Hermann Cohen's Ethics (Studies in European Judaism, SEJ 14)

Hermann Cohen’s Ethics

Studies in European Judaism Editor GIUSEPPE VELTRI University of Halle-Wittenberg Leopold Zunz Centre for the Study of European Judaism

Advisory Board Bruno Chiesa (University of Turin) Rachel Elior (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Alessandro Guetta (INALCO, Paris) Eleazar Gutwirth (Tel Aviv University) Moshe Idel (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Hanna Liss (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg) Paul Mendes-Flohr (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Reinier Munk (Universiteit Leiden) David Ruderman (Pennsylvania University) Peter Schäfer (Princeton University and Free University of Berlin) Stefan Schreiner (University of Tübingen) Jonathan Webber (University of Birmingham) Israel Yuval (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv University)

VOLUME 14

Hermann Cohen’s Ethics Edited by

Robert Gibbs

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

This monograph also appears as The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 13.1–3 (Brill, 2006). This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Giakalis, Ambrosios. Images of the divine : the theology of icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council / by Ambrosios Giakalis ; with a foreword by Henry Chadwick. p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Christian thought, ISSN 0081–8607 ; v. 54) Revision of author’s thesis (Ph.D.)—University of Cambridge, 1988. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 9004099468 1. Council of Nicaea (2nd : 787) 2. Icons—Cult—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 3. Image (Theology)—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600–1500. Iconoclasm. 5. Orthodox Eastern Church—Doctrines. I. Title. II. Series. BR240.G53 1993 246’.53’09021—dc20 93–31993

ISSN 1568-5004 ISBN-10 90 04 15318 7 ISBN-13 978 90 04 15318 9 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Preface Robert Gibbs Hermann Cohen’s Ethics ............................................................

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Articles Michael Zank The Ethics in Hermann Cohen’s Philosophical System .................. Helmut Holzhey Ethik als Lehre vom Menschen: Eine Einführung in Hermann Cohens Ethik des reinen Willens ............................................ Gesine Palmer Judaism as a “Method” with Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig ................................................................................ Andrea Poma The Existence of the Ideal in Hermann Cohen’s Ethics ................ Hartwig Wiedebach Physiology of the Pure Will: Concepts of Moral Energy in Hermann Cohen’s Ethics ............................................................ Reinier Munk On the Idea of God in Cohen’s Ethik ........................................ Almut Sh. Bruckstein Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides: Residues of Jewish Philosophy—Traumatized ............................................................ Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky The Ties Between Walter Benjamin and Hermann Cohen: A Generally Neglected Chapter in the History of the Impact of Cohen’s Philosophy .................................................................. Avi Bernstein-Nahar In the Name of a Narrative Education: Hermann Cohen and Historicism Reconsidered .............................................................. Leora Batnitzky Hermann Cohen and Leo Strauss ................................................ Lawrence Kaplan Hermann Cohen and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on Repentence ......

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PREFACE

HERMANN COHEN’S ETHICS Robert Gibbs University of Toronto, Guest Editor

It is a fine task to honour our predecessors, to recognize in Hermann Cohen’s work a signal promise for the development of Jewish Philosophy in the 20th Century. However, in the essays you hold here we turn to the future and recover Cohen as a source, eine Quelle, for Philosophy in the 21st Century. While there has been a steady interest in Jewish Studies in Cohen’s posthumous Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, for several decades; the English speaking world has largely ignored Cohen. The reasons are tragic, reflecting not only the destruction of the German Jewish community, and also the claim of complete falsification of the ‘German-Jewish symbiosis’, but also the triumph of Heidegger and the claim to refute neoKantianism. But the result was silencing one of the great thinkers of the generation before World War I. The essays assembled here represent the leading Cohen scholars from the United States and Canada, and from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Israel. The international nature of this collection points to the rising of a new generation with new interests in Cohen. It would be remiss to fail to notice the longstanding championing of Cohen’s cause by Steven S. Schwarzschild (z’l), and the remarkable contribution of Helmut Holzhey and the Philosophical Seminar in Zürich, where many of the authors studied over the last twenty years. Emerging from their efforts is a new set of explorations both in Cohen’s own system and also in his relation to a wide-range of subsequent thinkers. And it is to the system most of all that our attention is drawn in this set of essays, and to the center of the system, The Ethics of Pure Will. The various essays at the beginning of this volume will introduce Cohen’s text better than I can in a few words here. Published first in 1904, and then in a second edition in 1907, the second volume of a three volume system, The Ethics is a bold restatement of

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neo-Kantian ethics, drawing law and ethics together in defense of a critical liberal vision. It contains the primary text of the I-thou relation, a call for ethical socialism, a rigorous argument for the Rechtstaat (the state bound to the rule of law), as well as a robust humanism and an important prophetic vision of the messianic era. While Cohen insisted that his philosophy was neither dogmatic nor confessional, it is clear that we can view the system as a whole as Jewish philosophy, and The Ethics as a profoundly Jewish response to undertheorized Protestant notions of ethics and particularly of law. In one sense, one could interpret Cohen’s Ethics as a transcendental account of a modern halakhic perspective. Moreover, the concerns and modes of argumentation in The Ethics also appear in Cohen’s more explicitly Jewish writings, as well as in his earlier work on Kant’s philosophy. Thus to see the Jewish quality of The Ethics is not to compromise at all on the philosophic claims therein. It is rather to complement our recent recovery of the late work, and in particular Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, as coordinate with the philosophical system. Even as the late work is every bit as philosophical as the system, so the system is also oriented by Judaism. But this matter will be displayed again and again in the essays here, as the relation of Judaism and philosophical ethics is interrogated repeatedly. In August of 2001, David Novak and I hosted the First Shoshana Shier Symposium on Judaism and Modernity at the University of Toronto. We held a three day conference devoted to Cohen’s Ethics, a conference that was supported at the University of Toronto by the Jewish Studies Program, the Shoshana Shier Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies, and the Joseph and Gertie Schwartz Memorial Lectureship, and also by the Foundation Dialogik (Mary and Hermann Levin-Goldschmidt). Most of the papers here assembled were presented in some form at that conference; although we have had some welcome additions, too. It was, however, in the context of renewing the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, that these essays received revision and now publication. Although this is a special edition of the journal, it also marks a turn to a more international mission for the journal under a new editorial board and published by Brill. Thus we include more European participation, as well as a contribution in German. But in terms of content, exploring the most creative and rigorous work in Jewish Thought and Philosophy, this issue belongs in the excellent series of issue published in the preceding volumes of the Journal.

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The essays follow a somewhat simple order. We begin with essays that address Cohen’s Ethics, particularly as found in the work, The Ethics of the Pure Will, and then proceed to explore the relation of Cohen with other thinkers. We begin with Michael Zank’s introduction which situates The Ethics of the Pure Will within the philosophical system. Zank not only recounts some of the history of reception in tension with Franz Rosenzweig’s claim, but also devotes careful consideration to the role of system in Cohen’s thought. He concludes, moreover, with the question of the relation of The Ethics to Judaism. Helmut Holzhey offers us a rich account of the contents of the The Ethics, giving us a helpful overview of the work. His account focuses on the problematic of the human and of humanity. And he explores the contrast between sein and sollen (being and the oughtto-be) as the engine of the ethics. His exploration of the problem of God in the ethics leads to Cohen’s distinctive requirement of the sovereignty of ethics over religion. The conclusion of Cohen’s work, and of this overview, is a discussion of the virtues. A complex and radical interrogation of both Cohen’s work and of its context is staged in the essay by Gesine Palmer. Borrowing from a musical motif of Charles Ives, Palmer brings a set of objections and questions to Cohen, and then in inverse order takes each objector away. Guided by Rosenzweig’s claim about his own work that Judaism was not the content but the method of his thinking, she asks, Can this be so for Cohen? In the process, we encounter both biographical and contextual relations of Cohen’s thought, as well as a sharp insight into the role of jurisprudence in ethics. Andrea Poma examines the problem of realizing the Ideal. Cohen’s philosophy is a critical idealism, and for ethics that raises the risk that ethics will be only about fantastic wishes, and never become concrete or effective. Poma links the problem in cognition (how do we know existent particulars) to the realization of ethics, and shows the resources that Cohen wields to gain existential reality for ethics. Hartwig Wiedebach examines the role of the body in this realization. He explores the relation of Cohen’s thought to physiology, and focuses on the question of the production of a rational affect, first in the discussion of the pure will, and then in relation to the virtues. The final essay focusing on Cohen’s Ethics is by Reinier Munk, asking the question of how God can be properly belong to the system of philosophy, and especially in the Ethics. What emerges is both the

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radical subordination of religion to ethics, as well as the vigorous rejection of Kant’s own arguments in the 2nd Critique and his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. The solution Munk offers focuses on the way that in the system religion serves as a source (and not the origin) of ideas vital for ethics. Like the extensive role of history of science and philosophy in the system, the history of religion, and especially Judaism, serves a key role in the appearance of the contents of ethics, but not in their logic or justification. With Almut Bruckstein’s essay we shift from Cohen to relations with other thinkers. On the one hand her essay addresses Maimonides, and Cohen’s Ethics of Maimonides, and on the other hand she has recourse to Derrida and his address about Cohen in Jerusalem. Bruckstein examines the Protestant and Germanist aspect of Cohen’s thought in order to interrogate the situation of ‘normalized’ Jewish Thought in Jerusalem. Despite the political destruction of GermanJudaism in the Shoa, Bruckstein re-appropriates the hyphenated Judaism in Cohen as a much needed disruption of Jewish identity and philosophy. In this respect, Derrida’s questioning of Cohen and of Maimonides, and of his own unstable identity, offer an important disruption that Cohen’s thought can perform in the name of ethics. Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky examines Cohen in relation to Walter Benjamin (and in that context, Gershom Scholem). While she is able to show how deeply embroiled Benjamin’s project is in his early and ongoing engagement with Cohen, Deuber-Mankowsky situates the relation over the crisis of World War I. The historical moment is more than a backdrop, but is rather a focus of rupture and a moment in which the ethical task of studying history gains far greater moment. Benjamin appears then as a specific intensive response to Cohen’s Ethics. We move to a third continent with Avi Bernstein-Nahar, who tries to re-situate Cohen in our current moment for the American Jewish community. Bernstein-Nahar regards this import project as risky and seriously flawed, but by comparing Cohen with the Canadian political philosophy, Charles Taylor, he discerns a valuable role that Cohen’s thought might have in education. This is not a simple rehearsal of Cohen’s own education projects, but rather an account of how Cohen’s interpretation of historical consciousness might help us give a better framework for a contemporary Jewish community. With Leora Batnitzky we grapple with the dialectical relation of Leo Strauss and Cohen. She argues that Strauss, despite his protests,

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was deeply formed by Cohen’s project, and that he also set his own task as overcoming Cohen by destroying that very project. The essay highlights a question of hermeneutics from Strauss’s perspective, binding the idealizing interpretation by Cohen to an optimism about modern rationality and ethics. She emphasizes Strauss’s battle with historicism in examining a circle of Strauss, Cohen, and Maimonides. If Benjamin’s historian’s crisis was World War I, then Strauss’s is World War II and the Shoa, with a radical critique of Cohen’s confidence in reason. The final essay by Lawrence Kaplan examines Cohen in relation to R. Joseph Soloveitchik. The question of concern is why Cohen ignored the second and higher form of repentance attributed to Resh Lakish in the Talmud—repentance from love that transforms past sins into merits, particularly because Cohen cites the first form attributed to Resh Lakish, that repentance can transform intentional sins into unintentional ones. Soloveitchik emphasizes the pair, and Kaplan examines both the hesitation of Cohen and the development of Soloveitchik’s theory. This rich presentation of Soloveitchik’s theory sheds important light on the way that ethics in Cohen is unable to bridge the gap between the moral ideal and our striving—and how that gap itself is a decisive motor for Cohen’s ethics. These later essays are not simply examinations of influence— although they do explore that, too—rather, through contrast with other thinkers, they open Cohen’s ethics in two ways. First, they show us the deep questions that are operating within Cohen’s texts, and second they raise questions for ethics itself, particularly in relation to Jewish tradition. That specific topic, the primacy of ethics for Judaism, received one of its greatest and most philosophically rigorous treatments in Cohen’s work. For indeed, with Cohen thinking of the relation of ethics and Judaism became a truly philosophical task.

