The Ontological Halakhic Man:

On the Relation between the Thought of

Joseph Soloveitchik and Martin Heidegger

Dr. David Hyatt

davidraanan@gmail.com

Western Galilee College

Acco, Israel

1
 Scion to a Talmudic dynasty and perhaps the most influential figure in modern
Jewish orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik sought to integrate Western thought
with a classical Judaism in which Jewish law or halakhah, is understood as an a priori
revelation of the divine will, a dynamic system capable of continuous re-interpretation
and application. In his seminal essay, Halakhic Man (1944)1, Soloveitchik
repeatedly refers to the "ontological" approaches of his three protagonists: homo
religiosus, cognitive man and their sublimated synthesis, the man of halakhah.2 On
the whole scholars have stressed the epistemological, neo-Kantian orientation of
Soloveitchik's halakhic man,3 one largely informed by the cognitive type who is
assumed to be opposed to the ontological orientation. While I do not contest the neo-
Kantian influence on the cognitive and halakhic types, I have chosen to take
Soloveitchik's use of terminology seriously. My claim is that underlying the
approaches of all three types and particularly that of the halakhic individual is an
ontological orientation influenced by Martin Heidegger.4 More specifically I claim
that this influence can be shown through Heidegger's tool analysis and the dynamic
between objects that are present-at-hand [vorhandenheit] and ready-to-hand

1
Translated by Lawrence Kaplan. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1983). All page
references to Halakhic Man in this essay will appear non-footnoted.
Soloveitchik followed Edward Spranger's methodology of lebensformen, the positing of ideal types 2
which represent certain social, aesthetic, religious or political ideals. Spranger, Types of Man—
The Psychology and Ethics of Personality, tr. by Paul J. W. Pigors. (Halle, Germany: Max
Niemeyer, 1928).
3
See Lawrence Kaplan, “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. R. Soloveitchik.” Tradition 14,
1973, pp. 43-64; "Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Philosophy of Halakha." The Jewish Law Annual 7,
(1987),139-197; Aviezer Ravitzky, “Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge: Between
Maimonidean and Neo-Kantian Philosophy.” Modern Judaism, 6 (1986), 157-188; William
Kolbrenner, “Towards a Genuine Jewish Philosophy” in Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B.
Soloveithchik, ed. by Marc D. Angel. (Hoboken, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House, 1997);
Bruckstein, Almut Sh. “Halakhic Epistemology in neo-Kantian Garb.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 5,4 ,
(1998), 346-368; Dov Schwartz. Religion or Halakhah, The Philosophy of Rabbi B. R. Soloveitchik
Volume One, tr. by Batya Stein. (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007); Robert Erlewine, "Cultivating
Objectivity: Soloveitchik and the Marburg School and Religious Pluralism," in Judaism and the West.
(Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2016), 129-156.
4
For other scholars who have noted the affinities between the thought of Soloveitchik and Heidegger,
see Reinier Munk's The Rationale of Halakhic Man: Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish
Thought. (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben Publisher, 1996); Murray Johnston's Engagement and Dialogue:
pluralism in the thought of Joseph B. R.Soloveitchik. (Masters Thesis, Department of Jewish Studies,
McGill University. Montreal, 1999). Eliot Wolfson's, Eternal Duration and Temporal Compresence:
The Influence of the Habad on Joseph B. Soloveitchik in The Value of the Particular: Lessons from
Judaism and Modern Jewish Experience: Festschrift for Steven t. Katz on the Occasion of His 70th
Birthday, Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson eds. (Koninklijke: Brill, 2015), 207-212. Daniel
Herskowitz, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Endorsement and Critique of Volkish Thought," Journal
of Modern Jewish Studies, Vol. 14, No 3, November, (2015) and "The Moment and the Future:
Kierkegaard's Øieblikket and Soloveitchik's View of Repentance." Vol. 40, Issue 1, (April 2016), 87-
99.

2
[zuhandenheit], which in Halakhic Man are equivalent to the distinction between the
ontic and the ontological. Soloveitchik does not consistently use these terms in the
Heideggerian sense, but rather adapts them to the purposes of his own discourse. To
make my case, I shall first present some circumstantial evidence regarding the young
Soloveitchik's exposure to Heidegger's writings and lectures. This will be followed
by a brief discussion of neo-Kantianism and Soloveitchik's doctoral dissertation on
Hermann Cohen in which he critiques Cohen's conception of being. Then, after
explaining Soloveitchik's ontological terminology in Halakhic Man, we shall review
Heidegger's tool analysis and a variety of his seminal concepts, such as mood
[Stimmung], thrown-ness [Geworfenheit] and attunement [Befindlickeit]. From here
we will tackle the main task of this paper—exploring how these concepts are tacitly
affirmed and criticized in Halakhic Man, both from the perspective of ontology and
ethics.

Historical Context
Making a claim for a rapport between Soloveitchik and Heidegger may,
considering Heidegger's political orientation, elicit surprise. But when Soloveitchik
was studying in Berlin between 1926-1932,5 Heidegger's political sympathies and
anti-Semitism were either dormant or clandestine.6 Heidegger's fresh, approach to
ontology attracted many Jews, among them Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Emmanual
Levinas, and Herbert Marcuse, as well as the young Joseph Soloveitchik who read
Being and Time either then or at a later date.7 Years later, while reminiscing about his
Berlin years, he said that he had found Heidegger's approach to be "spiritual,"8 adding
that, "I was in Martin Heidegger's class. I was a good student. He continually spoke

5
In 1926 R. Soloveitchik moved to Berlin where he enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University to
study philosophy and economics. He graduated in December, 1932 with a doctorate in philosophy.
See Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff's and Dov Schwartz's entry in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition,
Vol. 18. (Jerusalem: Macmillan, 2007), 777.
6
It was only in 1934, when he assumed the rectorship of Freiburg University and delivered his
infamous university address that his Nazi sympathies became clear. See David Novak, "Buber's
Critique of Heidegger," in Modern Judaism, Vol. 5. No. 2 (May, 1985), 125-140. To many of his
disciples, especially the Jewish ones, Heidegger's political sympathies came as a shock, though in
retrospect scholars have been able to trace its insidious development. See Michael Zimmerman,
Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990),130-131; and Pete Eli Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassierer,
Davos. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 309-312.
7
In an oral communication R. Zev Gotthold, a friend of R. Soloveitchik, reported that Soloveitchik
read Being and Time and commented on its difficulty. Johnston, 121.
8
Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Vol 1, 195. KTAV
Publishing House, Hoboken, N.J.,1999.

3
about human destiny, spiritual perception, and the events of that time...."9 These
words pose a biographical conundrum since Soloveitchik spent his German years
(1926- 1932) in Berlin and during this period Heidegger taught in Marburg and
Freiburg. It seems, then, that Soloveitchik may have been something of a traveling
scholar, a possibility which lends support to conjectures that he attended the famed
debate between Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland during the spring of
1929.10 If Soloveitchik had been attending Heidegger's lectures in Freiburg, he was
then only 50 kilometers from the Swiss border. The Davos debate attracted a wide
array of European students and intellectuals including Emmanuel Lévinas (at the time
studying with Husserl in Freiburg). The possibility of Soloveitchik's attendance is
intriguing because, as I show elsewhere, many of the issues of that debate emerge in
the conflicting themes and tensions of Halakhic Man.11
In general, there is much mystery or perhaps suppressed information regarding
the exact details of Soloveitchik's extended sojourn in Germany. These were the
interwar years of the Weimar republic—an economically and politically unstable
period marked by tensions between an exuberant liberalism, growing conservatism
and incipient fascism. In philosophical circles, the mood of disillusionment that
followed Germany's defeat in World War I brought a concomitant disillusionment
with the intellectual icons and philosophical schools that dominated the scene prior to
the war.12 Prominent among these was Hermann Cohen and the Marburg school of
neo-Kantianism.13 The opposition to neo-Kantianism was expressed by various forms
of historicism and philosophical anthropology, all of which held that truth claims are
influenced by and must be contextualized within the historical, cultural or
biographical context in which they were conceived.14

Rakeffet-Rothkoff, ibid.9
See Seymour Kessler, “Soloveitchik and Levinas: Pathways to the Other.” (Judaism: 51, 4, 2002), 10
453; and Peter E. Gordon's, “Continental Divide: Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger at Davos,
1929—An Allegory of Intellectual History." (Modern Intellectual History, 1, 2. Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 227.
The Redemption of Nature in the Philosophical Writings of Rabbi Joesph Dov Ber Soloveitchik . 11
(Ramat Gan. University of Bar Ilan, 2015) [Dissertation], 64-68.
See Daniel Herskowitz, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Endorsement and Critique of Volkish 12
Thought”, 382-384.
13
See Gordon, Continental Divide, 62-67.
14
For a summary of this period see Joachim Fischer's, Philosophische Anthropologie: Eine
Denkrichtrich: Eine Denkrichtung des 20 Jahrhunderts (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2008). The origins of
this critique can be traced back to Herder, Hegel and Marx. See Martin Jay's Marxism and Totality:
The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas. (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1984), 43-68.

