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Rabbi Soloveitchik wants to discern whether, existentially, a person of faith can live and function in a modern technological society enamored of quantitative methods and bent on material triumphs.
Thus, God bids the human being to live in a dialectical fashion, oscillating between creative, victory-bent man and humble, submissive man.
And here is the rub: the need for oscillation means that the man of faith has no single home. He is a wanderer, striking roots in one community, only to then uproot himself and travel to another, in a perpetual cycle. This continuous oscillation is a source of loneliness—and it cannot be overcome. Because Adam the Second must, by divine mandate, enter Adam the First’s community as well, complete redemption is unattainable.
Turmoil and sacrifice, not comfort and placidity, are, by divine edict, the hallmarks of authentic religious life.
rejects views held by religious thinkers who see no religious significance in cultural developments.
We find as well inventions of new religions—often, to be sure, for the sake of transcendence and spiritual meaning, but often, too, for the sake of pleasure, comfort, and aggrandizement.
The gap between religious and secular moralities today is far wider than in 1965. Withdrawal becomes attractive to some as a strategy for spiritual and ethical survival.
Today’s men and women of faith feel, no less poignantly than their predecessors, the need both to engage the world and to affirm themselves as individuals seeking God who integrate themselves into vibrant covenantal communities.
I despair because I am lonely and, hence, feel frustrated.
Three possible reasons for loneloness: 1) Kierkegaard's ontology of non-being 2) Personal worries making one feel lonely 3) product of Western society?
What can a man of faith like myself, living by a doctrine which has no technical potential, by a law which cannot be tested in the laboratory, steadfast in his loyalty to an eschatological vision whose fulfillment cannot be predicted with any degree of probability, let alone certainty, even by the most complex, advanced mathematical calculations—what can such a man say to a functional, utilitarian society which is saeculum-oriented and whose practical reasons of the mind have long ago supplanted the sensitive reasons of the heart?
Of course, since we do unreservedly accept the unity and integrity of the Scriptures and their divine character, we reject this hypothesis which is based, like much Biblical criticism, on literary categories invented by modern man, ignoring completely the eidetic-noetic content of the Biblical story. It is, of course, true that the two accounts of the creation of man differ considerably. This incongruity was not discovered by the Bible critics. Our sages of old were aware of it.* However, the answer lies not in an alleged dual tradition but in dual man, not in an imaginary contradiction
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Soloveitchik's thesis
Modern science has emerged victorious from its encounter with nature because it has sacrificed qualitative-metaphysical speculation for the sake of a functional duplication of reality and substituted the quantus for the qualis question.
He is concerned not with the question per se, but with its practical implications.
Adam 1 interested in the practical application of how the world works --> how can he use his understanding to more fully master the world?
Adam the first is overwhelmed by one quest, namely, to harness and dominate the elemental natural forces and to put them at his disposal.
environment.
Adam 1 seeks kleos
Hence, dignity is unobtainable as long as man has not reclaimed himself from coexistence with nature and has not risen from a non-reflective, degradingly helpless instinctive life to an intelligent, planned, and majestic one.
There is no dignity without responsibility, and one cannot assume responsibility as long as he is not capable of living up to his commitments. Only when man rises to the heights of freedom of action and creativity of mind does he begin to implement the mandate of dignified responsibility entrusted to him by his Maker.
Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague with degrading helplessness could not lay claim to dignity. Only the man who builds hospitals, discovers therapeutic techniques, and saves lives is blessed with dignity. Man of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who needed several days to travel from Boston to New York was less dignified than modern man who attempts to conquer space, boards a plane at the New York airport at midnight and takes several hours later a leisurely walk along the streets of London.
Dignity follows responsibility. The more responsibility one is entrusted with, the more dignity one can possess
His conscience is energized not by the idea of the good, but by that of the beautiful. His mind is questing not for the true, but for the pleasant and functional, which are rooted in the aesthetical, not the noetic-ethical, sphere.
Man reaching for the distant stars is acting in harmony with his nature which was created, willed, and directed by his Maker. It is a manifestation of obedience to rather than rebellion against God. Thus, in sum, we have obtained the following triple equation: humanity = dignity = responsibility = majesty.
However, while the cosmos provokes Adam the first to quest for power and control, thus making him ask the functional “how” question, Adam the second responds to the call of the cosmos by engaging in a different kind of cognitive gesture. He does not ask a single functional question. Instead his inquiry is of a metaphysical nature and a threefold one. He wants to know: “Why is it?” “What is it?” “Who is it?”
While Adam the first is dynamic and creative, transforming sensory data into thought constructs, Adam the second is receptive and beholds the world in its original dimensions.
In a word, Adam the second explores not the scientific abstract universe but the irresistibly fascinating qualitative world where he establishes an intimate relation with God.
Dignity is a social and behavioral category, expressing not an intrinsic existential quality but a technique of living, a way of impressing society, the knowhow of commanding respect and attention of the other fellow, a capacity to make one’s presence felt.
dignity is measured not by the inner worth of the in-depth personality, but by the accomplishments of the surface personality.
There is no dignity in anonymity. If one succeeds in putting his message (kerygma) across he may lay claim to dignity. The silent person, whose message remains hidden and suppressed in the in-depth personality, cannot be considered dignified.
Adam the first exists in society, in community with others.
the individual is ontologically complete, even perfect, then the experience of loneliness must be alien to him, since loneliness is nothing but the act of questioning one’s own ontological legitimacy, worth, and reasonableness.
Distribution of labor, the coordinated efforts of the many, the accumulated experiences of the multitude, the cooperative spirit of countless individuals, raise man above the primitive level of a natural existence and grant him limited dominion over his environment.
They, Adam and Eve, act together, work together pursue common objectives together; yet they do not exist together. Ontologically, they do not belong to each other; each is provided with an “I” awareness and knows nothing of a “We” awareness. Of course, they communicate with each other. But the communication lines are open between two surface personalities engaged in work, dedicated to success, and speaking in clichés and stereotypes, and not between two souls bound together in an indissoluble relation, each one speaking in unique logoi. The in-depth personalities do not communicate, let alone
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Personalities of Adam 1 only interact at a surface level
they were not charged with the task of existing in unison,
Adam 1s act together but do not exist in unison
Cathartic redemptiveness, in contrast to dignity, cannot be attained through man’s acquisition of control of his environment, but through man’s exercise of control over himself. A redeemed life is ipso facto a disciplined life.
God summoned Adam the first to advance steadily, Adam the second to retreat.
Dignity is acquired by man whenever he triumphs over nature. Man finds redemption whenever he is overpowered by the Creator of nature. Dignity is discovered at the summit of success; redemption in the depth of crisis and failure:
Each great redemptive step forward in man’s quest for humanity entails the ever-growing tragic awareness of his aloneness and only-ness and consequently of his loneliness and insecurity. He struggles for the discovery of his identity because he suffers from the insecurity implied in seeing the icy darkness of uniformity and irresponsiveness, in gazing into that senseless something without being awarded a reciprocal gaze, in being always a silent watcher without in turn being watched.
Who knows what kind of loneliness is more agonizing: the one which befalls man when he casts his glance at the mute cosmos, at its dark spaces and monotonous drama, or the one that besets man exchanging glances with his fellow man in silence?
“To be” is a unique in-depth experience of which only Adam the second is aware, and it is unrelated to any function or performance.
"To be" is not "to do"
the “I” and the “thou” who collaborate in order to further their interests.
A fair reading of Buber?
Adam the first met the female all by himself, while Adam the second was introduced to Eve by God, who summoned Adam to join Eve in an existential community molded by sacrificial action and suffering, and who Himself became a partner in this community.
Does thia not contradict what you just said about "to be" is not "to X" such as "to suffer"
The paradoxical experience of freedom, reciprocity, and “equality” in one’s personal confrontation with God is basic for the understanding of the covenantal faith community.
The covenant draws God into the society of men of faith: “The God before whom my fathers did walk—the God who has been my shepherd all my life.” God was Jacob’s shepherd and companion. The covenantal faith community manifests itself in a threefold personal union: I, thou and He.
The covenantal confrontation is indispensable for the man of faith.
He is everywhere but at the same time above and outside of everything.
Therefore, the man of faith, in order to redeem himself from his loneliness and misery, must meet God at a personal covenantal level, where he can be near Him and feel free in His presence.
Must meet God at the level of personal covenant
Within the covenantal community, I said, Adam and Eve participate in the existential experience of being, not merely working, together.
prayer community.
Covenantal community comes about through prayer
The cosmic drama, notwithstanding its grandeur and splendor, no matter how distinctly it reflects the image of the Creator and no matter how beautifully it tells His glory, cannot provoke man to prayer.
Nevertheless, ecstatic adoration, even if expressed in a hymn, is not prayer.
Prayer is basically an awareness of man finding himself in the presence of and addressing himself to his Maker, and to pray has one connotation only: to stand before God.