THE ETHICS IN HERMANN COHEN’S PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM Michael Zank

Cohen and his philosophical work belong to a bygone era, unknown to most except to an admittedly rising number of specialists. The only work of Cohen (1842–1918) more widely available and quite well-known and respected, at least among students of Jewish thought, is his posthumous work on religion, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism. The connection of this work with Cohen’s system of philosophy, however, is problematic or, at least, not all that widely acknowledged or understood. Due to the vicissitudes of modern intellectual history and of the position of Jewish thinkers and their works in its midst (or, perhaps, in its margins), the acceptance of Cohen’s posthumous work on religion depended on the claim most famously and forcefully advanced by Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) that in writing it Cohen “broke through the veil of idealism” which, in our context, means that he left the demands of systematicity behind, replacing them with national and religious Jewish sentiments. To Rosenzweig and his school, the Jewish thought of Cohen begins to take shape only where the systematic philosophical thought of Cohen ends. The two may be contiguous, but they don’t overlap, and they certainly don’t follow the same rules of construction. I have argued elsewhere1—and in this respect I fully agree with Steve Schwarzschild—that this reading of Cohen is less based on fact than on the sensitivities of a younger generation of German Jews whose attachment to Judaism was no longer grounded in the solid education and socialization provided by an earlier Jewish society to which Cohen still belonged. Their lack of Jewish self-confidence and, more importantly, their lack of unselfconscious Jewish textual, ritual,

1 The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen. With an Appendix of Manuscripts from the National and University Library, Givat Ram, Jerusalem and Nachlaß Natorp Ms. 831 (Hessisches Staatsarchiv, Marburg) and a Preface by Wendell Dietrich. Brown Judaic Studies Nr. 324, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen (Providence/R.I.: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000).

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and liturgical competence forced them to forge an attachment to Judaism based on a mixture of romantic aspirations to cultural authenticity and vitalist thinking in terms of blood and soil. To pass muster in their eyes, a philosophical exposition of religion had to conform to the standard of expressive affirmation of difference. Cohen’s Religion of Reason does this to the degree that it extrapolates its concepts from the “Sources of Judaism.” That these concepts nevertheless constitute the elements of a “religion of reason” is excused by asserting that Cohen himself was not fully aware of the fact that his enthusiastic affirmation of Judaism made him break through the veil of his own idealist system. In Cohen’s own view, the most articulate expression of the connection between philosophy and Judaism is contained in his systematic ethics, Ethics of Pure Will (1904, second edition 1907). I will return to the question of the sense in which Cohen crafted this book as a statement on the cultural value of Judaism. First, however, I would like to establish its systematic character, purpose, and meaning.

“Science” (Wissenschaft) and System Let us begin the work of assessing the Ethics on its own criteria by reminding ourselves of the fact that the German word for “scientific” (“wissenschaftlich”) pertains to both natural and moral sciences, i.e., to the sciences proper as much as to the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). The systematic trend and presupposition of the German academic tradition is evident from the fact that a single word is used to indicate the ideal of a system of the sciences integrating all “scientific” methods and fields of inquiry. We easily recognize the neo-Platonic concept of mind (nous) as historical origin of this ideal of a thoroughly rational systematic whole of all knowledge. While the medieval predecessor to the modern idea of a system of the sciences had recourse to the infallible mind of God, the modern ideal rests on the more modest claim of methodical verification used to map all objects of knowledge. Unlike its medieval predecessor, the system of the sciences can be said to exist only as a self-conscious methodological ideal, a self-correcting principle on an infinite trajectory toward completion. Yet, like that of its predecessor, its claim to validity is universal and comprehensive. With this reminder of the meaning of the term wissenschaftlich in

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its relation to an ideal of the systematic totality of all knowledge we are already in the middle of our topic. For it is our task to consider the systematicity of Cohen’s Ethics, i.e., its claim that there is a relation between ethics and a comprehensive system of knowledge and that this relation is vital to the claim of ethics to philosophical validity. Following the method first sketched by Kant in his Prolegomena to a Future Metaphysics, Cohen determines the task of philosophy as analytical—even, as it were, midrashic. Philosophical critique, or the transcendental method, reads science and analogous fields of cultural productivity for the logical origin of their validity, whereby the fact of their validity is considered self-evident. Science itself is thus considered one of a bundle of foundational “directions of culture” (Natorp), albeit their paradigmatic one.2 The greater challenge was, however, how to combine reflections on the validity of distinct cultural fields within a systematic whole. This challenge was not merely of taxonomic concern: but what depended on it was the legitimacy of the academy itself, the survival of the notion of a unity of nature and spirit, of science and culture. Meeting the systematic challenge meant engaging in the rescue of the humanistic setting of science despite science’s obvious emancipation from its former philosophical context. This, and nothing less, was the charge that, in the last third of the nineteenth century, led academic philosophy on the Continent to an almost universal return of Kant. Cohen, too, takes on this challenge when he attempts to describe the distinct directions of culture according to the condition of the possibility of their unity. He calls the systematic idea the idea of the “unity of the cultural consciousness.” The unity of the cultural consciousness, in turn, was contingent on the distinct fields of cultural creativity from which the laws of their respective development could be analytically derived. Of course there were precedents for the desired unity of the cultural consciousness, but their pitfalls had to be avoided. The major models of a unity of the cultural consciousness, Spinoza’s concept of

2 Ernst Cassirer later merely took this approach to its logical conclusion when he identified the formation of symbols as the fundamental activity of human consciousness.

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God and Fichte’s concept of the “I,” seemed highly problematic. Thus Cohen steers a course between the determinism of Spinoza and the speculative idealism of Fichte. In contrast to Spinoza, Cohen finds in political law the manifestation of the kind of teleological judgment that transcends all natural conditions while, in contrast to Fichte, Cohen subordinates the problems of self-consciousness and freedom to the logic of science. Still, Cohen echoes none other than Spinoza when he reintroduces the idea of God at the central systematic juncture between Ethics and the Logic of Pure Cognition. Kant, too, had allowed the ideas of creation of the world in time, the Soul, freedom of the will, and the existence of God to be retained in form of postulates of practical reason. Cohen, however, seems to defend Maimonides against Spinoza when, in a manner that is more Kantian than Kant himself, he retains the idea of God as the infinite condition of the possibility of a reconciliation between necessity and freedom. So much for the analytical and systematic character of transcendental philosophy according to Cohen. But what justifies our calling it “midrashic?” I admit that neo-Kantianism is not commonly considered a midrash on science and other forms of symbolic representations of experience, but I did not choose this term merely to please a putative reader interested in the possible connections between Cohen’s Ethics and problems of Jewish thought and philosophy. The term “midrash” has, in fact, been part of the vocabulary of literary criticism for quite some time now, where it denotes a form of writing that resembles the ancient Jewish commentary literature whereby the author, while formally commenting on a sacred text, not only aspires to a certain independence from its plain sense but, somewhat counter-intuitively acts as the author of its meaning. This inversion of what we usually consider the function of commentary works only because it is mindful of its own limitations. There is not just one but there are many possible readings of the sacred text, all arising from an interest in the elevation of its sanctity by means of a disclosure of its infinite possibilities. The midrashist is creative and humble, innovative and dependent, and always indebted to the possibilities of meaning inherent in the notion of a sacred text. The Jewish love and experience of God has found its most poignant expression in this art of midrash that is used with respect to both halakhah and aggadah—i.e., with respect to matters of law as well as to matters of imagination—seeking to explore the possible reasons for, and

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repercussions of, the Law. In the end, law and imagination, in other words, the facts of the Law and their moral and theological groundings, coalesce in an ongoing divine revelation at the hands of the commentator. Similarly, science and its cultural analogues—the “ideas and institutions” manifest in the history of “religion and morality, law and the state”—may be said to represent ongoing projects in which reality is established in the ideal terms of knowledge and historic agency. But the books of science and history disclose their origin and meaning only if read in the context of the practice of philosophy, a practice resembling the activity of midrashic commentary as described a moment ago. Philosophy in this sense, and I contend that this is exactly how Cohen practiced his craft, is the task of reading the books of science and culture (rather than those of nature and the res gesta of chronistic history) for those elements by which they disclose themselves as sacred books, whereby their sanctity consists in their contribution to the progressive actuation of being and goodness as united in the idea of the unity of the cultural consciousness. What Cohen pursues is an answer to the question of what constitutes progress.3 Philosophical interest in the history of science and analogous cultural facts may then be defined more precisely as an interest in the history of thought itself, namely, of thought as origin of being. In pursuit of an answer to this question, or of a more rigorous way of posing it, Cohen tirelessly revisits the history of philosophy, which he understands as the history of perennial problems, or “Problemgeschichte.” In such a cultural history, the progression of scientific discoveries is merely the outside of an inner history of presuppositions, leading from its crude mythological beginnings in the ascription of anthropomorphic qualities to natural phenomena, via the Greek disenchanting of the cosmos and the Stoic invention of Nature, to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and the accomplishments of modern science and philosophy.

3 The Marburg school’s skepticism toward the originative power of the principle of self-consciousness gave rise to the label of an idealism without subject. Similarly, the limitation of philosophy to the task of analytically extrapolating the transcendental grounds inherent in certain “facts of culture” gave rise to the label of a “cryptoempiricism.” These and other possible misreadings of Cohen’s philosophy can be avoided by considering Cohen’s interest in the rules and logical presuppositions of the judgment of progress itself.

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What is the relevance of a science-oriented logic of being to the problems of the humanities and of ethics? We understand now that posing the question in this way limits the possibilities pursued in Cohen’s approach, and caricatures his concerns in a manner often found in our textbooks. First of all, Cohen’s systematic thought— grounded in Kant’s transcendental philosophy, developed in close critical readings of Kantian texts, and formulated in light of the progression of the sciences—maintains a strict distinction between the validity of scientific facts, the laws of nature discovered/written by the sciences, and certainty with respect to ethical normativity. In response to Kant’s attempt to retrieve the transcendental method as the foundation of critical philosophy (a retrieval that involves, among others, the effort to distinguish consistent theorems from the inconsistencies of their application), Cohen notes that Kant himself would not likely have endorsed the speculative excesses found in Fichte. Fichte considered ethics not only on par with respect to theory and the certainty of its contentions but even to the foundation of all philosophy, including the unfolding of its theory of the sciences. To Kant, the antinomies of reason, i.e., the contradiction between the theses and antitheses concerning matters of ultimate concern (i.e., the assumption of a beginning of the world in time in contrast to its eternity, the assumption of a simple monadic substance in contrast to the denial of such a substance, the assumption of freedom in contrast to the pervasiveness of necessity, and the assumption of an intelligent and benevolent author of the world in contrast to the denial of such an existent), cannot be resolved on the level of pure reason or theoretical reflection. According to Kant, what recommends the acceptance of the theses and renders their antitheses problematic is, aside from an interest of reason in practical respect, the infatuation of reason with its own systematicity, with the establishment of a neatly architectonic structure of thought. By nevertheless admitting the theses as postulates of practical reason, i.e., by tying the validity of the moral law to assumptions otherwise unprovable, Kant ostensibly saves the time-honored truths of rational theology and avoids a total clash with the censorship of the common sense of the Enlightenment. In the aftermath of Kant’s thought, the reference to the primacy of practical reason is taken by Fichte as the point of departure of a theoretical philosophy of self-consciousness that takes the concept of freedom as its foundation. While morally inspiring and esthetically empowering, this construction ignores the

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fact that, according to Kant’s First Critique, freedom can only remain a problematic assumption, a presupposition of practical reason, not, however, an absolute beginning. In the mistaking of the ideal of freedom—whose legitimacy consists in its functioning as the hypothetical ground of normative moral judgments—for the transcendent ground of subjective agency, the critical turn of philosophy is displaced by a mystical or mythological notion of self-consciousness. While Cohen agrees that concepts of self and self-consciousness are indispensable for an “ethics of pure will”—if for no other reason than that their indispensability consists of the role they have played in the history of the attempt of establishing a persuasive concept of moral autonomy, i.e., they are an integral part of the history of the problem of autonomy—they cannot make its beginning. To Cohen, the presuppositions of freedom, autonomy, and the agency of selfconsciousness can be validated neither in terms of the immediate certainty of theoretical truths, nor in terms of empirical reality, but only in teleological terms. Cohen’s method of reading the history of the concept of the self is thus best described as a method of demythologization (a method already found in Kant’s readings of the Christian tradition in the context of his Religion Within the Limits of Mere Reason), in the sense of a critical inspection of our terms aiming to sort the problem-historically useful wheat from the mythological chaff.

The Ethics Let us now take a brief look at the Ethics itself. Cohen produced a set of volumes that, persuaded by his publisher Bruno Cassirer, he advertised as a system of philosophy in four parts, namely, Logic of Pure Cognition (1902), Ethics of Pure Will (1904), Esthetics of Pure Feeling (1912), and a projected volume on psychology which, never actually completed, was to describe the bond unifying the discrete directions of culture that the preceding volumes had described separately and whose key term was to be the “unity of the cultural consciousness.” Even though Cohen thus presents as parts of a systematic whole the individual volumes in which he presents his own philosophy rather than his understanding of Kant’s, he nevertheless shuns the appearance of authorial self-sufficiency and intellectual independence that seems to be conjured up in the term “system.” System means here the “attempt” (“Versuch”) to carry to its currently possible conclusions

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the things we must learn from Kant as we apply them, perhaps quite differently and in tacit or open correction of his notions, to certain “facts of culture.” These facts are the accumulated storehouses of cultural productivity that, in their progressive development, gradually differentiated into distinct areas such as science, law, the arts, and religion. Cohen takes from Kant the method of correlating cultural facts, i.e., knowledge contained in books, or ideas manifest in texts and institutions, with independent areas in which the respective claims of validity of these facts are reflected. He emphasizes, however, that Kant himself did not consistently apply this principle of correlation. While Kant was convinced that the limits of theoretical knowledge may be determined analytically by describing how we know scientifically, i.e., by distinguishing what is given in phenomenal experience from things in themselves, whereby phenomenal knowledge consists of objects construed in and by appropriate scientific methods and concepts, he does not correlate the idea of a moral law, the central idea of Kant’s critique of practical reason, with a corresponding field of cultural facts with the same degree of confidence. Instead, Kant takes refuge in the intuitive attitude of “respect” (Achtung) as a testimony to the universality of the moral law that he radically distinguishes from all positive law. This Kant deems inferior in moral dignity to virtue in the sense of an agency that, in the form of the categorical imperative, takes recourse to no other motivation than the pure form of the law, i.e., to its formal universality. Cohen, always hesitant to charge Kant with actual inconsistencies, considers it possible to present an alternative, no less grounded in the fundamental assumption of the transcendental character of freedom. Instead of taking recourse to the psychologically doubtful abstractness of a deontological ethics, a morality of absolute duties, Cohen makes an attempt to identify a correlation between the possibility of a pure will and a set of cultural facts whereby the latter could be used in analogy to the sciences. The cultural facts provide the factual basis from which the transcendental principles of ethics could be analytically extrapolated as the inherent principles of the progress achieved in, and with regard to, that particular set of cultural facts. Cohen identifies the science of the law or jurisprudence as the set of cultural facts whose progression is inherently founded on the principles of moral teleology.4 4

Described in such general terms of authorial omniscience, the matter is still

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The key problem of ethics is the definition of man as the agent of his actions as distinct from man in natural respect, where human agency is submerged in infinite chains of causality. How is such a definition possible without either taking recourse to psychological terms dependent on the mechanism of natural causality or relinquishing any relation between nature and spirit, necessity and freedom? Two avenues to the solution of this problem are closed to Cohen. The Fichtean avenue to the solution of the problem would be an exaggeration of the value of the idea of freedom, making it— in form of the spontaneity of the intellect—the foundation not only of culture but also of science. It turns a manner of speaking (Kant’s reference to a “primacy of practical reason”) into a transcendent ground, the classical case of a mere turn of phrase being transformed into an animate object. The Aristotelian solution to the problem, on the other hand, involves a denigration of the value of the idea in regard to the discourse of ethics. By reducing ethics to a discipline of practical wisdom, Aristotle denies the possibility of using the idea of the good, or something akin to it, in order to achieve a “steadiness” in the “direction” of progress in the moral and cultural affairs of man that is at least analogous to the power exerted by the idea (qua hypothesis, thing-in-itself, and task, all of which Cohen treats as synonyms) as the ground of scientifically conceived natural reality. The middle position: in analogy to mathematics in its constitutive role for the scientific judgment of reality, jurisprudence and its concepts of agent and agency can be shown to represent and imply a concept of man that neither reduces the human being to a psychologically and hence naturally determined empirical entity nor evaporates it into the shady abstractness of pure speculation. In fact,

somewhat distorted. Cohen’s identification of the sphere of the law as most conducive to extrapolating analytically the originative factuality of a pure will is a compromise in the sense that pure will is assumed to be the underlying rule of history and religion as well, i.e., of the humanities in general. It is hence yet another caricature when Gadamer, himself one of the many significant dissident Marburg students, reduces the intention of the Marburg school to making jurisprudence the “logic of the humanities.” Cohen wavers between religion (1888), history (1896), and law (1904) as the primary discourse and the requisite set of cultural facts allowing a sound exposition of the agency of pure will. That he settles on the law and the problems of the legal constitution of individuality, community, and totality (the state) may be due, in part, to the political fertility of this approach, speaking as it does to contemporary concerns with issues of social justice, prison reform, and the protection of minority rights.

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the notion of progress or historical development that underlies the very concept of a moral dimension of the law—for it is in the changes of law in direction toward greater proximity to the moral ideals of justice and equity, in short, in direction of the good as its inherent teleological principle of development—provides us with a conception of the human being that is quite analogous to what corresponds to it on the scientific side in terms of natural teleology (evolution, organic teleology). Cohen “hearkens” (belauscht) to law as well as to the biological concept of man, from Aristotle to Darwin and beyond, recognizing the similarities and correspondences between our concept of natural species development and historical species development. Instead of leaving history to the naturalism of Social Darwinism, however, which would constitute a category error, he finds in jurisprudence—as the fundamental discourse on the normativity of cultural ideas and institutions bundled in the state as the universal form of human sociality—the tools for a teleological determination of the direction of development. The principle of development of the moral institution of the constitutional state is not the survival of the fittest. Rather, it is the telos of freedom (namely, the freedom of all) as advanced by self-generated agency in whose acts human beings (in the form of law-giving and its presuppositions) progressively distinguish themselves from their animal nature and bring about their own humanization, creating laws for themselves that are guided by the ideals of a pure will, i.e., by enacting the principle of autonomy.

Cohen’s Ethics as an Event in Modern Jewish Cultural History We are now finally at the point where we can meaningfully speak to the question in what sense the publication of Cohen’s Ethics indeed constituted an event in the history of Judaism and modernity. When the Frankfurt chapter of B’nai B’rith hailed the Ethics as the first work of its kind doing justice to the constitutive role of Judaism in the formation of Western culture, Cohen responded affirmatively: “Im Zusammenhang meiner wissenschaftlichen Einsichten steht mein Judentum.” This oblique and basically untranslatable quotation calls for some unpacking. What is accomplished in and by the Ethics that it warrants such an expression of satisfaction on the part of its most attentive Jewish readers as well as on the part of its author?

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We must remember what Cohen and his contemporaries were up against and what was their fundamental interest. In the view of early 20th-century educated Germans, Western culture was fundamentally constituted by a hybrid of Oriental and Occidental forces, by the Christ of the Gospel and by Greco-Roman philosophy, with its concomitant scientific and political aspects. At the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish participants in the game of the history of ideas could either accept this understanding of history, in which case they relinquished any claim to the continued cultural significance of their own tradition, or they could attempt to spell out in what sense Judaism exerted an original and irreplaceable function among the sources of Western culture, one not surpassed by or absorbed into either Christian or Pagan cultural formations. For the cultured late nineteenth-century Jew, the question was not yet one of cultural autonomy or political independence but one of the continued significance of Judaism in the context of the narrative of Western civilization. A worthy contribution had to meet this challenge squarely and, judging by the satisfaction expressed in the above statement, Cohen felt that his Ethics had accomplished exactly that. I believe, incidentally, that Cohen was after a fundamental defense of Judaism in the face of educated Protestant claims to its civilizational irrelevance. I would say that, in fact, the entire movement of the Wissenschaft des Judentums was laboring under this charge and that, from early on, Cohen set out to defend Judaism in the eyes of its despisers and to do so on the highest level of philosophical sophistication.5 To read the Ethics as a defense of Judaism may seem at first at odds with its surface meaning. Judaism is not prominently featured in the Ethics. It appears only in asides or in the context of the political virtues, i.e., as part of a second order conversation about the possibility of an application of the theoretical principles laid out in the first part of the book. Yet religion, of course, makes a frequent appearance. A culturally literate Ethics could not but touch on the proximity between ethics and religion, especially if it is construed in a constant reading of the history of the formation of ethical theory. It is noteworthy, and has often been noticed, that where, in the

5 Christian Wiese comes to a similar conclusion concerning the apologetic situation of the entire Wissenschaft des Judentums. See Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelminian Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

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Ethics, Cohen refers to religion he does so in a critical sense, defending ethical theory from the encroachment of religious sentiments and the traditional assumptions of an insufficiency of ethics to produce a sound concept of the good, so a dependence on a religious augmentation of sorts. But what tradition is Cohen polemicizing against? I have shown elsewhere that, in the Ethics, the term “religion” is nothing but a cipher for the Christian religion.6 Where Judaism is referred to at all, it is considered favorably, yet without spelling out a theory of religion that would pit Judaism against Christianity. In fact, in the context of the Ethics with its particular interest in law and the state, Judaism functions mostly as the paradigm of the “judgment of majority” (Urteil der Mehrheit),7 an expression referring to the sociological phenomenon of community as distinguished from singularity (the individual person as a member of community and state) and totality (the all, the state). In other words, Judaism makes its appearance as the paradigmatic ethno-religious minority. The defense of Judaism on the highest philosophical level, however, is not contained in the overt references to Judaism or in the critique of the Christian tradition of casting doubt on the sufficiency of reason to produce a viable idea of man. We may come closer to the matter when we consider the striking fact that Cohen, a modern systematic philosopher, at a crucial juncture of the argument reintroduces the idea of God in order to maintain a systematic connection between logic and ethics. God represents the fundamental law of truth, a law expressing the “being of the ought.” This “being of the ought,” or condition of the possibility of realizing the imperative of the moral law, is always in doubt. Freedom may be a chimera, an illusion, and so it seems from the point of view of modern science. Yet, the entire point of the Logic of Pure Cognition is to remind us of the importance of teleological judgments in the formation of the science of life, biology. As in Kant, but greatly amplified by Darwin and the theory of evolution, the study of the forms of life cannot do without reference to the possibility of, even the need for, development. But who is to say that the laws of evolution should agree with the being of the ought, i.e., with the notion that human

6

See work cited in note 1, above. On the sociological meaning of Cohen’s “judgment of plurality,” see Hartwig Wiedebach, Die Bedeutung der Nationalität (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997). 7

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law-giving is not just proceeding toward an improvement of the conditions of human life but that this improvement will and can be sustained by the natural ground of the biosphere, including the biological substratum of human life? The idea of God is constituted in form of a double infinite judgment, a double negation: nature (as constituted in the infinite progression of the sciences) itself must not preclude the possibility of the realization of the being of the ought; the ought whose being nature (as constituted in the infinite progression of the sciences) must not preclude nevertheless transcends nature. The idea of God unifies these two ideas: nature as open to an infinite progress toward human goodness, and goodness as a transcending of nature. While in this idea of God we easily recognize a nod to the radical rationalism of Maimonides, the greatest of all Jewish philosophers, this concept of God alone would suffice to describe neither the true originality of Cohen’s Ethics, nor his defense of Judaism on the highest level of sophistication. While nineteenth-century Judaism took great pride in the notion of its mission among the Gentiles, that of keeping the idea of God and of ethical monotheism in its purest form, Cohen is too much of a philosopher and too little of a simple apologist to overlook the fact that, where he himself along with his medieval predecessor speaks of God, he also transcends the limits of revelation. The God of the Ethics is a philosophical construct that, while deeply agreeing with what Cohen feels to be the proper Jewish idea of God, is ultimately universal. Philosophical knowledge of God must be open to philosophical defense and can thus never be the exclusive property of a particular community. The God of Cohen’s Ethics is the God of humanity who, to the degree that Judaism can be described as a humanistic religion (or a religion of reason), is also the God of the Jews. But the Ethics does not engage in a debate on the share of religion in reason and of the possibility of reading the sources of Judaism as an origin of this religion of reason. The former argument is made in Begriff der Religion (1915), while the latter is reserved to Religion of Reason (1919). What then is the oblique but evident defense of Judaism present in the Ethics as a statement on the highest level of sophistication on the ongoing cultural significance of Judaism? This defense cannot but be contained in the very core of the argument of the Ethics, in the very law and principle of its construction. Anything less would be insufficient. It would, in fact, cast doubt on

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the sincerity of Cohen’s defense of Judaism as well as on his seriousness about the systematic character of philosophy. Schwarzschild may have been right when he saw the Ethics as Cohen’s most Jewish book not least because it is here more than in his philosophy of religion that he defends the Jewish reading of the command to love one’s neighbor. Where the Christian interpretation turns the commandment to love one’s neighbor into the paradox of an unfulfillable command of perfect morality, Judaism considers it a rule concerning the protection of the stranger. While Cohen agrees with the Christian and Western traditions’ emphasis on the love of neighbor as a central principle, to him the realizable good is lost if the ideal of goodness is suspended beyond the reach of man. Like the Torah, the ideal of the attainable good must be suspended between heaven and earth. It must be near and “in your mouth.” Neither in heaven (as the sole place of residence of the good, casting doubt on all human goodness), nor on earth (as the residence of a reified and already actualized freedom of the self ), but in between. One of the boldest insights of Cohen’s Ethics consists in his displacing of freedom as a postulate concerning the possibility of acting in accordance with the moral law by the teleological freedom of the other, the fellow human being. Not: “I am able to act in accordance with the moral law because I am obliged to do so because I consider myself as a free agent,” but: “The other is not free but he is to become free, therefore we all are obligated not to rest until he is free.” Ethics proceeds not from supererogatory morality but from the fellow human being who is the necessary condition of all contractual, and legal relations. Cohen’s Ethics thus elevates the discourse of general legal theory to the level at which it has always functioned in the tradition of covenantal law. The choice of law as the source of the ethical concept of man therefore universalizes the Jewish attitude toward the Torah as divine law. As a midrash on the legal construct of human sociality in its infinite progress toward a realization of the ideal, Cohen’s Ethics places the philosophy of law at the center of the humanities by making the improvement of the legal conditions of human life the central obligation and purpose of all cultural productivity. The systematic goal of the Ethics is thus to describe the common ideal of humanization as both realizable and as our highest obligation.

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Cohen’s Ethics constitutes an event in the history of Judaism and Modernity because in it Cohen is able to fulfill the dream of his youth that is the dream of his entire generation: to defend Judaism before the forum of world culture. To Cohen, such a defense meant one thing alone, namely, the demonstration that Judaism has something truly original and originative to contribute to the perennial and universal problem of man, that Judaism’s core insights have not been absorbed by, nor even preserved in, the Christian tradition. As much as Cohen refrains from attacking the Christian faith in public, as much as he emphasizes the cultural dependence of modern Jews on the insights and achievements of modern Protestant culture, none of this should blind us to the fact that, in cultural and philosophical terms, Judaism harbored a philosophically fertile and unique set of ideas that must not be abandoned despite the most wholehearted affirmation of cultural assimilation. Cohen was able to produce this enormously noble defense of Judaism only under an equally enormous sacrificium emotionis. While in his youth his affirmation of the cultural affinities between the German and the Jewish ethos was genuine and enthusiastic, his defense of assimilation was increasingly an act of maintaining the philosophical long-range perspective in the face of and despite all present evidence to the contrary. His proud affirmation of the cultural universality of the Jewish religious idea was accompanied by expressions of deep concern for the future of Judaism and by premonitions of a war of annihilation waged against the Jews. Yet until the end, and despite fresh disappointment at the German establishment’s betrayal of the Jewish participants in the German war effort, Cohen as much admonished his now almost exclusively Jewish friends and students to “hold on to our religion” as he admonished them to hold on to “our philosophical idealism.” In the end, both Judaism and philosophical reason contribute to one and the same goal: Menschwerdung, the pursuit of the ideal of humanity constituting the condition of the possibility of our becoming human beings.

ETHIK ALS LEHRE VOM MENSCHEN EINE EINFÜHRUNG IN HERMANN COHENS ETHIK DES REINEN WILLENS 1 Helmut Holzhey

„Die Ethik ist eine sehr subtile Sache, ich sehe, dass man sie behandeln kann, ohne Phrasen zu machen.“ Die briefliche Äusserung Hermann Cohens stammt aus dem Jahre 1872, als er – erst dreissigjährig – bereits an seinem zweiten Kant-Buch arbeitete. Das erste über Kants Theorie der Erfahrung war im Jahr zuvor veröffentlicht worden und hatte den Verfasser in der akademischen Welt bekannt gemacht. Sein Versuch, mittels einer philologisch genaue Interpretation der Kritik der reinen Vernunft die Philosophie seiner Zeit „durch die Wiederaufrichtung der Kantischen Autorität“ zu erneuern, war erfolgreich: Cohen brachte den Neukantianismus auf den Weg und wurde zu einem seiner bedeutendsten Vertreter. Der Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnislehre folgten 1877 Kants Begründung der Ethik (mit einer einleitenden Untersuchung zur metaphysikkritischen Ideenlehre) und 1889 Kants Begründung der Ästhetik. So wie er dieser Trilogie eine Systematik zugrunde legte, die sich an das System der Kantischen Kritiken anlehnte, so gliederte er auch sein eigenes System der Philosophie in drei Teile, schrieb also nacheinander eine Erkenntnislehre (Logik), eine Ethik und eine Ästhetik. Allerdings war ein vierter Teil geplant, eine philosophische Psychologie, in der die Einheit des Kulturbewusstseins zum Thema gemacht werden sollte. Er hatte über dieses Thema in Marburg – wo er zwischen 1876 und 1912 als ordentlicher Professor der Philosophie lehrte – eine Vorlesung gehalten, und er dachte noch im Juni 1917 daran, im Sommer des nächsten Jahres an die Arbeit zu gehen,2 doch sein Tod am 4. April 1918 vereitelte das.

1 Veränderte Fassung einer Darstellung der Ethik des reinen Willens in Klassische Werke der Philosophie, hg. von Reinhard Brandt und Thomas Sturm, Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, 2002, S. 210–34. Mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Reclam Verlags. 2 Vgl. Cohens Brief an Paul Natorp vom 10. Juni 1917, abgedruckt in: Helmut Holzhey: Cohen und Natorp, Band 2: Der Marburger Neukantianismus in Quellen, Basel und Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1986, S. 480.

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Der erste Teil seines philosophischen Systems erschien 1902 unter dem Titel Logik der reinen Erkenntnis.3 Cohen entwickelte hierin eine Urteils- respektive Kategorienlehre, die gegen Kants erkenntnistheoretischen Dualismus von Anschauung und Denken den „Ursprung“ der Erkenntnis im „reinen“ Denken behauptete. Seine zwei Jahre später erscheinende Ethik des reinen Willens4 baute methodisch darauf auf. Ich halte sie für das – neben seinem opus postumum Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (1919) – persönlichste Werk Cohens, in dem ihm eine interessante Verknüpfung von Schul- und Weltbegriff der Philosophie gelungen ist, und das nicht zuletzt wegen der in ihm artikulierten Bezüge zur Religion (des Judentums) und zur Politik. Obwohl in fortlaufender Kapitelzählung aufgezogen, hat die Ethik des reinen Willens zwei deutlich voneinander getrennte Teile, einen ersten rechtsethischen und einen zweiten, kürzeren tugendethischen Teil. Eine gewisse Parallele zur Gliederung von Kants Metaphysik der Sitten in eine Rechtslehre und eine Tugendlehre ist deutlich. Doch fasse ich jetzt nur die Unterschiede ins Auge: In den philosophischen Belangen seines Buches trennt Cohen nicht, wie Kant, zwischen Recht und Moral, schreibt also auch keine philosophische Rechtslehre, sondern begründet seine Ethik als eine „Ethik des Rechts“ (70). Ferner übernimmt seine Tugendlehre die Aufgabe, das Problem der Verwirklichung moralischer Forderungen im individuellen Leben anzugehen und zu seiner praktischen Lösung zu ermutigen. Schliesslich steht zwischen den beiden Teilen der Ethik des reinen Willens, gewissermassen als Scharnier, ein Kapitel über die Idee Gottes (Kap. 9) – dazu gibt es keinerlei Parallele bei Kant, zumal Cohen entschieden gegen dessen scheinbar verwandte Lehre, praktische Vernunft postuliere die Existenz Gottes und die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Stellung nimmt.

3 Reprint der zweiten Auflage dieses Werks von 1914 als Band 6 der Werke Cohens, hg. von Helmut Holzhey, mit Einleitung, Variantenverzeichnis und Namenund Begriffsregister, Hildesheim: Olms, 1977. 4 2. Reprint der 2. Auflage von 1907 als Band 7 der Werke mit einer Einleitung von Peter A. Schmid und einem Variantenverzeichnis, Hildesheim: Olms, 2002; ich zitiere nach dieser Ausgabe unter blosser Angabe der Seitenzahlen.

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1. Das Ethos des Ethikers Bevor ich näher auf das Werk eingehe, möchte ich einen Bogen zutiefst menschlicher Art schlagen, einen Bogen, den der Autor selbst mit seiner Person über den Text gezogen hat. Auch das Schreiben von Ethiken ist eine Form menschlichen Handelns und unterliegt als solches rechtlichen wie moralischen Normen. Eine einschlägige moralische Norm lautet, dass man Argumente, nicht aber die Person angreifen solle, die die fraglichen Argumente vertritt. Sie zu befolgen bedeutet nun allerdings nicht, dass die Person des Autors für die Moral des von ihm geführten Ethikdiskurses gleichgültig wäre. So könnte nur urteilen, wer den Diskurs in der rationalen Auseinandersetzung von Argumenten aufgehen liesse. Aber selbst hinter einer solchen, heute sehr geläufigen Bestimmung der Aufgabe philosophischer Ethik wird immer eine philosophische Haltung oder Einstellung auszumachen sein, die sich nicht in Argumente ummünzen lässt. Ich spreche von einem Ethos und behaupte also, dass zur Moral des Diskurses ein solches Ethos gehört. Und das gilt keineswegs nur für die Ethik. Vom persönlichen Ethos der Philosophierenden ist vielmehr gerade in philosophischen Grundlegungsprozessen die Rede. Der Phänomenologe Edmund Husserl zum Beispiel hat es in seinen Cartesianischen Meditationen für sich so umschrieben: „Jeder, der ernstlich Philosoph werden will, muss sich ‚einmal im Leben‘ auf sich selbst zurückziehen und in sich den Umsturz aller ihm bisher geltenden Wissenschaften und ihren Neubau versuchen“. Das sei conditio sine qua non eines „echten Philosophen“.5 Husserl macht das Ethos des Philosophen in Gestalt einer Authentizitätsforderung namhaft; bezeichnenderweise qualifiziert er eine so durch die philosophierende Person bestimmte Philosophie als Weisheit. – Ein zweites Beispiel: Für den späteren Heidegger ist Denken selbst „ethisch“. Das hier gemeinte Ethos des Denkers hat freilich nicht normativen Charakter; „Ethos“ bedeutet vielmehr „Aufenthalt“, den Aufenthalt im Denken des Seins, und solch denkender Aufenthalt ist „in sich schon die ursprüngliche Ethik“.6 Cohen äussert sich zum Ethos der Ethik, besser: zu seinem Ethos als Ethiker, in der Vorrede zur 1. Auflage seiner Ethik des reinen

5 6

Husserliana, Band 1, S. 44 und 4. Brief über den “Humanismus”, in: Wegmarken, Frankfurt/M. 1967, S. 187.