4
 As we shall see, Soloveitchik's critique of Cohen in his dissertation reflects this
atmosphere. In the 1920's and 30's when Soloveitchik was formulating his ideas, he
was exposed to Dilthey's hermeneutics (with its emphasis on historicity and individual
norms15), Husserl's phenomenology (with its call for a return to the thing itself and the
life world), Scheler's lebensphilosophie (stressing that human consciousness is
constituted within a specific umwelt or worldly environment16) and of course
Heidegger's notion of the for-structure of being--Dasein. With this emphasis on life
and experience emerging in many philosophical schools, it is perhaps not gratuitous
that the subtitle of the first and largest part of Halakhic Man is, "His World View and
His Life". It is especially in this part that Soloveitchik is at pains to contextualize
halakhic man's ontological consciousness within autobiographical situations set
against vibrant natural phenomena.

Neo-Kantianism and Soloveitchik's Dissertation on Hermann Cohen

From the perspective of halakhic man's Kantian and neo-Kantian orientations

(which we will review in the next section), nothing could be more foreign than to
conceptualize his approach ontologically. The Kantian project renounces knowledge
of noumenal essences and/or things-in-themselves and this knowledge is traditionally
what ontology seeks. 17 Still, Kant did recognize the existence but unknowable
influence of the noumenon. However, 75 years after Kant, Hermann Cohen argued
that the noumenon should be altogether rejected as the locus organizing sensual
perception. In Cohen's interpretation of Kant, sensual objects have no objective
reality, but are merely a stimulus provoking cognition or thought (Denken). Within
thought these stimuli are spontaneously created as quantifiable objects which are
reduced (by a process which he called the infinitisimal calculus) until they attain a

See The Halakhic Mind (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 14, 30, where R. Soloveitchik cites 15
Dilthey. Daniel Rynhold argues for a hermeneutical rapport between Dilthey's notion of Erlebnis (life
experience) and R. Soloveitchik's conception of "reconstruction" in The Halakhic Mind. See
Rynhold's, “The Philosophical Foundations of Soloveitchik’s Critique of Interfaith Dialogue.”
(Harvard Theological Review, 96), 112-114
In Halakhic Man Husserl and Scheler are cited together on p. 14, and Scheler is cited an additional 16
four times (pp. 14, 68, 153n82, 161n125, 161n127, 164n147).
17
Though Kant often treats these terms synonymously, at times he differentiates them, treating the
noumenon as a limiting concept or boundary of knowledge and the thing-in-self as the domain of this
this beyond. See Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, tr. F. Max Muller, (New York: Anchor Books, 1966),
398-403; and Henry E. Allison's, "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental
Idealism" (The Kantian Review, March, 2006), 1-28.

5
qualitative value which simulates the senses.18 The mind then arrives at "pure"
constructs (categories and judgments), which are used to build scientific objects and
then goes back to the murky world of sensual "reality" to check that its constructs
nevertheless correspond to those illusive stimuli and perceptions. After approving this
cognitive process, thought finally becomes what Cohen calls consciousness
(bewusstsein). For Soloveitchik, the crucial point is that Cohen rejects Kant's claims
for the role of receptivity (aka, sensibility) 19 since he locates the "origin" of being and
concrete reality in the infinitesimal calculus of the mind and not the sensual world.
Soloveitchik's doctoral dissertation, Das reine Denken und die
Seinkonstituierung bei Hermann Cohen,20 is an analysis and critique of Cohen's Logik
der Reinen Erkenntnis (which, in turn, is Cohen's critique of Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason). In the section entitled Sein, Soloveitchik accuses Cohen of attributing an
exaggerated role to cognition, arguing instead that the being of objects is inextricably
mingled with a relation to the sensible, empirical world. Cohen's attempt to free
being from the qualitative world led to the, "complete de-actualization of being."21
He therefore rejected Cohen's approach, claiming that the qualitative component of
being precedes quantitative operations of cognition and judgment. "That which is
unique about the object of judgment," he wrote, "is that it gives full claim to the
existence of being. Being must, therefore, be the origin of all data which thinking
seeks to verify, that which first grounds the object of one's judgment and gives it its
dignity"22 It is this "dignity" that Soloveitchik also wishes to attribute to the halakhic
judgments of objects in Halakhic Man. 23

Cohen is not interested in the everyday cognition of objects. His approach takes a clear stand 18
regarding the interpretation of Kant's First Critique. One approach claims that the Critique relates to
the perception of objects in everyday life and the other only to the scientific perception of objects.
Cohen is a major proponent of the latter (See Schwartz, Religion or Halakhah, 47-54, 73-81, 88-94).
19
See Munk, 29-30. For the role of receptivity and understanding in Kant's First Critique see Stephen
Engstrom's "Understanding and Sensibility" in Inquiry Vol 49, No. 1, 2-25, (February 2006).
Joseph Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken und die Seinkonstituierung bei Hermann Cohen (Berlin: 20
Verlag Reuter & Reichard, 1933). [Henceforth Das Reine Denken]
21
"die vollständige Entwirklichung des Seins" Das reine Denken, 90 (Munk's translation, 49)
22
"Das Einzigartige an dem Urteilgegenstand besteht eben in seinem vollen Anspruch auf das Sein.
Das Sein muß dem nach als ein ursprÜngliches Datum des Denkens gelten, das erst den Urteils
gegenstand begrÜndet und ihm Dignität verleiht." (my translation), Das Reinen Denken, 86-87.
In his summary and analysis of R. Soloveitchik's book, Reinier Munk concludes that :23
The statement that the infinitesimal is reality exemplifies, to Soloveitchik, that Cohen went too far in trying to
free being from the yoke of sensualism…[by] dissolving the concept of being into the concept of the
infinitesimal. In fact, Soloveitchik concludes, Cohen's Logik [der Reinen Erkenntnis] does not offer an
interpretation of being, for 'reality' does not represent the true being but, instead, remains an eternal task, eine
ewige Aufgabe. Thought approximates reality without reaching it….Cohen's theory of the construction of
being appears to be marked, according to Soloveitchik, by an equation of being with the "carrier of being", the
infinitesimal… [which] is equated illicitly with reality. The equation of reality with the carrier of being is the

6
The Ontological Cadence

Soloveitchik begins his essay with the express aim of discovering the
"ontological approach" of halakhic man, a person who "reflects two opposing
selves"(3) that are "radically different"(5)—homo religiosus and cognitive man.24

[I]n order to fulfill the task we have set before us in this monograph, we must undertake a
comparative study of the fundamental and distinctive features of the ontological outlooks
of homo religiosus and cognitive man. For only by gaining an insight into the differences
and distinctions existing between these two outlooks will we be able to comprehend the
nature of halakhic man, the master of talmudic dialectics. (4-5)

Derivations of the word ontology (ontic, ontological) appear in at least 11 of Halakhic

Man's 21 chapters and allusions to the notion of being appear in all of them. Twice in
his footnotes he directly refers to Heidegger, the thinker who put ontology back onto
the 20th century philosophical map. The first reference is with scalding deprecation as
the representative of, "the phenomenological, existential, and antiscientific school "
(141) which he accuses of offering philosophical grist to the ideologues of World War
II and the Shoah.25 This long footnote, rife with pain and disillusion is surprising for
various reasons. First, its righteous and accusatory tone finds no correspondence in
the rest of the tex. This suggests that these comments were written after he completed
his essay (and learned of Heidegger's Nazism), since Halakhic Man is replete with
positive references to existential and phenomenological thought, especially with
respect to homo religiosus.26
To complicate matters, Soloveitchik's second reference to "the philosophy of
Heidegger" is with great praise. He describes halakhic man's, "development from

result of the exclusion of perceptions as a source of knowledge. As a result, the physical actuality is deprived
of its independence. (Munk, 48-49. Das reine Denken, 86, 88-90, 108)
24
In the original Hebrew, eesh dat and eesh da'at.
25
He throws Heidegger into a disparate group of thinkers—Bergson, Nietzsche, Spengler, and
Klages—all of whom express the, "Romantic aspiration to escape from the domain of knowledge," the
"sanctification of vitality and intuition, the veneration of instinct, the desire for power, the glorification
of the emotional-affective life and the flowing, surging stream of subjectivity, the lavishing of
extravagant praise on the Faustian type and the Dionysian personality," all of which have "brought
complete chaos and human depravity to the world. And let the events of the present era be proof!"
(141)
26
Schwartz, 42-52.

