covenantal history. Thus, 'God worked
through Moses in order to introduce man into the sphere of historical
creativeness. Let man himself attempt to realize the covenant' (184).
</p>
<p>As a number of writers have noted, this 'this-worldly' emphasis in
Soloveitchik's work meant that he did not pay much attention to
eschatological questions. It is particularly striking therefore that
ultimately, with its talk of covenantal realization, Part 3 is all
about a lengthy historical process of messianic redemption.
Nonetheless, the 'this-worldly' approach retains its hold throughout,
most notably in what is his lengthiest reflection on immortality. Thus,
we are told that 'Abraham did not conquer death in the metaphysical
transcendent sense. His immortality is through and through historical'
(169). And again 'the first concept of immortality as coined by Judaism
is the continuation of a historical existence throughout the ages....
The deceased person does not lead an isolated, separate existence in a
transcendental world. The identity persists on a level of concrete
reality disguised as a people' (176). While he is careful to note that
this is only the 'first' concept of immortality, it is the only one
that he discusses. Moreover, this is all given a messianic aspect when
combined with the view that 'the realization of the moral goal is not
to be found within the bounds of an individual life span. The
individual may contribute a great deal to the fulfilment of the ethical
ideal, yet he can never attain it. A moral telos is gradually realized
in a historical process' (168). In a naturalized eschatology that owes
much to one of Soloveitchik's most significant philosophical
influences, Hermann Cohen, what begins as a view of immortality as
continued historical existence culminates in the covenantal realization
of a messianic moral vision.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">Is man's drive to
immortality then primarily the drive to enter history? This might
actually link up RYBS with Dr. Isaac Breuer - no coincedence,
considering the common influences on their thought.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p></p>
<p>Of all the volumes to have seen the light of day so far in this
series, this one is probably the greatest treasure trove for
Soloveitchik scholars. It genuinely advances and refines themes
familiar from his published works, and throws up all sorts of further
questions for research, particularly regarding his intellectual
influences. Though we are not informed of the dating of these
manuscripts, much of the material in EEM obviously parallels that
contained in the more 'existentialist' works of the 1960s. Yet we also
see a continuation of his earlier fascination with Kant and Hermann
Cohen, all of which should be of particular interest for Soloveitchik
scholars. But in addressing general questions regarding the place of
the ethical in the religious sphere and as an example of how a
contemporary thinker committed to an orthodox religious tradition can
attempt to make philosophical sense of it in a non-apologetic manner,
it is also entirely accessible to the non-Jewish reader and would act
as an excellent introduction to Soloveitchik's oeuvre.
</p>
<p>
DANIEL RYNHOLD
</p>
<p>
King's College London</p>
<br>
<br>
<span class="small"><b>Named Works:</b> The Emergence of Ethical Man
(Book) Book reviews</span><br>
<br>
<span class="small"><a name="sourceCitation" id="sourceCitation"></a><b>Source
Citation:</b> <span class="citation">Rynhold, Daniel. "The Emergence
of Ethical Man.(Book review)." <i>Religious Studies</i> 42.3 (Sept
2006): 364(5). <i>Expanded Academic ASAP</i>. Thomson Gale. Ramapo
Catskill Library System. 13 Jan. 2007 </span></span></blockquote>
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