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The Christian Future
Or The Modern Mind Outrun
An Argo Book
Introduction by Harold Stahmer
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973) was a sociologist and social philosopher who, along with his close friend Franz Rosenzweig, and Ferdinand Ebner and Martin Buber, was a major exponent of speech thinking or dialogicism. The central insight of speech thinking is that speech or language is not merely, or even primarily, a descriptive act, but a responsive and creative act, which is the basis of our social existence. The greater part of Rosenstock-Huessy's work was devoted to demonstrating how speech/language, through its unpredictable fecundity, expands our powers and, through its inescapably historical forming character, also binds them. Born in Berlin, Germany into a non-observant Jewish family, he converted to Christianity in his late teens. He met and married Margrit Hussy in 1914. Rosenstock-Huessy served as an officer in the German army during World War I. He then pursued an academic career in Germany as a specialist in medieval law, which was disrupted by the rise of Nazism. In 1933, after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he immigrated to the United States where he began a new academic career, initially at Harvard University and then at Dartmouth College, where he taught from 1935 to 1957.
"It is unfortunate that Rosenstock-Huessy's thought has been so overlooked. For years he has been concerned with many of the same things theologians are grappling with today, that is, the meaning of speech, the question of hermeneutics, the problem of secularization, and the disappearance of a sense of the transcendent in modern life. Rosenstock-Huessy's thought is becoming more and more central to the theological conversation as the interest in secularization and the relationship of theology to secular categories continues to grow."
Harvey G. Cox
"The sweeping historical insights of Rosenstock-Huessy are some of the sharpest and freshest our age has known. His deep historical and religious penetration of the Old World past is joined to a rare understanding of the profundities of the American experience and of the human aspects of technology. Both a tirelessly critical spirit and an unquenchable hope suffuse his thought in The Christian Future as elsewhere. He has had the foresight to be an ecumenicist even before the ecumenical age."
Walter J. Ong, SJ
"Rosenstock-Huessy is a thinker of great importance who has not adequately been brought before the American public. Particularly vital in his thought is his view of history, and here his remarkable command of theology, philosophy, law, history, sociology, and grammar are all of great importance, as is the power and originality of his mind."
Maurice Friedman