7
'inauthentic existence' to 'authentic existence'" as exemplifying the capacity for, "self-
creation" which he lauds as, "an ethical norm, an exalted value, which Judaism
introduced into the world." (164) Though, as we shall see later, what Soloveitchik
means by authenticity is in many ways directly opposed to the Heideggerian version,
he nevertheless invokes Heidegger's philosophy to support his conception of halakhic
authenticity. In the latter part of this essay I shall explore this intriguing discrepancy
which will pose us with several questions. Did Soloveitchik misunderstand
Heidegger's notion of authenticity or did he deliberately misrepresent him, assuming
the role of what Harold Bloom would call the "strong poet" – an act of appropriation
and re-definition of a powerful predecessor?27 Furthermore, we must ask, why should
Soloveitchik have left such opposing assessments of Heidegger's thought in his
footnotes? Was he tacitly encouraging us to read between the lines, to separate
between ideas that were "pure and holy at their inception" and later became,
"profaned and corrupted in modern culture"?(164) It is my claim that this is indeed
his intention, though it requires that one sift through Halakhic Man's narrative to find
the Heideggerian currents informing the personalities of homo religiosus, cognitive
man and particularly, the man of halakhah.

Our inquiry begins when this Heideggerian current is a mere rivulet, with the
terms which Soloveitchik uses to describe the orientation of his various types:
religious, cognitive and halakhic man. All three, he writes, express an "attitude." (8,
9, 13,16) This ostensibly neutral word is consistently juxtaposed with the language
of ontology. He writes that the "ontological" orientation of halakhic man reflects the
two "attitudes"(8) of the religious and cognitive types.

[T]hese two attitudes parallel the twofold nature of existence itself. The ontological
dualism is a reflection of an ontic dualism." (8)
[T]he ontic dualism is transformed into an ontological dualism. The duality in the
attitudes of cognitive man and homo religiosus is rooted in existence itself. (9)
These attitudes toward reality are prevalent both in pantheistic and theistic systems. [16]

27
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1973), 19-48.

8
In the original Hebrew, Soloveitchik's word for attitude, zika, means affinity,
propensity, involvement, attachment .28 As types, all of these personalities find
themselves asserting an attitude that has already been formed for them even before
they begin to form themselves in it. We do not witness them choosing their mode of
being, but already situated within an attitude to a reality that they find "at hand," (19,
20,105) – an expression which, we shall soon see, also resonates strongly in Being
and Time.
Soloveitchik's description of human personality as expressing certain types was
borrowed from Eduard Spranger's Lebensformen.29 Himself a student of the
historicist philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, Spranger argued that the individual is born
into a language and society whose values and norms become the platforms for self-
construction. Soloveitchik endowed Spranger's notion of types with ontological
cadences, conceiving them as attitudes which share many similarities with
Heidegger's related notions of mood, attunement and thrownness. By "mood,"
Heidegger means the state of being in which one is "always already" 30 found or
attuned even before one begins to decipher the world.31 Heidegger distinguishes his
notion of mood from a "psychological" state but at the same time it is not outside the
mind. It is a "fundamental existential" component of reality itself." 32 "It comes
neither from 'without' or 'within,' but rises from being-in-the-world itself."33 For
example, we never say that a mood is in us, but that we are in a certain mood.
"Moreover, we never master a mood by being free of a mood, but always through a
counter mood."34 In other words, one is always already in a mood and it is this pre-
structure that gives moods their "existential" quality. The capacity to develop an
awareness of these moods is what he calls attunement and the sensation of finding
oneself already in a certain mood or attitude without having constructed it, is what

28
The term appears in the Talmud's discussion of levirate marriag to describe the first feelings a man
has for the woman who may be his wife (Yevamot: 17-19, 30).
29
Types of Men (Lebensformen; Halle (Saale): Niemeyer, 1914; translation by P. J. W. Pigors (New
York: G. E. Stechert Company, 1928). Spranger types were the theoretical, aesthetic, economic,
social, political and religious. See: "Spranger's Dimensions of Value,"
http://www.hfr.org.uk/figures/spranger.htm
Being and Time, tr. Joan Stambaugh. (Albany: State University of NewYork Pre ss,1996) 127, [134]. 30
Henceforth, BT.
31
See Katherine Withy, "Situation and Limitation: Making Sense of Heidegger on Thrownness."
(European Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 22, Issue 1, March 2014), 61-81.
32
BT, 127, [134].
33
Ibid 129, [136].
34
Ibid, 128 [136].

9
Heidegger calls the experience of thrownness.35 His famous term Dasein
morphologically reflects this existential dimension of reality—one's da (there), given-
ness or mood—precedes one's being (sein); it is the matrix into which sein is thrown
and finds itself.

The Ontic and the Ontological

Two iconic Heideggerian terms that appear throughout Halakhic Man are the
dynamic between the ontic and the ontological. Before turning to Soloveitchik's use
of these terms, let us briefly recount how Heidegger understands them. This summary
can hardly to justice to the nuances and range of these notions in Being and Time, let
alone in his life's work. However, what follows should suffice for initiating our
comparison with Soloveitchik. Heidegger offers various definitions of the ontic, all
of which reflect his phenomenological training under Husserl. Firstly, he tells us that
it is the "outward appearance" of, "things which are in the world: houses, trees,
mountains, stars."36 It is also the "apriori" of "being," its "self-evident character" that
allows "things at hand [to] be encountered."37 In other words, for Heidegger the ontic
expresses the way phenomena present immediately themselves to us. As such the
ontic very much resembles Husserl's phenomenological reduction (the epoché), in
which one does not question the existence or non-existence of objects, let alone
engage in Kantian questions regarding appearances and the noumenal thing-in-itself;
instead, one "brackets" a phenomenon (whether physical or imagined) as a reality
worthy of investigation. In contrast, Heidegger's notion of the ontological is not
concerned with what things are but with how they are. It is a questioning and
exploring of the being of things. On the one hand, this includes an inquiry into a wide
range of moods, such as care and anxiety. However, the ontological is not concerned
with how these moods inform our awareness of the things themselves, but rather how
they describe our involvement with them, how when in acts of engagement, the
distinction between subject and object dissolves. For Heidegger, ontological being is
found neither in subject nor object, but in the activity of involvement.

35
"Attunement discloses Dasein in its thrownness." (ibid)
36
BT, 59 [65].
37
Ibid, 79, [85].

10
 Soloveitchik elicits the notions of the ontic and ontological at the very beginning
of Halakhic Man. He writes that the attitude of homo religiosus and cognitive man
expresses an "ontic" and "ontological "dualism" (8-9) which is also a "pluralism"
(13,16) since there are innumerable objects that may enter into such a relation. There
are various differences between the ontic and ontological attitudes of these two types.
Though they both engage ideas and empirical reality, they do so from different ontic
starting points. For homo religiosus the ontic is the face of the world--"natural
phenomena" and "knowledge" of the laws of nature (11)--whereas the ontological is
the supernal realm that eludes cognition and representation..