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Willens mit einem „persönlichen Wort über dieses Buch . . . über das, was es anstrebt“. Als Verfasser einer Ethik sieht er sich gewissermassen in einem Glashaus sitzen, kritischen Blicken ausgesetzt. Eine gewisse Scham überkommt ihn, weil er „bei Lebzeiten eine Ethik herausgibt“. Genügt er den persönlichen Erfordernissen eines Ethikers, genügt er – mit anderen Worten – der Authentizitäts- oder Glaubwürdigkeitsforderung? Er erinnert an den „bekannten Ausspruch . . .: dass der Ethiker ebensowenig ein guter Mensch zu sein brauche, wie der Maler ein schöner“. Dieser Ausspruch könnte ihn salvieren, allerdings nur auf zynische Weise. Wie rettet sich der Autor vor diesem Zynismus, wie rettet er sich aber auch gegenüber hypermoralischen Ansprüchen? Indem er sein Arbeitsethos deklariert. Und dieses besteht darin, die Sittlichkeit zunächst als „ein Problem der Erkenntnis“ zu bearbeiten, „in aller der Genauigkeit und Nüchternheit und Sachlichkeit, welche jedes theoretische Problem erfordert“. Anders formuliert: Ethik soll nicht mit Moral verwechselt werden, die Thematisierung (heute z.B. des Problems der Abtreibung) nicht mit (mörderischer) Gesinnung. Gleichwohl verkennt Cohen nicht, dass zwischen der „methodischen Arbeit“ am Problem der Sittlichkeit und dem „sittlichen Selbstbewusstsein“ des Autors eine innere Beziehung besteht. Gestiftet wird diese Beziehung durch ein Ethos, das ich das Ethos der Suche nenne. Darunter verstehe ich eine Grundhaltung, welche die kognitive Arbeit an der ethischen Theorie (mitsamt ihrem eigenen Ethos) in eine praktische Zielsetzung einbindet, eine Zielsetzung, auf die hin, nicht von der her Ethik betrieben wird. Das Ethos der Suche ist demjenigen Ethos genau entgegengesetzt, das sich als Ethos des christlichen Glaubens an einem Wort Jesu, etwa an seinem „Es ist vollbracht“ am Kreuz, orientiert. Wie führt nun die Haltung der Suche zur rational ausweisbaren Verknüpfung von (wissenschaftlicher) Erkenntnis und Sittlichkeit? Cohen verbindet Haltung und Argument, indem er Erkenntnis, auch ethische Erkenntnis, als problemorientierte Aufgabe begreift, die schon von sich her auf ein Suchen festgelegt ist. Dieses Suchen bleibt nicht, so Cohen, ein bloss theoretisches Untersuchen, sondern prägt sich im Ethiker zum Ethos des Verlangens „nach der Enthüllung“ der „Menschheit in allen Völkern und in jedem Menschen“ aus. Dieses Ideal einer wahrhaft humanen Welt zeigt alle Merkmale eines Ideals, nämlich das Bild einer Vollkommenheit, die durch Vervollkommnung angestrebt, aber wegen der Unabschliessbarkeit des Vervollkommnungsprozesses mit dem Stigma der Unvollkommenheit gezeichnet ist (423–4). Ein solches

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Verlangen zu tragen, das qualifiziert den Philosophen zum Ethiker; oder negativ formuliert: das Ethos des Ethikers besteht darin, nicht an der „Realität des Sittlichen“ angesichts der Tatsachen zu verzweifeln, nicht in seinem Denken dem „Irrewerden und . . . Irremachen der sittlichen Kultur an sich selber“ nachzugeben (VIII–IX). Die theoretische Suche nach der Idee des Guten wird durch den Affekt der Hoffnung und Zuversicht genährt; die Suche bedarf dieser Unterstützung, ist es doch keineswegs selbstverständlich, die menschliche Situation als eine Situation bleibender Unvollkommenheit anzuerkennen und trotzdem engagiert an der „Ausgrabung“ des „Schatzes“ weiterzuarbeiten, den „die Menschheit [Humanität] in allen Völkern und in jedem Menschen“ bildet. Cohen schreibt seine Ethik in dieser Haltung, die für ihn das Ethos bzw. die Tugend des Ethikers ausmacht. Damit spannt sich der Bogen zum letzten Teil seines Werks. Was im 1. Kapitel als „Grundgesetz der Wahrheit“ entwickelt wird, findet im 11. (innerhalb der Tugendlehre) seine Entsprechung in der Tugend der Wahrhaftigkeit. Für Cohen ist Wahrheit nur auf dem Wege von revidierbaren Grundlegungen zu finden, die „Wahrheit“, die Logik und Ethik verknüpft, also nur in der beiden Disziplinen gemeinsamen „Methodik der Grundlegung“. Auch ein Wissen darüber, was ich prinzipiell tun soll, ist nicht aus einer Erleuchtung, aus alltäglicher Praxis, aus dem gesunden Menschenverstand oder dergleichen, sondern allein durch eine Grundlegung (d.h. „hypothetisch“) zu gewinnen. „Die Forderung der Wahrheit . . . stellt immer neue Probleme; daher bleibt der Besitz immer Streben“ (498). Um seiner Beharrlichkeit willen ist dieses Streben, diese Suche, auf eine Stütze angewiesen – auf die Tugend der Wahrhaftigkeit (498–529). Sie beruht auf Selbsterkenntnis, d.h. auf einem Prozess, in dem sich das Subjekt selbst beständig zum Problem der Erkenntnis macht (501). Dank dieser Verwurzelung im Prozess der Selbsterkenntnis wird Wahrhaftigkeit zur „Tugend der Philosophie“ und damit auch zum „Wegweiser“ im „stetigen Gange sittlicher Arbeit“ (510), d.h. auch zur Tugend des Ethikers. Gerade er ist angesichts der menschlichen Angelegenheiten, die er reflektiert, der Verführung besonders ausgesetzt, sein „Verlangen“ in vermeintlich absoluten Gewissheiten zu stillen, und sei es aus Verzweiflung über den schlechten Gang der Dinge. Die Wahrheit aber besteht einzig im „Sicheren der Grundlegung“; die „Devise der Wahrhaftigkeit“ kann es nur sein, sowohl „gegen alle Beteuerungen und machtvollen Aufschwünge eines sittlichen Glaubens“ (512) wie gegen das „Irrewerden . . . an sich

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selber“ auf die Vernunft der fortgesetzten Grundlegungen zu bauen, ohne diese letztbegründend absichern zu können und zu wollen.

2. Der ethische Begriff des Menschen Bei der Artikulation seines Ethos hat Cohen schon auf die Zielsetzung, aber auch auf grundlegende Probleme der von ihm vorgelegten Ethik aufmerksam gemacht. Der Rekurs auf das persönliche Ethos des Ethikers ist nicht nur eine Antwort auf die affektive Beirrung durch die unaufhebbare Differenz zwischen Idealität und Realität des Sittlichen „in der empirischen Menschenwelt“ (IX). Dass die Reflexion auf das Ethos des Ethikers unabdingbar ist, deutet zugleich auf die Grenze theoretisch-methodischer Bearbeitung ethischer Probleme hin, auf die Grenze ethischer Argumentation. Schliesslich äussert sich die Verantwortung des Autors für sein Vorhaben in der Selbstverpflichtung, mit seiner Ethik einem realen gesellschaftlichen Notstand zu Leibe zu rücken, wie er für Cohen mit der „Arbeiterfrage“ (nach Friedrich Albert Langes Formulierung)7 signalisiert war. „Was ist das aber für eine Ethik, die den Menschen von der Strasse aufrafft. Von allen Geschäften der Vernunft ist die Ethik am allermeisten wesentlich architektonisch.“8 In dieser frühen, gegen Schopenhauers Mitleidsethik gerichteten Bemerkung kommen andeutungsweise zwei wesentliche Momente der Cohenschen Ethik zur Sprache: dass sie erstens „Lehre vom Menschen“ und dass sie als solche zweitens systemphilosophisch geprägt ist. Was beinhaltet diese „Lehre vom Menschen“? Wenn sich Cohen eingangs seiner Ethik des reinen Willens darauf festlegt, dass der Mensch Gegenstand der Ethik sei (2), so ist und bleibt das präzisierungsbedürftig. Das gilt zu allererst in Bezug auf die Rede vom Menschen. Denn Menschen sind Individuen, Menschen leben in Gemeinschaften, die Menschen insgesamt bilden die Menschheit. In welcher Hinsicht wird „der“ Mensch nun Gegenstand der Ethik? Nicht als Individuum, oder doch erst sekundär. Cohen konzipiert also keine Individualethik. Auf das Individuum als 7

Vgl. F. A. Lange: Die Arbeiterfrage in ihrer Bedeutung für Gegenwart und Zukunft, Duisburg 1865. 8 Brief an Hermann Lewandowsky vom 28. September 1870, in: H. Cohen: Briefe, ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Bertha und Bruno Strauss, Berlin 1939, S. 25–6.

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„Kernbegriff des Menschen“ zu setzen, implizierte für ihn, das methodische Fundament der Ethik in der Psychologie zu suchen und sich damit dem Naturalismus auszuliefern. Seine Ethik richtet sich vielmehr „auf die Durchdringung des Individuums mit der Besonderheit und mit der Allheit“ (11). Cohen schreibt aber auch keine Sozialethik, die auf die Besonderheit, d.h. die Verbindung von Einzelnem und Mehrheit in menschlichen Gemeinschaften, abstellen müsste. Es ist vielmehr das Prinzip der Allheit, dem er seine Ethik verpflichtet weiss. Sie betrifft zuletzt die Menschen insgesamt, die Menschheit – als Einheit und als Wesen verstanden. Da diese „Menschheit“ immer Ideal bleibt, in der allheitlichen Einheit des Staates aber ihren Vorschein hat, ist die Ethik des reinen Willens in ihrem grundlegenden Teil, zugespitzt formuliert, eine Lehre vom Rechtsstaat. Der Staat – natürlich nicht in seiner aktuellen Wirklichkeit, sondern als „Prinzip des ethischen Selbstbewusstseins“ (255) – wird als das eigentliche ethische Willenssubjekt begriffen. Cohen präzisiert, dass seine als „Lehre vom Menschen“ definierte Ethik eine Lehre vom Begriff des Menschen sein soll (3). Der Mensch wird nicht „von der Strasse aufgerafft“, d.h. nicht vorgefunden, sein Begriff muss vielmehr, wie jeder fundamentale Begriff, denkend erzeugt werden. Eine eigentümliche Schwierigkeit des Vorhabens, die Ethik als Lehre vom Begriff des Menschen aufzubauen, zeigt sich in der Frage, ob es sich dabei um einen deskriptiven oder normativen Begriff handelt. Cohen entscheidet sich ganz klar für letzteren, und stellt sich damit auf den Boden der Kantischen Ethik, grenzt sich aber auch von der Schopenhauerschen Metaphysik des Willens ab. Der Naturalismus, als „Todfeind der Ethik“ apostrophiert (12), wird in allen seinen Varianten abgewiesen, ob er nun in Gestalt einer physiologisch-psychologischen Anthropologie, als Eudämonismus oder auch als Rousseauismus auftritt; gegen den letzteren äussert sich Cohen drastisch dahingehend, dass „die Ethik . . . nicht in erster Linie von den Bäumen lernen [will], sondern von den Menschen in der Stadt“ (13). Menschliches Wollen ist in der Ethik durch ein Sollen bestimmt zu denken. Man vergegenwärtige sich biblische Verbote wie „Du sollst nicht töten“ oder Gebote wie „Du sollst deinen Nächsten lieben wie dich selbst“. Auf solche Sollensbestimmtheit oder, wie wir auch sagen können, auf die Unterstellung unter ein normatives Gesetz statt auf ein Begehren oder ein triebhaftes Nicht-mehranders-können verweist Cohens Ausdruck „reiner Wille“. Aber ist das dann noch ein menschlicher Wille, wie wir ihn in seinem

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Schwanken zwischen Lust und Verpflichtung nur allzugut kennen? Ein Urteil wäre verfrüht, weil Ethik mit der „Konstituierung des reinen Willens“ (164) überhaupt noch nicht am Ziel ist. Der Wille muss zur Handlung, als seinem „eigentlichen Gegenstand“ (174), finden. Der blosse Wille ist moralisch nichts wert. Erst indem der Wille in die Handlung mündet, kommt er eigentlich zu sich selbst. „Weit gefehlt, dass der Wille in der Handlung sich veräusserlichte, verinnerlicht er sich vielmehr in ihr und durch sie“ (175). Und wenn es der „reine“, nur durch ein Sollen oder Gesetz bestimmt gedachte Wille ist, von dem die ethische Anthropologie ihren Ausgang nimmt, so macht erst die Handlung den Menschen zum Menschen, denn ethisch betrachtet wird der Mensch dadurch zum Menschen, dass er der Handlung fähig wird (168). Die Frage nach der menschlichen Realität des reinen Willens stellt sich dennoch. Sie berührt einerseits das allgemeine methodische Problem von Sollen und Sein, sie nährt andererseits den Zweifel, ob die Ethik des reinen Willens doch bloss eine „transzendente Schäferwelt“ male (28). Cohens Lob des idealen Staates ist gegen den Anarchismus und die Erwartung der Revolution in Kreisen des orthodoxen Sozialismus gerichtet. Er verteidigt den liberalen Rechtsstaat aber auch gegen den völkischen Nationalismus und gegen Bestrebungen, das Christentum wieder zur staatstragenden Religion zu erklären. Er tritt nicht zuletzt als emanzipierter Jude für einen Staat ein, in dem Angehörige von Minderheiten als vollwertige Staatsbürger anerkannt sind. Und in gesellschaftlichsozialer Hinsicht unterstützt er Reformen im Geiste eines ethischen Sozialismus.9

3. Sein und Sollen Ich wende mich zunächst dem ersten Aspekt des Problemkomplexes von Sein und Sollen zu. Mit der Formel, das spezifische „Sein des Sollens“ bestehe im gesetzmässigen Wollen, wird nur erst ein theoretisches Programm umschrieben. Cohen legt fest, dass die Unterscheidung des Sollens vom Sein auf das Sein der Natur zu beziehen ist, dem Sollen also nicht schlechthin ein Sein, was immer auch das

9 Vgl. Helmut Holzhey (Hg.): Ethischer Sozialismus. Zur politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus, Frankfurt/M. 1994.

