Review Essay: Nietzsche, Soloveitchik and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy by Daniel Rynhold and Michael J. Harris : The Superman and the Knight of Faith

Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik was occupied with Continental philoso-phy through the whole of his career, starting with his studies at the University of Berlin in the late 1920s and his 1931 dissertation on the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen. He was reticent about his relationship to secular sources; not until 1984 did he authorized publi-cation of his most extensive treatment of secular philosophy, the essay The Halakhic Mind, forty years after he wrote it. Prof. Michael Wyschogrod, who attended his Talmud shiur at Yeshiva University for eight years, reported that he never discussed his years at the University of Berlin.