Philosopher · Contemporary
Joseph B. Soloveitchik
1903–1993 · Brisker Talmudism; Neo-Kantian philosophy of halakhah
The Rav of Modern Orthodoxy, who in “Confrontation” (1964) set the terms on which Orthodox Jews would meet the Church after Nostra Aetate: cooperation on social and moral questions, no theological negotiation over faith commitments.
Heir of the Brisk dynasty of Talmudists and a Berlin doctor of philosophy on Hermann Cohen, Soloveitchik taught at Yeshiva University for over forty years and ordained most of a generation of American Orthodox rabbis. Halakhic Man (1944) portrays the Jew for whom the law is an a priori cognitive system through which he approaches the world as a mathematician approaches nature, and who creates himself through repentance; The Lonely Man of Faith (1965) reads the two creation accounts as two human types, Adam the majestic maker of civilization and Adam the covenantal, who seeks redemption in a community with God and the other. Kol Dodi Dofek (1956) answers suffering not by theodicy but by the question what the sufferer is now called to do, and reads the State of Israel as the knock of the Beloved. He kept the halakhah whole, embraced secular learning as itself commanded, and refused to make Judaism a philosophy.
Why he matters: A Catholic reading The Lonely Man of Faith meets a religious anthropology as rich as Guardini's or Wojtyła's, built from Genesis alone; his “Confrontation” explains why the dialogue the Church sought after Nostra Aetate has taken the shape it has, and his insistence that faith communities not negotiate their doctrines is a sober reminder to both sides.
Where to be careful
He denies the Incarnation, holds the Torah to be the final and complete revelation, and refused theological dialogue with the Church as a confrontation between faiths each of which must keep its own integrity; his account of the law as a quasi-mathematical a priori is foreign to the Church's reading of the ceremonial law as fulfilled in Christ (ST I-II q. 103). His doctrine of the person called by God to loneliness and covenant, and his defense of free will and repentance, are common ground.
Reading
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Halakhic ManJoseph B. Soloveitchik · The portrait of the Jew for whom the law is the form of the mind.
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The Lonely Man of FaithJoseph B. Soloveitchik · Adam I and Adam II; the shortest and most accessible entry.
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Nostra AetateSecond Vatican Council, 1965 · The declaration whose program of dialogue “Confrontation” answered and bounded.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.