[H]omo religiosus is intrigued by the mystery of existence—the mysterium tremendum—

and wants to emphasize that mystery. He gazes at that which is obscure without the intent
of explaining it and inquires into that which is concealed without the intent of receiving
the reward of clear understanding….Homo religiosus sees the entire ordered world, the
entire creation which is delimited and bound by the law as a cryptic text whose content
cannot be deciphered, as a conundrum that the most resourceful of men cannot solve. The
riddle of riddles is the very nature of the law itself. (7-8)

Homo religiosus is drawn toward the numinous dimension of religious experience, or

what Rudolf Otto calls the mysterium tremendum which exists beyond the screen of
empirical reality.38 One's ability to become aware of the mysterium is necessarily
fleeting -- it "discloses in order to hide, reveals in order to conceal."(10)—a
characteristic which Soloveitchik identifies in Rambam's "doctrine of negative
attributes."(11)39
Cognitive man, in contrast, celebrates the ontic which for him consists of
mathematical, scientific "a posteriori" and "a priori" (17) laws and rational systems
which are used to establish "correlatives" with the nebulous world of qualitative
reality. He denies ontic status to the sensual, empirical dimension, viewing the realm
of the senses as a murky, indeterminate zone which, "[he] has no desire to

38
Rudolf Otto's study on The Holy was often quoted by R. Soloveitchik. See Halakhic Man: 4, 67,
139n4, 150n50, The Halakhic Mind, 3, 119n, 120n. For more on Otto and R. Soloveitchik see,
Schwartz, Dov. Religion or Halakhau, The Philosophy of Rabbi B. R. Soloveitchik Volume One,
translated by Batya Stein. (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), 15, 162.
39
For Soloveitchik, Rambam is a complex figure, sharing qualities with religious and cognitive man.
See Schwartz's, Religion or Halakhah, chapters 3-4.

11
apprehend." (19) Cognitive man equates this dubious, indeterminacy with the
Kantian noumenon, an ontological domain that has no relevance for him.

[Cognitive man] has no wish to passively cognize reality as it is in itself. Rather, first he
creates the ideal a priori40 image, the ideal structure, and then compares it with the real
world. His approach to reality consists solely in establishing the correspondence in effect
between his ideal, a priori creation and concrete reality… And having achieved this aim he
has fulfilled his task. For he is concerned not with the concrete, qualitative phenomena
themselves but only with the relationship that prevails between them and his a priori, ideal
construction. (18)

For the cognitive type, the only reality which has pertinence is thought itself and is
known when identifying the, "correspondence" between the "a priori" and the
"concrete." As Soloveitchik points out, the cognitive type shares many features in
common with Cohen's neo-Kantianism, where the infinitisimal calculus acquires the
status of reality itself.41 Both the cognitive and the religious types grant natural laws
with ontic status. But cognitive man sees these laws as the very building blocks of
reality, while homo religiosus sees them as a "riddle" or screen, hiding it. Both the
religious and the cognitive personality degrade and invalidate the realm of nature and
concrete phenomena. However, they differ in that the religious personality wants to
get beyond nature whereas the cognitive personality, although he is a this-worldly
type in so far as he dismisses the transcendent realm, invalidates the concrete realm
of nature as a reliable source of knowledge. In brief, Homo religiosus valorizes the
ontological and cognitive man, the ontic.

40
Soloveitchik’s use of the a priori is idiosyncratic and hovers between a priori and a posteriori
assumptions. “Knowledge is said to be a priori (literally: prior to experience) when it does not depend
for its authority on the evidence of experience, and a posteriori when it does so depend.” (The Oxford
Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich. (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1995), 43. For Kant a priori
refers to a truth claim that is derived by virtue of the structures of the human mind while a posteriori
refers to a truth claim that has been derived, created or learned from empirical evidence (ibid).
Soloveitchik uses a priori to refer to the laws, rituals, and customs of a religion—truths which are
contingent on whether or not one consciously accepts the normative system of a given religion.
However, the origin of these truths is not in experience but in G-d. As Rachel Elior formulated it,
"although the metaphysical origin of [Soloveitchik's use] halakha comes from G-d and is thus beyond
human consciousness”, the practicing Jew uses halakha as a means of, “developing, categorizing
and…understanding” reality which thereby gives halakha an a priori effect to a posteriori laws derived
through the Torah and Talmud. [Rachel Elior, “On the Problem of Halacha’s Status in Judaism: A
Study of the Attitude of Rabbi Josef Dov Halevi Soloveithcik.” Forum, 30-1 (1978), 149-153]; see
also Schwartz, Religion or Halakhah, The Philosophy of Rabbi B. R. Soloveitchik Volume One, tr. by
Batya Stein. (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), 52, 73, 97-98.
41
See Halakhic Man, footnote 18, (146).

12
Halakhic and Heideggerian Signs and Tools

Soloveitchik devotes the greater part of his essay to describing how the halahkic
personality expresses several similarities and differences with homo religiosus and
cognitive man. From each of them he takes their most outstanding feature-- cognitive
man's stress on ontic, a priori halakhic categories and homo religiosus's stress on
ontological experience-- the ineffable, uncontainable quality of being. Yet in contrast
to both these types, who ultimately negate the sensible realm, halakhic man conflates
and transforms these features onto a this-worldly plane, interweaving them with
natural phenomena and social relations. The result is something quite new, a
"singular, even strange…type that is unfamiliar to students of religion." (3)
Soloveitchik begins his description of halakhic man's particularity by tacitly
eliciting one of the central concepts of Heidegger's Being and Time--the notion of
handiness. He tells us that, "When halakhic man approaches reality, he comes with
his Torah, given to him from Sinai, in hand." 42 For example, "When halakhic man
comes across a spring bubbling quietly, he already possesses a fixed a priori relation
with this real phenomena." (19, my emphases) Three times he uses this Heidegerrian
phrase of the "at hand" to describe how one "already" "comes" to the world and
"finds" oneself with an attitude toward it. (19,20,105) First, when he compares the
similarities between the cognitive and halakhic attitude. Next, in the above example
with respect to halakhic man, and finally, with respect to man in general and his
"creative capacity." (105)
Heidegger's distinction between the present-at-hand and ready-to-hand is
arguably the central organizing theme of Being and Time.43 First presented in his
discussion of the handiness of signs and tools, he defines the character of the "sign" as
a "useful thing" that is "at hand."44 Its "handiness" consists of "indicating" a
"relation" between the ontic, isolated sign and its ontological referentiality or
"'serviceability.'"45 He writes,

42
Kaplan translates b'yad, "in hand" (19, 20) and "at hand" (105),
43
This is the thesis of Graham Harman in Tool Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects
(Chicago: Open Court, 2002).
44
BT, 73, [78].
45
Ibid, 72,[77].

13
 Signs are something ontically at hand, which as this definite useful thing, functions at the
same time as something which indicates the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, of
referential totalities, and of worldhood.46

Examples of signs include "boundary-stones, the mariner's storm-cone", "car signals"

and "signs of mourning."47 To become aware of the ready-to-hand, "ontological
structure" of these signs one must not focus on the coordination between sign and
signified on a synchronic axis. Rather, one must attempt to be attuned to diachronic48
trajectories—a periphery that exerts itself before any synchronicity comes into direct
awareness. In readiness, signs do not have single, specific meanings but are part of
"referential totalities" that allow,

what is ready-to-hand be encountered ; more precisely, they let some context of it become
accessible in such a way that our concernful dealings take on an orientation and hold it
secure. A sign is not a Thing which stands to another Thing in the relationship of
indicating; it is rather an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment
into our circumspection so that together with it, the worldly character of the ready-to-hand
announces itself…[It] comes as an addition to what is already present-at- hand … Signs
always indicate primarily 'wherein' one lives, where one's concern dwells, what sort of
involvement there is with something.49

Their ready-to-hand character is not "indicated" as a present-at-hand relation of sign

and signified relation but rather "announces" itself as a "totality." The ready-to-hand
is not a singular object of inquiry but is part of an indeterminate, non-thematic whole.
It gestures toward, "where one's concern dwells," announcing, "an involvement" and
"care" before and beyond what is "already present-at-hand."50 Heidegger prefers the
word "equipment," rather than object, entity or "'things'" (denigrated with quotes) to
emphasize that a ready-to-hand 'thing' exerts a surplus of meaning even before the act
of contemplating it. The physical and intellectual tools we use to understand,
manipulate and construct reality do not exist in isolation but are already caught up in a

Being and Time, tr. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (New York:Harper Row, 1966) 77 46
[83]; Stanbaugh translates Zuhandenheit as handiness, 114. It is reasonable to assume that
Soloveitchik read the text in the original and therefore adapted vorhandenheit and zuhandenheit to his
ideas.
47
Ibid, 72 [77], 75 [80—81].
48
The axis of morphological, phonetic and hermeneutic associations.
49
BT, Macquarrie and Robinson 110-111 [80]
50
See also, ibid, [84,192].

14
system of references to "other equipment : ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad,
table…These 'Things' never show themselves proximally as they are for
themselves…51-- they are part of an ebullient "totality" of relations which,
paradoxically, is limitless.

Soloveitchik's halakhic man uses the halakhah to relate to the world in a manner
strikingly akin to Heidegger's tool and sign. For example, as halakhic man
encounters, "the spring bubbling quietly," he "already" has, "his Torah, given to him
from Sinai, in hand." (19) The tradition that coalesced at Sinai and has been
developing ever since, directs and permeates his consciousness as he encounters the
stream. Again, he writes that this "Torah" which he "already" has "in hand," consists
of a generative series of associations, "complex laws,"

regarding the halakhic construct of a spring. The spring is fit for the immersion of a zav (a man
with a discharge); it may serve as mei hatat (waters of expiation); it purifies with flowing water; it
does not require a fixed quantitity of forty se'ahs; etc." (20)

This "etc." goes on for many pages as example after example of natural and social
phenomena are elicited to set the halakhic personality into a series of possible
relations with natural and social reality. In each encounter halakhic man mentally
grasps the halakhah as if it were literally a tool in hand to organize his
understanding of the world. Ultimately, it is neither the object nor the halakhic sign
which becomes the focus of his attention but a vivid, this-worldly reality, "pulsating
with…strength" (33), received through the mesorah, the passing down of an oral
tradition-- a totality of relations.52 He uses these halakhic tools--which "he already
possesses" (20)--to construct a world where he is already being constructed.

The Concrete Immediacy of Halakhicizing

Until now we have explored how in its handiness the specificity of the halakhic
tool is enveloped into a sea of relations. However, we have also begun to see that the
ever peripheral influence of the "at hand" is balanced by a counter movement that
heightens one's awareness of objects, setting one into what Heidegger would call a
"primordial" relation with them. This intensified reality is created by the ontic-
ontological play between the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand. For Soloveitchik

51
Maq. [68].
52
See And From There You Shall Seek, where Soloveitchik develops his conception of mesorah.

15
this is true both for the halakhic tool/sign and the concrete, sensual qualitative world it
engages. His text is replete with descriptions of "at hand" halakhot revealing, "the
beauty and splendor" of a richly colorful "world" (37,38) depicted with bracing
imagery such as "fresh, green, moist myrtles" (30), "mighty mountains", "the swelling
sea"(36), "the rays of the rising sun" (36), "an exquisite autumn sun…sinking…into a
sea of purple and gold"(38) and a "pale moon casting its delicate strands of light."
(106) Even the mathematical aspects of halakhah, "take on form and color." (38)
"Not only the qualitative world bursts forth into song, but so does the quantitative
world. From the very midst of the laws there arises a cosmos more splendid than all
the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo." (84)53

This lyrical intensity and celebration of the sensual immediacy of halakhic man's
qualitative and quantitative reality raises a nagging question. Doesn't Soloveitchik's
rhetoric contradict the Neo-Kantian orientation of halakhic man—one in which the
concrete world is invalidated? How, on the one hand, can he write that halakhic man,
"has no wish to passively cognize reality as it is in itself" (18)54 and then go on to
describe his "performance of commandments…[as being] confined to this world, to
physical, concrete reality, to clamorous, tumultuous life." (33) His vivid, vital
depictions of nature are not merely Neo-Kantian "stimuli" to spur halakhic cognition.
They exert an immediate reality on a par with the immediacy of his halakhic
constructions—a reality created in the fluctuation between quality and quantity. The
qualitative and the quantitative each consist of an ontic-ontological dualism and these
two dualisms are set into relation with each other, creating an, "ontic and ontological
pluralism." (16) By engaging in this dialectical play, halakhic man actively creates a
reality that emerges in the process of using the halakhic tool.

Similarly Heidegger's ontological reality is found neither in the tool or sign

"itself" nor in the object toward which it directed. "When we are primarily and
exclusively oriented toward that which is objectively present, the "in itself" cannot be

In his essay and eulogy "Mah Dodekh Midod", written for his uncle, R. Chaim of Brisk, whom he 53
considered the epitome of a halakhic man, he wrote, "the halakhic man 'sees' halakhic data, 'senses'
halakhic ideas is if they were data of tone, color, or smell. He dwells in the halakhah which constitutes
his world, just as the natural world he dwells in is his world, with its profusion of colors, with its tones,
its fragrances, its warmth…" translated and cited from Lawrence Kaplan's, "Rabbi Joseph B.
Soloveitchik's Philosophy of Halakhah." The Jewish Law Annual 7, (1987), 165-6.
54
Halakhic man, "creates the ideal structure a priori image, the ideal structure, and then compares it
with the real world," (ibid)

16
ontologically explained at all."55 Rather, it is in one's handy usage of the tool--the
coordination between tool and object--that "primordial" reality emerges. Heidegger's
paradigmatic illustration of this is in one's use of a hammer.

the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing-and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the
more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it
encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the
specific 'manipulability' ("Handlichkeit")56 of the hammer. The kind of Being which
equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself it its own right—we call "readiness-to-
hand" [Zuhandenheit]. Only because equipment has this 'Being-in-itself' and does not
merely occur, is it manipulable in the broadest sense and at our disposal. No matter how
sharply we just look at the 'outward appearance' of Things in whatever form this takes, we
cannot discover anything ready-to-hand.57

One's "primordial…relationship" to the hammer emerges as the specific object called

a hammer dissipates into the referentiality of the "'readiness to hand.'" While using
the tool one acquires an intimate knowledge of both the tool and the object upon
which it is directed. Heidegger calls this the "in order to" of the object which fosters a
cognizance of its tangibility together with its use and purpose. This is not an
understanding of how the tool is being used, but that in being used, the tool gives forth
its being, its ipseity or there-ness.58 In the long passage quoted above, Heidegger
goes so far as to call this state, "'Being-in-itself.'" This ontological pun on the
Kantian phrase shows how his approach is both near and far from the Kantian
orientation. It is near because like Kant and Cohen, he is not attempting to describe a
noumenal reality beyond the senses. Yet he is doubly far, because not only is he a
phenomenologist (and thus concerned with concrete 'appearances' and not the
categories of thought that organize perceptions), but he is also an ontologist, claiming
that readiness-to-hand is the phenomenological equivalent of ontological truth.
With respect to the ontological relations of halakhic man, we can say that just as
the "Being-in-itself" of the hammer is only understood by the act of hammering, so
too the being of halakhah is grasped ontologically only in the act of halakhicizing.
Take the following passage as an illustration.

55
BT, 71 [76], Stanbaugh.
56
"handiness," in Stambaugh's translation.
57
Maq. 69
58
"Es gibt" Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, p. 73. GA 56/57. (cited in Harman, 81)

17
 If a Jew cognizes, for example, the Sabbath laws,…if he comprehends, via a profound
study and understanding that penetrates to the very depths, the basic principles of the
Torah law…then he will perceive the sunset of a Sabbath eve not only as a natural
cosmic phenomenon but as an unsurpassingly awe-inspiring , sacred, and exalted
vision—an eternal sanctity that is reflected in the setting of the sun. I remember how
once, on the day of Atonement, I went outside into the synagogue courtyard with my
father, just before the Ne'ilah service. It had been a fresh, clear day, one of the fine,
almost delicate days of summer's end, filled with sunshine and light. Evening was
approaching fast, and an exquisite autumn sun was sinking in the west, beyond the trees
of the cemetery, into a sea of purple and gold. R. Moses, a halakhic man par excellence,
turned to me and said: 'This sunset differs from ordinary sunsets for with it forgiveness
is bestowed upon us for our sins' (the end of the day atones). The Day of Atonement and
the forgiveness of sins merged and blended here with the splendor and beauty of the
world and with the hidden lawfulness of the order of creation and the whole was
transformed into one living, holy cosmic phenomenon (38).

