  Rosenzweig understood himself to be living at a transitional moment in the history of philosophy. The systems of German Idealism, by Rosenzweig’s account, brought to completion a 2500-year arc of philosophical thinking initiated by the pre-Socratics. In so doing, however, they at once brought to light tendencies of the philosophical tradition that prevented its representatives from achieving the very knowledge they set out to attain. These tendencies of what Rosenzweig refers to as the “old” thinking, include the following: