I’ve been reading through the two volumes of Rosenzweig’s letters and diary entries here and there for good while, but in a footnote in the first chapter of Benjamin Pollock’s so far quite interesting Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy I came across an something I haven’t yet seen. As Pollock notes, Rosenzweig was rather unimpressed with the majority of the Neo-Kantians (except for Hermann Cohen, really), who he thought were simply confused about the relationship between a “system” and the task of philosophy. Hence the need to return to the approaches of German Idealism to get clear on the systematic task of philosophy. In this letter his ire is directed towards Rickert
Spinoza refutes Descartes, Leibniz refutes Spinoza, Kant refutes Leibniz, Fichte refutes Kant, Schelling refutes Fichte, Hegel refutes Schelling, and Hegel, through the advance of history is more than refuted, he is judged. But Nietzsche does not refute Schopenhauer and I do not refute Nietzsche. He who still busies himself today with refutations (e.g. Rickert with Nietzsche, for what is the philosophy of value other than a struggle against the transvaluation of values?), proves in so doing that he is not a philosopher.
Geez. How awkward. I mean Rickert purportedly helped Rosenzweig publish his article, “Oldest System-Program.” Moreover, as Pollock notes (I wouldn’t know since I’m not that familiar with Rickert): “Rickert’s own systematic work contains key themes and concepts too many of which pop up in Rosenzweig’s Star for such overlap to be coincidental” (64). Yet…
Perverse Egalitarianism 
Are letters/diaries in English?
No. One can certainly find translations of some of the letters in other sources (in the letters of Martin Buber, for one, and some collections of FR’s essays I think), but they are all collected here untranslated:
Briefe und Tagebücher. 1.Band 1900-1918. 2.Band 1919-1929. Edited by Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann with the cooperation of Bernhard Casper. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979.
See also the Leo Baeck Institute:
http://www.cjh.org/academic/findingaids/lbi/nhprc/FranzRosenzweig.html
I wonder what the connection between Rosenzweig and Rickert could be, actually. I mean, Rickert doesn’t buy into the idea of history as continuous progression, and conceives of reality as essentially sublime (which seems consonant with FR’s ‘All’), which shifts the job of philosophy to a problem of presentation. But these are sorta general tendencies, rather than concrete concepts. Does Pollack say anything more on the subject? I’m really curious now, especially since FR’s Nietzsche swipe seems (1) off-base to me, and (2) really mean-spirited.
By all accounts, though, Rickert was an arrogant prick. Benjamin describes him as “Grey and evil” at one point, and Jaspers recounts how Rickert claimed just after Weber’s death how he [Rickert] was far more important than Weber, because weber adopted his theory of research….
Sounds like a prime candidate for being a biggus dickus.
Yeah, it’s a rather nasty comment, and I don’t know what the connection between the two would/could be since I know very little about Rickert (save for the fact that photos of him kind of scare me). Here’s the footnote to Pollock’s sentence I cited above:
That’s really the only mention of Rickert in the whole of Pollock’s book. Sounds like a good dissertation for somebody to write…