Contro l’autoctonia: il mare come metafora dell’ebraismo nel pensiero di Franz Rosenzweig

Abstract

In this essay I analyze the role of the sea from historical, symbolic and eschatological perspectives in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig, who proposed a radical philosophy of the diaspora. I consider his historic-philosophical account of the opposition between land and sea in Globus and compare it with his theological-political analysis of Judaism in the Star of Redemption. I show how his conception of an uprooted Judaism coheres with his critique of the nation-state, already developed during the war years. I spell out the metaphoric significance that the sea has in Rosenzweig’s Globus in order to illuminate the complex relationship between state and diaspora, history and eternity.