The difference between Hermann Cohen’s systematic philosophy and his philosophy of religion can be determined via the logical “Judgment of Contradiction,” viewed as an “Authority of Annihilation.” In Cohen’s Logic of Pure Knowledge the “Judgment of Contradiction” acts as a “means of protection” against “falsifications” that may have arisen on the pathway through the previous judgments of “origin” and “identity.” Cohen thematizes these operations in his Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, too. However, there they do not (...) form the grounding for natural science but rather for the knowledge of nature as creation in a strict correlation to God’s uniqueness. Any admixture between God and nature is the falseness that must be excluded via the “Authority of Annihilation.” The Being of God places the world over against the possibility of its own radical Non-Being. Yet at the same time, a second mode of Negation, a relative Nothing providing continuity for the world’s being-there, grounded in the “Logic of Origin,” retains its validity. In Cohen’s view a Creation “in the beginning” stands side by side with a continuous “renewal of the world”. (shrink)

Das von Weizsäcker so genannte „Pathische“ bezeichnet eine Haltung zum Leben. Das Leben ist etwas, dessen „Existenz weniger gesetzt als vielmehr erlitten wird“. Eine solche Haltung prägt unser Urteil über andere Menschen wie über uns selbst. Wer sich hier einrichtet, wandelt zwischen Wissen und Nicht-Wissen, klaren Umrissen und bloßen Nuancen, Machen und Geschehenlassen. „Pathische Ethik“ ist ein Bestimmungsversuch dessen, was es heißt, in dieser Vagheit zielsicher zu bleiben. Wo er gelingt, keimt Friede. Das Loslassen der Hand eines Sterbenden ist eine (...) Probe darauf. Im alltäglichen Umgang mit Patienten und Hilfesuchenden dagegen helfen fünf „pathische Kategorien“, dem Urteil eine Wegleitung zu geben. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen′s passionate philosophizing begins with a departure from the letter of the rabbinical doctrine of revelation. Initially his Science of Reason is shaped by a psychology of language based on Plato, Herder, Humboldt, and Steinthal. Later the influence of Kant is prevalent. In the end Cohen′s System of Philosophy becomes the foundation upon which he reappropriates the sources of Judaism in their literalness. His program from 1908/09 onwards is to “think the uniqueness of God as it must be felt.” (...) A distinctive metaphorics comes into being: a hermeneutics of being human anchored in Reason through comparison with an incomparable God. The critical edition of his works illuminates this philosophical process by means of details previously not taken into account. (shrink)

Abstract Both Immanuel Kant and Moses Maimonides wrote lengthy treatments of the biblical garden of Eden. For both philosophers the biblical story served as an opportunity to address the genealogy of morals. I argue here that the two treatments offer deep insights into their respective philosophical anthropologies, that is to say, into their assessments of the human person and of moral psychology. Contrary to much that has been written about Maimonides as a proto-Kantian, I expose the profoundly different and even (...) opposed conceptions of human nature and of reason at the heart of the respective philosophies. For Kant, the first exercise of reason in the garden is an act of rebellion that jettisons the human person from the womb of nature into a post-natural freedom. The repudiation of the natural is the beginning of an ethical life, according to Kant—a life to be dominated by respect for a human dignity beyond the natural. For Maimonides, in contrast, reason is a philosophical torah li-shma . Rational understanding is an understanding of the laws of a nature fecund with the presence of the divine. Exposing the reason inherent in nature is the only path to knowledge of God and whatever communion with the divine is available to human beings. Such knowledge transforms the heart as well as fills the mind, embedding the human person as moral actor in a God-filled universe. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen was a Jewish-German thinker with a passion for philosophy. Two forms of national engagement influenced his philosophical system and his Jewish thought: a cultural-political 'Germanness' and a religious Judaism beyond the political.