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heissen mag, abgesprochen werden kann. Die Ethik verwaltet einen spezifischen „Seinswert“. Damit wird zugleich gegen die Auffassung Stellung genommen, dass nur vom „Sein“, nicht aber vom „Sollen“ eine methodische Erkenntnis möglich sei (12–13, 21–27). Die Unterscheidung von Sein und Sollen bekommt nun den neuen Sinn: dass mit der Behauptung eines spezifischen, vom Sein der Natur unterschiedenen Sein des Sollens das Problem ethischer Erkenntnis vom Problem der Naturerkenntnis abgegrenzt wird und doch „als ein Problem der Vernunft anerkannt“ bleibt (21). Obwohl die formallogische Seite der Differenz von deskriptiven und normativen Sätzen im Text kaum behandelt wird, hat sich Cohens Ethik mit ihrer konsequenten Unterscheidung von Sein und Sollen (im Sinne der Kantischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Freiheit) systematisch gegen den „naturalistischen Fehlschluss“ abgesichert. Mit „Sein“ meint Cohen nicht die eine oder andere ontologische Bestimmung wie Realität oder Substanz, insbesondere auch nicht Wirklichkeit (Dasein), sondern die ontologische Verfassung eines Gegenstandsbereiches überhaupt. Was das Sein der Natur betrifft, so vertritt er die Auffassung, dass der Grund ihres Seins nicht gegeben ist, sondern „in Grundlegungen“ denkend erzeugt wird (97). Er bezeichnet dieses Denkverfahren mit dem platonischen Ausdruck „hypothesis“.10 Die Grundlegung setzt beim Faktum einer Wissenschaft an, in der theoretischen Philosophie am Faktum der mathematischen Naturwissenschaft. Dieses „Faktum“ vertritt die Stelle der Phänomene bzw. der Erfahrung. Philosophie analysiert wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis auf ihre Grundlagen („Bedingungen der Möglichkeit“) hin und weist diese Grundlagen als Grundlegungen aus, die wir in unserem Denken vollziehen.11 Damit ist knapp gekennzeichnet, was Cohen als „transzendentale Methode“ in die Philosophie einführt. Er verfolgt damit einen methodischen Idealismus, dem modernen Konstruktivismus in mancher Hinsicht verwandt. Dieser „Idealismus“ besteht nicht in einer subjektivistischen Reduktion, auch nicht in einer Philosophie

10 Platons Idee hat für Cohen ausschliesslich die Bedeutung des Verfahrens der Grundlegung (hypothesis), in dem „wahrhaftes Sein“ erzeugt wird; vgl. H. Cohen: Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik (1878), in: Schriften zur Philosophie und Zeitgeschichte, hg. von Albert Görland und Ernst Cassirer, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1928, Band 1, S. 336–66, bes. 360–64. 11 Ein Beispiel dafür wäre der Nachweis, dass das dritte Axiom der Newtonschen Physik die Grundlegung des Systems der Natur leistet (Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, S. 334–41).

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des Selbstbewusstseins, sondern in der gedanklichen Arbeit, zunächst das Sein der Natur – den Inbegriff naturwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis – auf eine Grundlegung zurückzuführen und in diesem Sinne als denkerzeugt auszuweisen. „Sein“ ist damit als Inbegriff von Gesetzesrelationen gedeutet. Wenn es sich aber mit dem „Sein“ (als Sein der Natur) so verhält, dann wird auch Cohens Rede von einem „Sein des Sollens“ plausibler. Das Sein der Natur und das Sein des Sollens haben eine formale (methodische) Gemeinsamkeit. Sie besteht darin, dass das eine wie das andere „Sein“ als denkgesetzlich erzeugter Komplex von Gesetzesrelationen zu verstehen ist. Neben dieser Gemeinsamkeit ist aber auch eine Differenz zu beachten. Während nämlich bei der naturwissenschaftlichen Beschreibung der Natur ein Ding an sich „im Hintergrunde stehen bleiben“ kann (27), wenn auch nur im entschärften Sinne eines regulativen Prinzips, gilt das nicht für die Bestimmung des Wollens durch das Sollen in der Ethik. Kandidat für das ethische ‚Ding an sich‘ wäre der Wille, verstanden als das natürliche Begehren des Menschen, verstanden aber auch als metaphysischer Weltwille im Sinne Schopenhauers (19). Cohen spricht den dergestalt absolut gesetzten Willen als einen „Schlupfwinkel“ für „die Mächte der Finsternis“ an, den er damit zu beseitigen sucht, dass er – wie schon ausgeführt – das Wollen ganz durch das Sollen bestimmt sein lässt. Nur in dieser Bestimmung des Begehrens zum „gesetzmässigen Wollen“ – „reiner Wille“ genannt – wird „ein wahrhaftes Sein“ für die Ethik gewonnen (27). Gerade diese These aber muss skeptisch stimmen. Und damit komme ich zum zweiten Aspekt des Problemkomplexes, der durch das Stichwort „transzendente Schäferwelt“ (28) bezeichnet worden war. Der Einwand, es handle sich beim „Sein des Sollens“ bloss um eine freischwebende Konstruktion, wenn auf jede Absicherung in der Natur des Menschen verzichtet werde, drängt sich fast noch massiver auf als gegenüber der Grundlegung des Seins der Natur. Gemäss der Ethik des reinen Willens soll aber auch hier, in der praktischen Philosophie, die Bezugnahme auf ein Wissenschaftsfaktum Abhilfe schaffen. Mit der Faktizität einer Wissenschaft wird nicht ein empirischer, sondern ein theoretischer Sachverhalt vorgegeben. Wenn die nach transzendentaler Methode verfahrende kritische Philosophie generell von gültiger wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis ausgeht, um die sie bedingenden Grundlegungen auf- und auszuweisen, dann stellt sich die

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Frage, ob sie auch als praktische Philosophie (Ethik) so vorgehen kann und muss. Wiederholt moniert es Cohen gegenüber der Kantischen Ethik, dass sie ein solches Wissenschaftsfaktum nicht kennt. Zwar erklärt er die „Anweisung auf das Faktum der Wissenschaften“ für „das Ewige in Kants System“ (65). Und man könnte meinen, dass er sich in der Ethik dabei auf das „Faktum der reinen praktischen Vernunft“ bezieht. Für Kant kann man das Bewusstsein des kategorischen Imperativs „ein Faktum der Vernunft nennen, weil man es nicht aus vorhergehenden Datis der Vernunft, z.B. dem Bewusstsein der Freiheit (denn dieses ist uns nicht vorher gegeben) herausvernünfteln kann, sondern weil es sich für sich selbst uns aufdringt“.12 Doch Cohen erklärt sich unmissverständlich dahin, dass es sich hier bloss um ein „psychologisches ‚Faktum‘“ handle,13 um eine „BeobachtungsAnnahme“, die ihrem Status nach mit dem Rekurs auf den „gemeinen Verstandesgebrauch“ in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft verwandt sei, woraus sich ergebe, dass dieses ‚Faktum‘ seinem Sinne nach nicht mit dem „Faktum der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaft“ gleichgesetzt werden könne.14 Dass es sich beim „Sein des Sollens“ nicht um ein Gedankengespinst handelt, belegt unter den Kulturerscheinungen am besten das Recht bzw. die Rechtswissenschaft, primär die Staatsrechtslehre. Warum? Die Geschichtwissenschaft zeigt wohl, welche Verhältnisse das ideelle sittliche Sollen und die Macht eingegangen sind, kann aber so gerade nicht als Ausgangsfaktum einer Ethik des reinen Willens dienen. Allein in der reinen, d.h. weder tatsachenwissenschaftlich noch naturrechtlich (metaphysisch) konzipierten Rechtslehre ist mit dem Recht – soweit es an den Begriff der Handlung geknüpft ist (64–5) – eine reine Form des Sollens in Gestalt eines Sets normativer Sätze gegeben. Lässt sich aber eine reine Rechtslehre auch als Garant für das in Frage stehende Sein des Sollens in Anspruch nehmen? Angesichts dieser skeptischen Frage ist nochmals klarzustellen, dass es mit dem „Sein“ des Sollens nicht auf empirisch nachweisbares sittliches Handeln oder die ‚schmutzige‘ Wirklichkeit der ständigen Verstösse gegen das

12

I. Kant: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Akademie-Ausgabe Band 5, S. 331. H. Cohen: Kants Begründung der Ethik (1877). Nachdruck der 2. verbesserten und erweiterten Auflage von 1910 mit einer Einleitung von Peter Müller und Peter A. Schmid sowie mit textkritischem Apparat und Registern als Band 2 der Werke, Hildesheim: Olms 2001, S. 260. 14 Ebd., S. 255. 13

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moralische Gesetz abgesehen ist, dass also ethisches „Sein“ nicht die faktischen Verhältnisse meint, in denen wir leben, sondern das „Sein“ der gesetzlichen Verfassung des (demokratischen) Rechtsstaats. Die rechtsstaatliche Verfassung ist dabei wieder nicht als etwa soziologisch nachweisbares Faktum ins Spiel gebracht. Wenn in ihr das „Sein“ des Sollens festgemacht wird, dann meint das vielmehr, dass die Verfassung als Grundlegung des Staates legitimatorische Funktion für rational begründetes faktisches Handeln besitzt. Aus der ganzen Anlage von Cohens Ethik des reinen Willens, nicht zuletzt mit dem Übergang von der Rechts- zur Tugendlehre, lässt sich jedoch extrapolieren, dass das „Sein des Sollens“ weder nur in der (Staats-)Rechtswissenschaft noch im (Staats-)Recht zu suchen ist, sondern ebenso in gelebter Moralität. Paul Natorp bringt das in einem 1912 gehaltenen Vortrag bei der Skizzierung der transzendentalen Methode dadurch zum Ausdruck, dass er Ethik auf die Kulturfakta der Sittlichkeit zurückbezieht und diese als „praktisches Gestalten sozialer Ordnungen und eines menschenwürdigen Lebens“ beschreibt.15 Cohen würdigt vor allem ( jüdische) Religiosität als eine Gestalt gelebter Moralität; über Religion im Allgemeinen schreibt er, dass sie wohl einen Monopolanspruch auf Sittlichkeit erhebe, aber nur den sittlichen „Naturzustand“ repräsentiere, „dessen Kulturreife in die Ethik fällt“ (586). Seine These von der Auflösung der Religion in Ethik16 würde, transzendentalmethodisch gelesen, besagen: Auch Religion, repräsentiert z.B. durch Texte der hebräischen Bibel, bildet ein Bezugsfaktum, an dem die ethische Reflexion ansetzt, um in ihm die sittlichen Prinzipien zu eruieren und als solche auszuweisen.

15

P. Natorp: Kant und die Marburger Schule, in: Kant-Studien 17 (1912) S. 196–97. Vgl. H. Cohen: Religion und Sittlichkeit (1907), in: ders.: Jüdische Schriften, hg. von Bruno Strauss, Berlin 1924, Band III, S. 151: „Die Richtung der Religion wird aufgehoben in die der Ethik. . . . Die Aufhebung bedeutet . . . die Verwandlung in die andere Richtung“, nämlich des Geistes. – In der dritten Auflage seiner „Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag“ zu F. A. Langes Geschichte des Materialismus ersetzt Cohen 1914 die „Auflösung der Religion in Ethik“ durch die „Aufnahme der Religion in die Ethik“ (Werke, Band 5/II, S. 106); in seiner Schrift Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (Giessen 1915) erläutert er, dass es sich bei dieser „Aufnahme“ um eine Erweiterung des „Umfangs der Ethik mit dem Inhalt der Religion“ handelt (Werke, Band 10, S. 58). 16

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4. Die geschichtliche Wirklichkeit des ethischen Sollens Ist so das Sollen in seinem spezifischen „Sein“ gegenüber dem Verdacht blosser Fiktionalität gesichert, bleibt „sittliches Sein“ hinsichtlich seiner Wirklichkeit doch Ideal (423). Der handelnde Mensch steht bei seiner Orientierung an einem Ideal aber in einer unauflösbaren Spannung zwischen der natürlichen Bedingtheit seiner Triebe und Bedürfnisse und der ideellen Unbedingtheit vernunftbestimmten Sollens. Diese Spannung ist keine bloss faktische, sondern eine dem ethischen Begriff des Menschen eingeschriebene. Das bedeutet zunächst, dass Ethik vom Interesse am Unterschied zwischen dem Sein der Natur und dem Sein des Sollens getragen ist.17 Das bedeutet fernerhin, dass alle Konzepte naturalistischer oder idealistischer Überwindung dieses Unterschieds verworfen werden; und drittens, dass das Sein des Sollens – im Unterschied zum Sein der Natur – seine Wirklichkeit ewig in der Zukunft hat. Es ist die Auseinandersetzung mit der sinnbaren naturhaften Abhängigkeit menschlichen Handelns und menschlichen Seins, die Cohen zu einer spezifischen Verhältnisbestimmung von tatsächlicher menschlicher Lebensführung („homo phaenomenon“) und einer durch praktisch-moralische Vernunft bestimmten Lebensführung („homo noumenon“) nötigt.18 Das Problem besteht darin, wie die Gegenwärtigkeit des „homo noumenon“ im „homo phaenomenon“ zu denken ist, d.h. wie die unbedingte Verpflichtung in der praktischen Wirklichkeit Realität gewinnt. Es ist ja zunächst einmal höchst zweifelhaft, ob die sittlichen Forderungen in der menschlichen Wirklichkeit überhaupt eingelöst werden können (390). Doch was macht die Wirklichkeit des „homo phaenomenon“ aus? Gewiss müssen die ethischen Prinzipien für die natürlich-geschichtliche Wirklichkeit, in der wir alle leben, relevant sein. Das bedeutet allerdings nicht, dass die „Wirklichkeit der Sittlichkeit“ selbst eine natürlich-geschichtliche sein muss – ihr Bezug zur Zeit wird vielmehr von der Zukunft her bestimmt (398–416). „Ewigkeit“ meint diesen eigentümlich unzeitlichen Zukunftsbezug (400). Wenn das nun so zu verstehen wäre, dass die Einlösung des

17 Vgl. H. Holzhey, Sein und Sollen. Postmetaphysischer Idealismus bei Cohen und Natorp, in: Sinn, Geltung, Wert. Neukantianische Motive in der modernen Kulturphilosophie, hg. von Christian Krijnen und Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Würzburg 1999, S. 139–153. 18 Vgl. I. Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 538ff./B 566ff.; ders.: Metaphysik der Sitten, Rechtslehre, Akad.-Ausg. Band 6, S. 239 und 434.

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„Sollens“ in die Ewigkeit – nach dem gängigen Verständnis des Wortes – fiele, hätten allerdings Mythologie bzw. Metaphysik das letzte Wort behalten. Doch Cohen weist das strikt ab. Er fängt den metaphysisch belasteten Begriff der Ewigkeit in der Rede vom „Selbstbewusstsein der Ewigkeit“, welches das sittliche Subjekt erfüllt, auf. Der Begriff des Selbstbewusstseins wird von ihm nur in der Grundlegung der Ethik zugelassen: Er beschreibt nicht das „Ich der Erkenntnis“, sondern ausschliesslich die Selbstentfaltung des „reinen Willens“ (223), die nichts anderes als Selbstgesetzgebung ist, weil das Selbst für Cohen in Korrelation zur Gesetzgebung und nur in dieser Korrelation steht (340). Das sittliche „Selbstbewusstsein der Ewigkeit“ tritt an die Stelle der einer menschlichen Seele zugedachten Unsterblichkeit (413). Was hat es dabei mit seiner „Ewigkeit“ auf sich? Cohen interpretiert „Ewigkeit“ messianologisch, wie er umgekehrt den mythisch-religiösen Zug des Messianismus in der „Ewigkeit“ der Selbstgesetzgebung menschlicher Subjekte aufhebt. „Ewigkeit“ bedeutet dann denjenigen Zeithorizont menschlichen Seins, in dem das Sollen in der geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit erscheint: Ewigkeit als Wirklichkeit der Zukunft. In seinem „Selbstbewusstsein der Ewigkeit“ erwartet das sittliche Subjekt die „Erfüllung der Zeit“ nicht utopisch in der Zukunft eines Noch-nicht, sondern als Zukunft, muss diese messianische Zukunft jedoch „ständig der zeitlichen Zukunft anheimstellen“.19 Gemeint ist die „ewige Arbeit“ im „Fortgang des reinen Willens“ (410, 415). Das Sein des Sollens hat in der „ewigen Verwirklichung des Sittlichen“ in der Geschichte der Menschheit und nur in ihr seine Wirklichkeit.

5. Letzte Sicherungen Trotz seiner Ablehnung von Kants Postulatenlehre nimmt Cohen an dieser Stelle dessen Gedanken auf, Gott sei eine Hypothese zur Befriedigung des systematischen Vernunftinteresses. Die philosophische Ethik kann allerdings nicht den religiösen Gottesbegriff voraussetzen, sondern nur – wenn es denn sein muss – einen eigenen ethischen Gottesbegriff entwickeln. Methodisch grenzt sich Cohen

19 Pierfrancesco Fiorato: Geschichtliche Ewigkeit. Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens, Würzburg 1993, S. 175.

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nicht so sehr von religiöser als von theologischer Heteronomie ab; er gesteht der Religion die Inanspruchnahme einer Offenbarung Gottes als des „Urhebers der Sittlichkeit“ zu, lehnt aber den Anspruch der Theologie, für die von ihr gesuchte Erkenntnis Gottes auf das Wort Gottes (im Sinne einer „Urkunde vom Denken Gottes“) zurückgreifen zu können, vehement als Heteronomie ab (332–335). Nicht betroffen vom Vorwurf der Heteronomie ist die Idee Gottes. Was die philosophische Rede von Gott in der Ethik – und nur hier ist sie für den Verfasser der Ethik des reinen Willens angebracht und legitimierbar – bedeutet, wird in wiederholten Anläufen zu formulieren versucht. Mit der Abweisung aller Wesensbestimmungen verbindet Cohen die Konzeption eines relationalen Gottes, der in einem „auswärtigen Verhältnis“, dem Verhältnis zu den Menschen, aufgeht (55). Pantheismuskritisch hält er dabei an Gottes Transzendenz fest: Gott „bildet die Grundlage nicht zu dem Verhältnis, als dessen anderes Glied der Mensch gefordert würde; sondern zu den Verhältnissen, welche unter den Menschen die Sittlichkeit ausmachen, damit diese vollziehbar werden“ (55). Gott wird in Cohens Ethik dazu gebraucht, als der Eine Gott Bürgschaft für die zukünftige Vereinigung der Menschen zur Einheit der Menschheit unter dem Sittengesetz (55, 214) zu leisten, Bürgschaft für die Verwirklichung des Guten in der menschlichen Welt. Nun liefert die Berufung auf eine diesbezügliche religiöse Tradition (der Propheten Israels) noch kein Argument für die Einführung der Idee Gottes in eine philosophische Ethik. Cohen selbst stellt sich die Frage, an welchem Punkte „die Berührung mit dem Probleme Gottes unausweichlich ist“ (432). Das wird es für ihn dort, wo das Verlangen nach einer letzten Versicherung bezüglich der „Wirklichkeit des Sittlichen“ aufkommt. Nachdem geklärt wurde, dass sittliches Sein ein ideales ist (423), welches „keine adäquate Wirklichkeit“ besitzt (424), aber das Moment der Vervollkommnung im Sinne der „Ewigkeit des sittlichen Fortschritts“ (421) einschliesst, könnte sich die Frage aufdrängen, ob die „Natur“ bei diesem Prozess mitspielt, weil sie und mit ihr der natürliche Mensch irgendwann einmal vergehen dürften, sodass damit auch der sittliche Fortschritt an sein Ende käme (438). Statt aber diese metaphysisch-apokalyptische Fragestellung zurückzuweisen, lässt sich Cohen überraschenderweise auf sie ein, indem er zunächst die (metaphysische) Forderung aufstellt, „dass die Natur dem Raume, wie der Zeit nach, unendlich sei, weil das Sein des Ideals die Ewigkeit bedeutet“, und dann diese Forderung durch

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die Aufnahme des Gottesbegriffs ins Lehrgebäude der Ethik einzulösen sucht (439): Gott soll „für die Ewigkeit des Ideals die analoge Ewigkeit der Natur sichern“ (440). Cohen anerkennt, dass der Gottesbegriff, der die letzte „Lücke“ bei dieser Sicherung der „Wirklichkeit des Sittlichen“ schliessen soll, für die philosophische Begründung sowohl der Naturgesetze wie der ethischen Selbstbestimmung nicht benötigt worden ist und nicht benötigt wird (439, 447). Und er betont auch, dass er Gott bloss in methodologischer Bedeutung als Garanten der „Übereinstimmung“ zwischen Naturerkenntnis und sittlicher Erkenntnis zugrunde lege (447). Es geht also um das Verhältnis von zwei Erkenntnisformen. Eine Interpretationshilfe zum besseren Verständnis dieser ‚Theologie‘ bieten frühere Ausführungen zur Verknüpfung von Physiko- und Moralteleologie in Kants Begründung der Ethik. In Aufnahme und Weiterführung kantischer Reflexionen entwickelt Cohen dort erstmals, welchen philosophischen Sinn die Gottesidee hat: Mit „Gott“ unterstellen wir, dass die heuristisch für Naturprozesse angenommene Teleologie und die mit der Befolgung des moralischen Gesetzes einhergehende teleologische Ausrichtung sittlichen Handelns auf den geschichtlichen Endzweck sich weder methodisch noch sachlich gegenseitig aufheben, sondern in begründeter Übereinstimmung befinden. Die Gewährleistung dieser Übereinstimmung ist der Sinn der Gottesidee.20 Hier also verbürgt Gott noch keineswegs das ewige Dasein der Natur. In der Ethik des reinen Willens ist es demgegenüber höchst irritierend, dass sich Cohen von der metaphysischen Frage nach der Dauer des Kosmos tiefgreifend herausgefordert sieht, wo er doch in der Frage des individuellen Fortlebens nach dem Tod und der „Ewigkeit des Menschengeschlechts“ die Möglichkeit einer theoretischen Antwort verneint (415), weil sich für sie, anders als für das sittliche Ideal der Ewigkeit, keine rationale Begründung (Grundlegung) geben lässt (435–6). Irritierend bleibt weiter, dass Cohen mit der Analogisierung von „Ewigkeit der Natur“ und „Ewigkeit des Ideals“ (440) mit seinen eigenen Bestimmungen von Ewigkeit in Widerspruch gerät.21

20 Kants Begründung der Ethik, S. 365–6. Ähnlich argumentiert Cohen auch in der Ethik des reinen Willens, wenn er die religiöse Rede von der Wahrheit Gottes in die vernünftige Rede von der Wahrheit als „einheitlicher Methode der Logik und der Ethik“ transformiert (91). 21 Eindeutig heisst es in Kapitel 8: „Die Ewigkeit des sittlichen Selbstbewusstseins bedeutet nicht eine theoretische Frage über die Dauer des Menschengeschlechts“

