Adam I is formulated in connection with the verse that describes manʼs creation bʼtzelem elokim, in the image of G-d. He is termed the "majestic man," for in this context, the Divine image is synonymous with the innate human potential for creative endeavors vis-à-vis command of the external world, in both its natural and social aspects. His primary mode of cognizing reality is through abstraction and conceptualization, forming quantitative equivalents of the objects of experience, and constructing ideal models of reality that will enable him to attain his goals. Adam I is therefore not interested in the intrinsic value of things, but only in their functional properties in relation to his mission of attaining majesty and dignity through environmental mastery.
Adam II, by contrast, encounters reality on its own terms; he is not interested in the "how," but the "why" of existence. His question is philosophical, and his mode of engagement with the world is experiential. He is, as such, inherently lonely, for he comes into the world alone, and is aware of his uniqueness, and his separateness from everything else. Moreover, Adam II was created when G-d "blew into his nostrils the breath of life," and this indicates that he has a close, personal relationship with his Creator, Whom he seeks, hoping to transcend the enclosed confines of his own existence, cleaving to the Divine. He is also termed the "covenantal man" on account of the mission with which he is charged through his intimate bond with his Maker.
Throughout The Lonely Man of Faith, the Adam typology operates on both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic levels, serving as the vehicle to assess simultaneously modern society and the individual person within it. In particular, Rav Soloveitchik laments the alienating schism that exists at present between the two faces of Adam, wherein the voice of Adam II, with his G-d consciousness, his sensitivity to intrinsic and ultimate meaning, and his experiential approach to reality, is all but completely banished from the discourse of contemporary society, where the approach of Adam I holds sway; quite frequently Adam II is stifled or totally silenced even within the individual person.
But perhaps even more significant than the specific content of this book is the window it provides for us into the unique and creative mode of theorizing that characterizes the Ravʼs works. For it illustrates his core method of formulating what I term cognitive mashalim, that is, intellectual or philosophical parables or analogies, carefully constructed to give voice to the profound spiritual themes of the nimshal or analogue of Torah, yet in a language that is normally incapable of expressing it.
The work itself therefore consists of the beginning of a solution to the very rift that Rav Soloveitchik himself diagnoses throughout, by uniting the two faces of Adam, for as he mentions at the conclusion of his opening remarks [page 2], "there is a redemptive quality for an agitated mind in the spoken word ..."
Moreover, the immense practical value of the Ravʼs original project of rendering the Torahʼs account of the creation of man in philosophical terms, can be seen in light of the following remarks from the great psychotherapist, Dr. Viktor Frankl, who writes in The Will to Meaning (page 15-16):
"The metaclinical implications of psychotherapy refer mainly to its concept of man and philosophy of life. There is no psychotherapy without a theory of man and a philosophy of life underlying it. . . . Thus the issue cannot be whether or not psychotherapy is based on a Weltanschauung [worldview] but rather, whether the Weltanschauung underlying it is right or wrong. Right or wrong, however, in this context means whether or not the humanness of man is preserved in a given philosophy and theory. The human quality of a human being is disregarded and neglected, for example, by those psychologists who adhere to either "the machine model" or the "rat model," as Gordon W. Allport termed them. As to the first, I deem it to be a remarkable fact that man, as long as he regarded himself as a creature, interpreted his existence in the image of G-d, his Creator; but as soon as he started considering himself as a creator, began to interpret his existence merely in the image of his own creation, the machine."
As the bearers of the covenant, it is our duty to affirm the concept of the human being that derives not from the crude pseudo-philosophy of the majestic society gone mad, but rather from Parshat Breishit; for the reductionism that Frankl aptly diagnoses here and elsewhere can be effectively supplanted by grounding the human sciences with the "philosophical anthropology" of the Torah, and this the Rav does beautifully in The Lonely Man of Faith, and throughout his writings.
(Gidon Schneider, Editor, Divrei Azriel)