  Rosenzweig begins the Star with a reflection on human mortality, and his consideration of the irreducible uniqueness of the individual revealed in death precipitates the break-up of the “All”, which philosophy has long claimed to know, into what Rosenzweig takes to be the three fundamental—and fundamentally independent—kinds of beings: God, world, and self. Moreover, the insights Rosenzweig draws from the human fear of death in the opening pages of the Star serve to direct him in his own quest for knowledge of the “true All” that has eluded the “old thinking” of the philosophical tradition. The most important of these insights are the following: