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Hermann Cohen's Perceptions of Spinoza: A Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Franz Nauen
Franz Nauen
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
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Extract

The audacious goal of Hermann Cohen's philosophy of religion is to reconcile Judaism and modern culture. Interest in Cohen's Jewish writings, especially his posthumous Religion der Vernunft, both on the part of Jewish scholars and the English and Israeli reading public, bears witness to its lasting significance. For the contemporary reader, the value of Cohen's project is, it appears, not canceled even by the historic fact that the Holocaust proved Cohen's messianic dream tragically—even obscenely—out of phase with the grim reality of modern Germany. As Ernst Simon pointed out, Cohen was not the only sage to follow “a false prophet”; Maimonides, for example, found nothing wrong with Rabbi Akiba's fateful allegiance to Bar Kochba.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 4 , April 1979 , pp. 111 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1979

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References

01. Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judenlums (Leipzig, 1919); hereafter cited as Religion.Google Scholar

02. Simon, Ernst, “Zu Hermann Cohens Spinoza Auffassung, ” Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 79 (1935): 181–94Google Scholar; reprinted in Briicken (Heidelberg, 1965), pp. 205–14, esp. pp. 213–14.

03. According to Guttmann, Julius in Philosophies of Judaism (New York 1973), pp. 400—15, Cohen, because of his neo-Kantian premises, could not fully express his experience of Judaism, an opinion shared by Joseph Ben Schlomo in“The Philosophy of Religion and the Perception of Judaism of Cohen” [Hebrew] in Hermann Cohen, Dal ha-tevunah mi-meqorot ha-yahadultrans. Zvi Voyeslavski (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 481–511.Google Scholar

04. See“Einleitung” to Hermann Cohens Judische Schriften, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1924; henceforth cited as J.S.), 1: xiii—lxiv.

05. Simon, “Auffassung.”

06. Berlin, 1904; 2d rev. ed., Berlin, 1907 (hereafter referred to as Ethik).

07. Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism trans. Kaplan, Simon (New York 1972)Google Scholar and Dal ha-tevunah mi-meqorot ha-yahadut trans. Wislovski, Zvi (Jerusalem, 1971).Google Scholar Some of Cohen's major essays on Judaism and Judaica are collected in Hermann Cohen, 'lyyunim bayahadut u-vi-ve'ayot ha-dor trans. Voyeslavski, Zvi (Jerusalem, 1977).Google Scholar

08. Bergman, S. H., Hogei ha-dor 3d ed. (Jerusalem, 1974), pp. 219–43.Google ScholarVery similar is Bergman's, English essay, “Hermann Cohen” in Between East and West: Essays Dedicated to the Memory of Beta Horowitz (London, 1958), pp. 22–47.Google Scholar

09. Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times (New York, 1968), pp. 52–105.Google Scholar

10. Bergman, S. H., “'Iqqar ha-rishon ba-filosofiyah shel Hermann Cohen, ” Hogim u-maaminim (Tel Aviv, 1959), pp. 139–59.Google Scholar

11. In Publications of the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 17 (1972): 179–87.Google Scholar

12. Zwei Welten: Siegfried Moses Festschrift (Tel Aviv, 1962), pp. 377–99. Emil Fackenheim pays tribute to Altmann's achievement in“Hermann Cohen after Fifty Years, ” The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture XII, New York, 1969, esp. pp. 21–22.

13. Printed in Festgabe zum zehnjdhrigen Bestehen der Akademie fur die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (Berlin, 1929), pp. 43–68.Google Scholar

14. Reprinted in J.S., 3: 290–372.

15. Martin Buber, Reden iiber das Judentum, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1932), pp. xvi–xvii.

16. Religion, p. 187.

17. Religion, pp. 187–88.

18. Ethik, p. 435.

19. Berlin, 1877 (henceforth cited as KBE.A) not to be confused with the considerably revised and expanded second edition, Berlin, 1910 (henceforth cited as KBE.B).

20. KBE.A, p. 4.

21. Ethik, p. 15.

22. Ibid., pp. 44—45, esp. pp. 461—63.

23. This is not a valid question for the historian of ideas who may safely conclude that Kant criticized dogmatic metaphysicians, including Spinoza and Mendelssohn for trying to prove what is only a rational“orientation.” It is a great difficulty for Cohen who devoted much of his time to the project of showing that Kant at his best rejected not only the dogmatic claims of the metaphysicians but also the substance of their discourse.

24. Ethik. pp. 306–7.

25. Ibid., pp. 305–9.

26. “In fact, every purely historical reproducer of Kant's system must realize that Kant on the matter did not succeed in distinguishing clearly between the methodological and the ontological problem, ” Ernst Cassirer, “Hermann Cohen und die Erneuerung der Kantischen Philosophie, ”Kant-Studien 17 (1912): 252–73; esp. p. 268.Google Scholar

27. This“explaining away” of Kant's concept of a“thing in itself” is already a major theme in KBE.A and Ethik; in KBE.B, Cohen points out that he is devoting even more space to this “Grenzbegriff, ” p. x.

28. Ethik, pp. 459–70.

29. KBE.A. p. 4; Ethik, p. 46.

30. KBE.A, p. 167; Ethik, pp. 15–16.

31. KBE.A, pp. 323–25; Ethik, p. 466.

32. KBE.A, p. 177.

33. Ethik, p. 123.

34. Ethik, pp. 201, 480.

35. Ethik, pp. 217–20, 314.

36. Religion, pp. 188–89.

37. So, for example, even in“Das Problem der judischer Sittenlehre” (1899); J.S.3: 17—19, where ethics based on autonomy is seen as philosophically independent of religion based on the God Idea. Cf. Ethik, p. 62.

38. So especially during the“Antisemitismus Streit” with Treitschke; see“Zur Verteidigung” (1880); J.S.. 2: 95–100 and“Letter to Rabbi Moses of Mobile, Alabama” (1880); Ibid., p. 472. Cf. Ethik, p. 463.

39. So even in Begriff der Religion (Giessen, 1915), p. 14.

40. “Autonomie and Freiheit” (1900), 7.5., 3: 39.

41. Religion, p. 163.

42. “Spinoza uber Staat, Religion, Judenthum und Christentum” (1915), J.S, 3: 368, 371.

43. J.S., 3: 372; Religion, p. 429.

44. J.S., 3: 346–50; Religion, p. 391.

45. J.S., 3: 366.

46. Ibid., p. 363.

47. Ibid., p. 371.

48. Ibid., pp. 363, 371.

49. Printed in Festgabe zum zehnjahrigen Beslehen der Akademie fur die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (Berlin, 1929), pp. 43–68.Google Scholar

50. Reprinted in J.S., 3: 290–372.

51. J.S., 1: xlv–lvii.

52. Rosenzweig, Franz, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin, 1937), pp. 351—53Google Scholar; this is made explicit however only in“Einleitung, ” J.S., 1: lv—lvi.

53. Cohen, in fact, in 1910, in KBE.B, not only rejects unambiguously the possibility of a philosophically based religion of reason—the project of Begriffder Religion (1915) and Religion der Vernunft (1919), but also rejects religion's compatibility with philosophy:“Ethics is philosophy. Religion however cannot be absorbed by philosophy.” KBE.B, p. 497.

54. J.S., 1: xlv.

55. “Auch sonst ist die Behandlung Spinozas im Vortrag zwar keine Spur weniger deutlich als in der Abhandlung, aber doch weniger erbost”; Kleinere Schriften, p. 352.

56. See above, n. 2.

57. Simon, “Auffassung, ” p. 211.

58. Ibid., p. 210; Letter to Dr. Munk, Leo, 1907. Hermann Cohen, Breife ed. Bruno and Bertha Strauss (Berlin, 1939), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

59. Bracken, p. 210;“Religiose Postulate” (1907), J.S., 1, 2.

60. Der Jude 8: 295–314; esp. pp. 299, 314.

61. Ibid., p. 314.

62. Simon, Brucken, p. 211.

63. Rosenzweig, “Einleitung, ” J.S., 1: xlv.

64. The only two allusions to Spinoza's political writings which I have found in Cohen's writings before 1910 are to Spinoza's remark that the Jewish theocracy was a democracy in “Der Sabbat in seiner Kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung” (1869), J.S., 2: 57 and to Spinoza's favorable assessment of Jesus in“Zur Verteidigung” (1888), Ibid., p. 97. Both are allusions to commonplaces and might well be derivative, not based on a first hand exposure to Spinoza's political writings.

65. Reprinted in Hermann Cohens Schriften zur Philosophie und Zeitgeschichte, ed. Gorland, Albert and Cassirer, Ernst, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1928), 2: 501–3.Google Scholar

66. Ethik, pp. 592, 594.

67. J.S., 3: 221–89.

68. J.S., 3: 250.

69. See above, n. 19.

70. KBE.B, pp. 373–76, 386. Cohen does, however, emphasize here that Kant was right in distinguishing between the higher status of the natural sciences and the Geisleswissenschaften, a point not made in Ethik, pp. 228—30.

71. KBE.B, pp. 377–78.

72. Ibid., pp. 379–80.

73. Ibid., p. 386.

74. Ibid., p. 387.

75. Ibid., pp. 385–86.

76. Ibid., p. 389.

77. Opera, ed. J. Van Vloten and J. P. N. Land, 2d ed., 3 vols. (The Hague, 1895), vol. 1; reprint of 2 vol. first edition (The Hague, 1883).

78. Ibid.

79. Ed. Gebhardt, Carl, Theologisch-politischer Traktal Phil. Bib. 93 (Leipzig, 1908). Both of Spinoza's political writings are mentioned by name for the first time in KBE.B, p. 387.Google Scholar

80. KBE.B, p. 466.

81. Ibid., p. 388.

82. Ibid., p. 467.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid., pp. 467–68.

85. Printed in Festgabe zum zehnjahrigen Bestehen der Akademie fur die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (Berlin, 1929), pp. 43–68.Google Scholar

86. For an excellent first hand account of Cohen's seminars on Spinoza at the Hochschule in Berlin, see Hans Liebeschutz, “Hermann Cohen and Spinoza, ” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Inslitutsno. 12 (December, 1960). pp. 225–38.Google Scholar

87. Reprinted in J.S., 3: 290–372.

88. Ibid., 3: 359.

89. Ibid., p. 298.

90. Ibid., p. 360.

91. Ibid., p. 361.

92. Ibid., p. 367.

93. Ibid., pp. 371–72.

94. Ibid., p. 368.

95. Ibid., p. 370.

96. Ibid., p. 371.

97. Ibid., p. 372.

98. J.S., 3: 372; cf. pp. 344–53, where Cohen attacks Spinoza's interpretation of Maimonides at great length.

99. Ibid., p. 360.

100. Ibid., p. 361.

101. Ibid., p. 363.

102. So for example in“Die religiose Bewegungen der Gegenwart” (1914): Pantheism is not Atheism but“Amoralismus, Aufhebung, Nevelierung der Sittlichkeit in das Naturliche.” J.S.. 3: 57.