When the halakhic tool is engaged with the world of nature and society, the end result
is neither the a priori halakhah nor its direct object of inquiry. Both are transformed
into a new, palpable reality, partially given to thematization and partially exceeding
itself. The anecdotal style of this passage, like so many others in Halakhic Man,
stresses that halakhic "cognition" is not simply an act of the mind. It is existential; it
takes place in specific moments of life. Enmeshed in time and space, it is a physical,
emotional activity.59 (Recall that chapter one is called, "His Life and His World.")
During the above moment of halakhicizing both the "Sabbath laws" and the sunset are
experienced as something more than themselves, more than a quantifiable halakhic
category and natural "phenomenon," but rather a unique and inimitable moment of
life. Is it the sunset or the halakhah that initiates the Sabbath or that atones during
Ne'ilah? Both and more. Halakhicizing is an experience that cannot be defined or
contained by language or law; it is at once immediately at hand but out of reach--
"unsurpassingly awe-inspiring," "an eternal sanctity," expressing a "hidden
lawfulness." While halakhicizing, the world sustains and perpetuates more than itself,
the exertion of a presence that transcends the totality of reference.60 Eliciting

59
See Daniel Rynhold and Michael J. Harris, "Soloveitchik on Modernity and Jewish Orthodoxy:
Nietzsche, and life affirmation, asceticism, and repentance." Harvard Theological Review, 101:2,
(2008), 253-284.
60
See Shmuel Trigano, Philosophy of the Law: The Political in the Torah. (Jerusalem, New York.
Shalem Press, 2011), 19-20, 39-43.

18
Yitzchak Luria's notion of the tzimtzum, Soloveitchik writes that the act of halakhic
cognition expresses the, "contraction of the infinite within the finite, the transcendent
within the concrete, the supernal within the empirical and the divine within the realm
of reality." (48)61 Halakhicizing endows the world with an uncontainable surplus of
meaning and a heightened, authentic, immediacy.

Beyond Readiness—Creativity

In the remainder of this essay, I wish to sketch how the halakhic type's attitude
both affirms and critiques a Heidegerrian ontology. What Soloveitchik calls halakhic
man's "creative capacity," shares certain features of Heideggerian ontology, but
ultimately tips the balance in favor of the ontic value of halakhah, a structure that
perpetuates a creative activity which is normative but only tentatively ethical.

Halakhic man's relationship to existence is not only ontological but also normative in
nature. In truth, the ontological approach serves as the vestibule whence he may enter the
banquet-hall of normative understanding. Halakhic man cognizes the world in order to
subordinate it to religious performances. (63)

Soloveitchik was well aware of the problem of prioritizing and valorizing the
ontological mode of readiness-to-hand. Though one must pass through its
"vestibule," he recognized that remaining there could lead to a fascination with a pre-
rational, "primordial" world in which one surrenders to a receptivity that suspends
hermeneutic determinations. Though Soloveitchik's halakhic man acknowledeges the
reality and importance of the ontological, he is committed to a creative activity which
moves beyond the ontological receptivity of readiness.

Man initially is receptive, is pure potentiality. But creation, by definition, means

spontaneity, actuality, action, renewal, aspiration and daring….The creature must become
a creator, the object who is acted upon [must become] a subject who acts…(131, my
emphasis).

Soloveitchik's halakhic man is "acted upon" by the ready-to-hand attitudes which are
cast upon him. He is thrown into a pre-formed world whose referentiality exceeds

61
In the Davos debate, Heidegger also described the "infinitude in the ontological" and how the
"human being" becomes "infinite" in the act of "the understanding of being." (from the transcript of the
debate in Gordon, 166-167).

19
his particular consciousness. This pre-thematic state of readiness intensifies his
relation to the world, but awareness alone is not enough. The halakhic individual
insists upon implementing what he calls a priori laws--logical, axiomatic structures--
to analyze and create new understandings of himself and the external world. These
ontic networks are Soloveitchik 's strategy for aligning the halakhic personality with
the "rational principle," to combat what he saw as a fascination with the irrational,
"anti-scientific" currents of thought lurking in "the school of Heidegger." (141)62
We shall now explore two such strategies of halakhic rationalism, both of which
integrate and critique Heideggerian notions of authenticity. The first concerns how
the halakhic type deals with the authentic angst of facing one's death and the second
with the creation of personality—the creative drive to exist or to be authentically--
which Soloveitchik argues, is the urgent impetus of halakhic cognition.

Death and Creativity

Two anecdotes are presented in which the halakhic type confronts his own death.
In the first anecdote Soloveitchik expresses an attitude toward death which closely
resembles Heidegger's, while in the second, he rejects the Heideggerian approach.
The first retells a moment when Soloveitchik's grandfather, R. Hayyim of Brisk, was
"absorbed" in the "beauty and splendor" of a "glorious, cosmic, spectacle"-- the "rays
of the rising sun." Ironically, this exalted moment immediately evoked within him an
awareness of his mortality so that he was soon filled with "a soul-shattering
melancholy and a black despair" (36-37) He is overwhelmed by the premonition that
beyond the joy and beauty of existence lurks an abyss of nothingness. Nevertheless,
this foreboding anxiety is construed positively—an expression of halakhic man's
commitment to a this-worldly reality, his enmeshment" in the very midst of the world
and the fullness thereof."(37) This profound involvement in reality goes beyond the
pre-thematic immediacy of the ready-to-hand , for unlike other such moments we
discussed, here he has no access to halakhic themes which can be used to ontically
adapt and transform this sublime encounter with natural beauty. Instead, one is left
only with a mood: "The fear of death is transformed into a quiet anguish, a silent pain,
and a tender and delicate sadness…" (ibid)

62
"The individual who frees himself from the rational principle and who casts off the yoke of objective
thought will in the end turn destructive and lay waste the entire creative order." (fn 4, 141)

20
 Soloveitchik's above meditation on death resonates strongly in Being and Time.
Heidegger notes that unlike one's relation to all other things, an "authentic" relation to
death lacks the "ready-to-and or present-at-hand" element of "equipment."63 Death--
the nothingness beyond existence--allows consciousness no ontic tool, sign or theory
with which to orient oneself. Heidegger understands this nothingness as the infinitude
which precedes existence. He encourages his readers to confront it. Upon doing so,
one experiences "Angst," – a dread which lacks an object to which it can be attributed
(as opposed to a "fear" whose source can be identified).64 However, this emersion
within angst is ultimately positive—it is an experience which "frees…Dasein" to,
"authentically be itself " by triggering the encounter with one's "ownmost
nonrelational possibility." 65 It is a radically subjective moment which cannot be
assimilated to the experience of "others"66 or to one's theoretical, social constructs. It
"individualizes" because there are no ontic relations or tools that allow one to
"bypass" this ultimate possibility. In contrast, an inauthentic relation to death
involves substituting this radically individual experience with constructs borrowed
from one's culture. Heidegger calls these cultural conceptions, the death of the
"they,"67 a death that can be thematized and represented, thereby allowing one to
"bypass" the unthinkable nothingness of death, and assuage the "Angst"68 it evokes.

Yet it seems to be exactly a death of the they that Soloveitchik celebrates when,
later, he recounts another incident of death anxiety. Here we shall see that it is the
ontic affirmation of halakhah that allows one to overcome the dread of death.

Death is frightening, death is menacing, death is dreadful only so long as it appears as a

subject confronting man. However, when man succeeds in transforming death-subject into
death-object, the horror is gone. My father related to me that when the fear of death
seized hold of R. Hayyim, he would throw himself with his entire heart and mind into the
study of the laws of tents and corpse defilement. And these laws…would calm the
turbulence of his soul and would imbue it with a spirit of joy and gladness. When halakhic
man fears death, his sole weapon wherewith to fight the terrible dread is the eternal law of
the Halakhah. The act of objectification triumphs over the subjective terror of death. (73)

63
BT, 241, [261].
64
BT, 314-316 [342-344].
65
BT, 243, [263].
66
BT, [264].
67
BT, 235 [254].
68
BT, 175, [187].

21
The halakhic attitude recognizes the existence of death anxiety. However, instead of
remaining suspended in the previous mood which oscillates between "black despair"
and "quiet anguish" (36-37), the study of "laws" concerning death, fills his spirit with
a profound "joy." Instead of celebrating the "subjective terror of death," he opposes
it. This "act of objectification," is an affirmation of the Heideggerian they since these
laws express social norms and customs related to death. For both thinkers death
individualizes, but it does so by very different means. For Heidegger it does so by
allowing one to plunge into the depths of one's subjectivity and confront the
unthinkable nothingness beyond life. Halakhic man also confronts this nothingness
but copes with it by diverting his gaze into the abyss and focussing upon cultural,
halakhic structures.

Both thinkers demand a choice, but a very different choice, based on different
approaches to the notion of authenticity. Indeed, one might be tempted to conclude
that what Soloveitchik calls authentic, Heidegger calls inauthentic. But if this is
entirely true, it leaves us with the problem of understanding what Soloveitchik meant
when writing that Heidegger's conception of,

the development from 'inauthentic existence' to 'authentic existence'"69 [as expressed in

Being and Time]70 in the thought of Heidegger71 expresses, "the obligatory nature of the
creative gesture, of self-creation as an ethical norm, an exalted value, which Judaism
introduced into the world… that norm which aspires to the complete realization of man in
the ongoing course of his ontic transformations." (164)

From a Heideggerian perspective there are several problems with this statement. As
we have seen, Heidegger understands the "ontic" as that which either veils
authenticity or is a necessary but secondary stepping stone leading to it. Furthermore,
he was a philosopher of ontology and had, at best, an ambivalent approach to ethics.
When ethical categories do appear in his thought (care, guilt, conscience,
resoluteness), the ethical mode he praises involves a suspension of .judgment and
remaining in the indeterminacy that precedes the assertion of norms and "values."72

69
In the Hebrew text, Soloveitchik cites these terms in German: "uneigentliches Sein…eigenliches
Dasein" Ish Halakhah, Giluy V'Nistar (Jerusalem, Sifriat Ilinar, 1979), 112.
70
This parenthetical was added by Lawrence Kaplan and approved by Soloveitchik.
71
These italicized words appear in Soloveitchik's original Hebrew text.
72
See his "Letter On Humanism" where his attack on "values" is expanded. Basic Writings, ed. by
David Farrell Krell. (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 232.

22
One attains ethical authenticity by making "resolute choices" that resist the norms
imposed by the they.73

Yet, if we attend carefully to the language that Soloveitchik uses to praise the
authenticity of the "creative gesture" (164), we will see that his position also shares
many similarities with Heidegger's ethics of "volunteerism."74 Soloveitchik's allusion
to authenticity refers the reader to Hugo Bergman's chapter on Heidegger,75 which we
can assume inflected or inspired Soloveitchik's reading of Heideggerian authenticity.
There, Hugo discusses Heidegger's distinction between two levels of conscience -- the
"vulgar" and the "existential" understanding of conscience.76 Borrowing from
Heidegger's language, Hugo's explains that existential conscience refers to the highest
"calling" of one's soul, the "mission" of one's life.77 When hearing this call one's life
is at stake, one is not judging a situation but one is being judged. In contrast, vulgar
conscience refers to the norms and dictates of society, norms which encourage
mediocrity and the compromise of one's innermost calling. In Being and Time,
Heidegger aligns vulgar conscience with the coercive force of the "they-self…the
common ambiguity of publicness" which leads one into a state of "irresoluteness," a
state which veers one away from one's existential conscience-- the "calling" to the,
"ownmost potentiality of being" to which each individual is "summoned."78 But
Heidegger also stresses that it is impossible entirely to bypass these public norms–
"resolutions are dependent on the they and its world." 79 There is a dialectical relation
between the they and one's calling, between vulgar and existential conscience.

To clarify his point, Heidegger returns to the dynamic which we have traced
throughout this paper. He explains that the ontic reality of the they is found "present-
at-hand," while beyond the they is the "ready-to-hand," a beyond that gestures toward
things for which one authentically "cares," one's "authentic" self, the calling which

Herman Philipse, "Heidegger and Ethics", (Inquiry, 42, 1999), 439. However, as Hans Jonas has 73
argued, "it is not for what or against what one resolves oneself, but that one resolves oneself [which]
becomes the authentic signature of authentic dasein." "Heidegger's Resoluteness and Resolve: An
Inverview," in Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, ed. Günther Neske and Emil Kettering (New
York: Paragon House, 1990), 201.
74
Philipse, ibid.
75
Hugo Bergman, Hogei Ha'dor /Contemporary Thinkers [Hebrew],(Tel Aviv, Mitspeh, 1935), 150-
151.
76
BT, 266-277 [289-301].
77
Bergman, ibid.
78
BT, 251-258 [272-280], 275 [299].
79
BT 253 [274], 275 [299].

23
summons the self.80 However, as with his conception of angst, he argues that this
true voice of conscience lies beyond the referentiality of the ready-to-hand, for it,
"hears and understands its own being summoned in a nonrelational way."81 Indeed,

The call does not say anything, does not give any information about events in the world,
has nothing to tell…"Nothing" is called to the self, but it is summoned to itself, that is, to
its ownmost potentiality of being…Conscience speaks solely and constantly in the mode of
silence.82

Heidegger's conscience lacks content. It is a blind imperative, the silent but

compelling call of being which is compromised the moment it is articulated. Like the
confrontation with one's unique death, the individual is summoned from the unique
nothingness of his or her being in the act of "taking care" of things found "ready-to-
hand."83 Finally, a person attains the ability of "authentically being-in-the-world,"
by willfully facing the nothing of his or her self with "resoluteness."84

Halakhic Man's Creative Ethics

Heidegger's "nonrelational" act of care is an expression of his reticent ethics.85

Soloveitchik, on the other hand, repeatedly declares that halakhic man's creative
potential is an "ethical" and "normative" injunction. Nevertheless, the moral content
of this demand is not immediately evident. Indeed, there are various similarities
between Heidegger's "non-relational possibility" and the "normative" ethic of
Soloveitchik's creative imperative. The ethical thrust of "man's task" (101, 105) to be
creative is one's resistance to the passivity of receptivity. (131) Like Heidegger's
calling to realize one's ownmost potentiality, it is a demand—Soloveitchik calls it a
longing, "to bring into being something new, something original" (99)—new
interpretations of Torah, of history or of one's self. He identifies the halakhic origins
of this concept in Maimonides "ontological outlook " (133) on providence and
prophecy, the "ontological privilege" (125) of certain individuals to create their "own
personality" -- to be "the subject who acts" and not "the object who is acted upon."
(130-131)

80
BT, Macquarrie & Robinson, 344 [297]
81
BT, 258 [280].
82
BT, 252 [273].
83
Ibid, Stambaugh and Macquarrie & Robinson.
84
BT, Macquarrie & Robinson, 344 [297]
85
John Paley, "Heidegger and the Ethics of Care." Nursing Philosophy 1(1) 64 (2000)

24
 The first step required to attain this active, unique personality is to separate
oneself from what Heidegger would call the they. Soloveitchik writes that the,
"public," "random" person,

exists solely by virtue of the fact that he was born a member of the species…His soul, his
spirit, his entire being, all are grounded in the realm of the universal. His roots lie deep in
the soil of faceless mediocrity; his growth takes place solely in the public domain. He has
no stature of his own, no original, individual, personal profile. He has never created
anything, never brought into being anything new…"(127)

To break out of this "universal" "mediocrity" requires that one re-create oneself by at
once engaging and resisting the "universal," "public domain." Soloveitchik writes
that by actualizing the "universal form," one's "own specific image" is not
"obliterated," but "acquires a particular form." (135)

This outlook is truly striking in its paradoxical nature. It is a hybrid of two views: the
view of Aristotle, with its emphasis on the universal, and the view of the Halakhah, with
its emphasis on the individual. The method is Greek, the purpose halakhic. The goal of
self-creation is individuality, autonomy, uniqueness and freedom. (ibid)

"Greek" is placed on the same axis as stasis, "forms" (123) and universality, whereas
"halakhic" relates to dynamic movement, development and "individual" "particular
existence" (124) Within the context of our discussion, this duality is equivalent to
the relation between ontic presence86 and ontological readiness. The moment of
authenticity is achieved when halakhic man actualizes (135) the "universal form" in
the particular. He is then able to perceive, "the norm as an existential law of his own
individual and spiritual independent being." (136) The willfulness of Soloveitchik's
merging of the universal and the particular parallels the resoluteness demanded by
Heidegger in attaining authenticity.

Nevertheless, there are significant differences between their approaches. The first
is Soloveitchik's commitment to the "ontic transformations" (164) of the individual
and in this respect there are indeed ethical implications. Though strictly speaking
there is no moral content to the "obligatory nature of [halakhic man's] creative
gesture" (164), his designation of it as a "commandment" and a "value" (ibid)

86
Heidegerrian "presence" corresponds to the present-at-hand and is comparable with Husserl's
epoché, the phenomenological reduction.

25
indicates that we are not in Heideggerian territory. Regardless of its content, an
imperative is structurally ethical. While Heidegger's calling is ontological, arising
from being itself, Soloveitchk's "task" is imposed externally, from the revealed, given
structures of the Torah. This given-ness attests to his task's ontic structure. But its
ethical content is a commitment to Eros, a rejection of valorizing the confrontation
with death and the inconceivable abyss. Halakhic man is committed to renewal
(105), "development," "repair" and "the complete realization of man" (164) and is
utterly opposed to the nothingness which Heidegger sees as the threshold of
authenticity.

When man, the crowning glory of the cosmos, approaches the world, he finds his task at
hand—the task of creation. He must…repair the defects in the cosmos, and replenish the
"privation" in being. Man, the creature, is commanded to become a partner with the
Creator in the renewal of the cosmos…(105, my emphases)

As we have seen, this handy task oscillates between readiness and presence. The
indeterminacy of the "privation of being" occupies the axis of ontological readiness
while the design and directionality of the act of repair comes from halakhah's ontic
"delineated law and limiting boundary" (104) Readiness endows the task with
spiritual depth and thrust while its aim and direction comes from ontic presence.

Halakhic creativity is generated by the dynamic between "relative nothingness"

(privation, readiness) and the "law" (102), both of which must prevent the individual
from falling into "absolute nothingness…chaos and void" (ibid) that precedes the
creation of the "cosmos," the something which emerged out of nothing. Heidegger is
fascinated by this nothingness and its "nonrelational possibility"87 which allows for
authenticity. Halakhic man, in contrast, steers clear not only of "absolute
nothingness," but is highly wary of "relative nothingness"-- the "'primordial stuff"88
of creation.

…the forces of relative nothingness at times exceed their bounds. They wish to burst forth
out of the chains of obedience that the Almighty imposed upon them and seek to plunge
the earth back into chaos and void. It is only the law that holds them back and bars the

87
BT, 243, [263].
88
Lawrence's translation (which was approved by Soloveitchik) of the Hebrew, "milfanim" which
likely comes from the Simchat Torah song, "Atzula milfanim kodemet hazmanim” ["Sublimity From
Before the Beginning of Time"].

26
 path before them. Now the Hebrew term for law, hok, come from the root h-k-k (which
means "to carve, engrave"). Thus the law carves out a boundary, sets up markers,
establishes special domains, all for the purpose of separating existence from
"nothingness," the ordered cosmos from the void, and creation from the naught. (102)

There is a bridge between "relative" and "absolute" nothingness but the "law" will not
allow one to cross it. The prohibition is also an ethical gesture. Soloveitchik refuses
halakhic man the option of a Heideggerian nothingness directed beyond equipmental
relations of presence and readiness. The "law" is an ontic tool marking the boundary
between the non-relational "void" and the "domains" of "existence." It is a screen--
a marker or separation (ibid), a commitment to differences and distinctions. As such
it is also a rational tool, allowing one to construct ideas, selves, worlds –to "'fashion,
engrave, attach, create'89, and transform the emptiness in being into a….holy
existence." (101) For Soloveitchik, this existential holiness is an expression of the
dynamic tension between the ontic and ontological, one which inflects reality with a
surplus, a "contraction of the infinite within the finite… the supernal within the
empirical." (48) For just as there is a relative nothingness within concrete reality,
there is a relative infinitude within the "domains" of halakhic reality, an effervescence
flickering between the ready-to and present-at-hand.

Conclusion: a final word on ethics

The ethical tensions in halakhic, covenantal ethics have been discussed by many
scholars90 including Soloveitchik himself.91 One of the contributions of this essay is
to articulate the Heideggerian nuances of this tension in Halakhic Man. In a nutshell,
the dilemma is this. If the basis for justifying halakhic norms is the identity between
the revealed law and a universal, rational (Kantian) morality, halakhah then becomes
superfluous. Laws which cannot be warranted by the categorical imperative must be
discarded, resulting in a separation between ethics and halakhah and ultimately
making the ontological ground of halakhah ethically "free" (66). On the other hand,

89
A citation from The Book of Creation—Sefer Yetzira.
See, Walter S. Wurzburger, Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal Ethics . 90
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994); R. Aharon Lichtenstein, “Is There a Morality
Independent of Halakah” in Modern Jewish Ethics ed. Marvin Fox. (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1972); Shalom Carmy, “Pluralism and the Category of the Ethical,” Tradition 30, 4 (1996):145-
163; and Avi Sagi, and Daniel Staatman, Religion and Morality. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995).
See, And From There You Shall Seek, translated by Naomi Goldblum. (Jersey City, New Jersey: 91
KTAV Publishing House, 2008), 54-55.

27
the ontic aspect of halakhah is informed by a teleological purposiveness. Halakhic
man believes that God is good and that by fulfilling these laws he will improve and
heal the world. As Soloveitchik writes,

The concept of freedom should not be confused with the principle of ethical autonomy as
proposed by Kant and his followers. The freedom of the pure will in Kant's teaching refers
essentially to the creation of the ethical norm. The freedom of halakhic man refers not to
the creation of the law itself, for it was given to him by the Almighty, but to the realization
of the norm in the concrete world." (153)

This is where Soloveitchik clearly parts ways with Heidegger. For as much as
Heidegger (in Being and Time and the "Letter On Humanism") veers away from the
assertion of norms, he also insists that authenticity consists in maintaining oneself in a
state of the "nonrelational" by resisting the leap into affirming and actualizing
received norms and values of a tradition. When in WWII he did take that leap, it was
not into the tradition of Western thought that he plunged, but into a pre-Socratic, neo-
Pagan language where he found the question of being still vibrant.92 Since, he
claimed, the West had gone astray, it was the "vocation" of the German nation to
return to the "primordial powers of being."93 where the "essent" (the ontic or present-
at-hand) "begins to waver and oscillate" upon the "possibility of non-being."94
Soloveitchik believes that by asserting the ontic priority of the halakhah, the
individual is protected from the seduction of the primordial. In other essays like The
Halakhic Mind95 and "Confrontation," Soloveitchik goes further, claiming that his
assertion is applicable not only to the dynamic tradition of halakhic Judaism, but to a
rational ethics, to what Gadamer would call a "social reason"96—a community of
interpreters who open themselves to the checks and balances of the hermeneutic
framework of a tradition.

92
Michael Zimmerman, Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 95.
93
Martin Heidegger, "The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics" in An Introduction to Metaphysics.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 38.
94
Ibid, 28.
The Halakhic Mind, 19-22, 79-81; "Confrontation.” Tradition 6, 2 (1964), 14; see also Carmy, 95
Shalom. “Pluralism and the Category of the Ethical” Tradition 30, 4 (1996):145-163; and William
Kolbrenner, The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Rabbinic Tradition. (Indiana University Press:
Bloomington, 2016), 5-6, 191-194.
96
Hans-Georg Gadamer, "What is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason," in Reason in the Age of
Science, tr. F.G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 80.

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