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Auch wenn die in die Idee Gottes gesetzte Bürgschaft für die „Harmonie“ von Natur und Sittlichkeit keine metaphysische Erkenntnis sein will, sondern das Ergebnis einer systematischen Reflexion, wird sie das Odium einer metaphysischen These auf religiös-mythologischem Hintergrund nicht los. Cohen selbst hat schliesslich eingesehen, dass sich die Einführung der Idee Gottes in die Ethik nach den Prämissen seiner Systemphilosophie nicht rational rechtfertigen, sondern nur als Befriedigung für den „Rest jenes Verlangens nach Wirklichkeit“ interpretieren lässt, der in der „Gesinnung der Ewigkeit“ (427) „unaufgelöst zurückgeblieben ist“ (432). Er bringt das 1916 im Aufsatz „Gottvertrauen“ damit zum Ausdruck, dass er erstens die Idee Gottes zur Bürgschaft für die Realität der ethischen Forderungen an den Begriff des Menschen erklärt, „vergleichbar derjenigen [Realität], die den logischen Begriffen der Wissenschaft“ im Blick auf die Natur zusteht, und zweitens diesen Gedanken der Verbürgung mit der religiösen Haltung des Vertrauens parallelisiert: „Was die Religion Vertrauen nennt, das nennt die Ethik Denken, Erkenntnis der Idee. Lassen wir jetzt die methodische Unterscheidung fallen, so einigt sich die Ethik mit der Religion in dem Vertrauen auf Gott, als den Bürgen für die Herstellung der Sittlichkeit auf Erden.“22 Am Ende seiner Ethik des reinen Willens aber bekennt sich Cohen nochmals zur Souveränität der Ethik gegenüber der Religion, ja behauptet es als eine „Pflicht der Treue“, an der entmythologisierenden ethischen „Idealisierung der Religion unablässig zu arbeiten“ und so „zum geistigen und sittlichen Fortschritte der Kultur“ beizutragen – nicht ohne einräumen zu müssen, dass angesichts des faktischen Entwicklungsstandes der Kultur „auf das Surrogat der Religion praktisch nicht verzichtet werden“ kann (586–7).

6. Die Tugenden Den Abschluss der Ethik bildet eine Tugendlehre. Mit den Tugenden wird die subjektiv-affektive Seite der Durchsetzung von Moralität im (415), weil sie nicht als eine zeitliche verstanden werden kann (409–10, 417), höchstens als eine geschichtliche im Sinne der „Ewigkeit des Fortgangs der sittlichen Arbeit“ (410). 22 H. Cohen: Gottvertrauen, in: Neue jüdische Monatshefte 10. November 1916, S. 79–82. Werke, Band 17: Kleinere Schriften VI (1916–1918), bearbeitet und eingeleitet von Hartwig Wiedebach, Hildesheim: Olms, 2002, S. 348–49.

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Leben der Individuen thematisch. Dieser letzte Schritt in Cohens Reflexion auf die „Realität“ der Sittlichkeit ist selbst getragen von einem messianischen Ethos. Die Tugendlehre stützt damit Cohens geschichtsphilosophischen Optimismus, den er selbst im Redestil des Wilhelminischen Zeitalters als Glaube an den Fortschritt der Sittlichkeit und an den „Sieg des Guten“ (452) expliziert. Wenn das Individuum prinzipiell in der lastenden Spannung zwischen seiner sittlichen Aufgabe und der „ewigen“ Bemühung um ihre Erfüllung steht, so bietet ihm die Tugendlehre eine positive Orientierung, indem sie Wege zu einer gewissen Vervollkommnung seines moralischen Standards zeigt, so unvollkommen es dabei auch immer zugehen wird (424). Tugend ist immer mehr als bloss moralisches Wissen. Sie muss die „Vermittlung zwischen der Aufgabe der Handlung und dem einzelnen Schritte derselben“ leisten (473) und, wenn sie das tun soll, „ihre lebendige Wurzel in der Gesinnung haben und behalten“ (472). Tugendgestütztes Handeln ist beharrliches und stetiges Handeln. „Kein Tugend ohne Affekt“, schärft Cohen ein (476), d.h. keine Tugend ohne „Gefühlsannexe und Gefühlssuffixe“ (488). Als Affektgrundlage der Tugend bietet sich die Liebe an. Das ist, nicht zuletzt von der Religion her betrachtet, plausibel. Von besonderem Interesse für uns ist es aber, wenn Cohen dieses Angebot zurückweist. Natürlich bringt die Liebe, und das spricht für sie, den Bezug zum anderen Menschen ein. Sie ist paar-, familien-, gemeinschaftsbildend, indem sie „vom Ich zur Gemeinschaft führt“ (482). Dieser Ausgang vom Ich ist für Cohen einer der Mängel, der gegen die Liebe als affektive Grundlage individueller Moralität spricht. Schon im ersten Teil der Ethik des reinen Willens war er auf diesen Mangel aufmerksam geworden. Wo es nämlich im Zuge der Konstitution des ethischen Begriffs des Menschen um die „Erzeugung“ des Anderen als des „Nebenmenschen“ ging, im Kontext der Erörterung des Willenssubjekts (203), wehrte er die Liebe als den von der Religion gebotenen Weg zum Anderen ab, weil er den Anderen in Gestalt des Fremden oder Nächsten, auf den sich das Liebesgebot beziehe, immer schon voraussetze. In der Grundlegung der ethischen Lehre vom Menschen hingegen müsse der Andere erst erzeugt werden. Das geschehe nun nicht so, dass sich das Ich ein respektive „den“ NichtIch entgegensetzen würde, sondern – im Widerspruch zu Fichte – umgekehrt damit, dass der Andere der Ursprung des Ich bzw. des Selbstbewusstseins sei (212, vgl. 248–49). Des Weiteren lässt ihre

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affektive Struktur die Liebe als Grundlage von Tugendhaftigkeit ungeeignet erscheinen. Wer sich in Liebe einem anderen Ich zuwendet, begünstigt es. Der Affekt der Liebe zeigt Abstufungen, wie sie z.B. im unterschiedlichen Grad der Hilfsbereitschaft sichtbar werden, je nachdem ob sich eine Katastrophe im Nah- oder im Fernbereich ereignet. Cohen schreibt, dass man angesichts der Möglichkeit, Abstufungen in der Liebeszuwendung vorzunehmen, „auf den zynischen Einfall gekommen ist, die Nächstenliebe abzuschütteln, weil man es nicht bloss zugestehen, sondern zum Bekenntnis machen will, dass man die sogenannte eigene Rasse inniger zu lieben habe als fremde Nächsten“ (482). Liebe ist gemeinschaftsbildend, aber sie grenzt damit auch aus; sie übt also ihre affektive Funktion immer für und in relativen Gemeinschaften aus. Das ist durchaus ihr guter Sinn; Kritik verdient die Berufung auf sie nur dann, wenn eine „Sondergemeinschaft“ beansprucht, Gemeinschaft überhaupt erschöpfend zu vertreten, also für die „Allheit“ der Menschen zu sprechen. Aber eben: die Möglichkeit, als affektive Grundlage für solche Ansprüche zu dienen, haftet der Liebe an und macht sie deshalb untauglich, als Grundaffekt der Tugend zu fungieren. „Wir verlangen einen Affekt, der ohne Ansehen der Person seine Pfeile aussendet; dem das Menschenantlitz allein und als solches seine Reize enthüllt, und in gleicher Austeilung des Wärmegrades; wenn nicht gar vielmehr auf den Wärmegrad, als auf den Gradmesser der Liebe [d.h. auf die messende Abschätzung], verzichtet werden kann.“ (485) Cohen findet diesen Affekt in der Ehre. Das klingt merkwürdig und dürfte im ersten Moment auf Leser und insbesondere Leserinnen heute sehr befremdend wirken. Lesen wir weiter, so klärt sich auf, dass wir glücklicherweise nicht an Duelle oder an das Schicksal unverheirateter junger Frauen, die schwanger geworden sind, zu denken haben. Denn Cohen hat bei der Ehre die Würde, bei der Menschenehre die Menchenwürde im Auge. Entgegen unserem heutigen Sprachempfinden bevorzugt er den Ausdruck „Ehre“, weil dieser „nüchterner, bescheidener, unzweideutiger“ sei als das Wort „Würde“, dem eine „feierliche Pose“ anhafte; vor allem aber auch, weil „Ehre“ – anders als „Würde“ – ein eingeführter juristischer Terminus sei. Schriebe er heute, würde Cohen zweifelsohne von „Würde“ reden, wie das folgende Zitat zeigt: „Wie die Münze gleichen Wert hat in jedermanns Hand, so leuchtet auf dem Antlitz des Menschen die Ehre, als die Menschenehre. Und diese Menschenehre bedeutet die Gleichheit der Menschen in ihrem Berufe zur Sittlichkeit“ (491–92) – mit allen politischen Konsequenzen, auf

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die Cohen ausdrücklich hinweist. ‚Würde vor Liebe‘ ist seine Botschaft. Abzulesen ist die Würde „auf dem Antlitz“ des anderen Menschen: „Denn wie die Liebe aus dem Ich quillt, so die Ehre aus dem Du. Und so kittet sie vermöge des Du das Wir.“ (493) – Cohens Ethik nimmt hier Einsichten von Martin Buber und Emmanuel Levinas vorweg. Zu ergänzen ist, dass die Tugend der Liebe schon in der Ethik des reinen Willens nicht nur in ihrer gemeinschaftsbildenden Funktion betrachtet wird, sondern auch in ihrer Bedeutung für das Individuum, nicht zuletzt in seiner Schwäche. Das wird vor allem an den Ausführungen zur „Liebestugend“ der Bescheidenheit sichtbar. Wer aus Bescheidenheit oder – wie es in der Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums heisst – in Demut handelt, ist darüber belehrt, dass er in der Spannung zwischen Ideal und dem praktisch Erreichbaren leben und diese Spannung aushalten muss. Auch die Wahrhaftigkeit, eine Tugend der Ehre, besitzt individuelle Relevanz. Denn mit ihr ist das delphische bzw. sokratische „erkenne dich selbst“ eingefordert. Durch diese Tugend wird der einzelne Mensch davor geschützt, das sittliche Selbstsein, das er im Prozess der Selbsterkenntnis gewinnt, als Besitz zu verkennen. Anders gesagt: Wahrhaftigkeit stabilisiert die kritische Einstellung, in welcher sich die für die Selbsterkenntnis konstitutive „Selbstprüfung und Selbstkontrolle“ (501) vollzieht. „Kein Mensch darf an sich selbst glauben, in keinem Momente seines Lebens“, denn aus Wahrhaftigkeit muss er sich sagen, „dass er sich selbst immer doch nur ein Problem bleibt“ (503). Was zum Schluss ausgeführt worden ist, bringt an den Anfang zurück. Der ethische Begriff des Menschen, den der Ethiker entwirft, und die Selbsterkenntnis in „Wahrhaftigkeit“, die dem Ethiker als Person überbunden ist, konvergieren im Gedanken des unabschliessbaren Prozesses unserer Selbstbestimmung. Cohens Ethik des reinen Willens hat, insbesondere in der Tugendlehre, aus solcher Konvergenz heraus, einen persuasiven Gestus, der Ermutigung wirken soll, Ermutigung bei seinen Leserinnen und Lesern, Ermutigung auch bei ihm selbst. Der Theologe Adolf Deissmann, selbst ein Schüler Cohens, spricht in einer Rezension des Buches vom Eros der Cohenschen Ethik, der sich an manchen Stellen „zu prophetischer Wucht“ erhebe.23

23 In: Die Hilfe. Wochenschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst, 12. Jg., Nr. 37, 16. September 1906.

JUDAISM AS A “METHOD” WITH HERMANN COHEN AND FRANZ ROSENZWEIG Gesine Palmer

Über Fragen des Wie, der “Methode,” sollte man ja eigentlich immer nur nach getaner Arbeit, nicht vorher reden.”1 [on questions of How, of “method,” one should eigentlich only speak after work has been done]

I love Rosenzweig’s philosophy. Hence I feel free to do the contrary of what he states with the sentence quoted as a motto. Only doing so I do what he implies with his use of the word “eigentlich.” The German word “eigentlich” has two meanings in general speaking: (1) It can be used as an attribute in order to stress the very problem that has not been recognized as central yet: one would say: das eigentliche Problem is not A, but B. The real problem is not A, but B. (2) It can be used as an adverb: eigentlich müßte ich alles auf Englisch sagen, aber ich tu es nicht. Eigentlich I should say everything in English, but I don’t do so. Eigentlich one should talk about method only after work has been done: but this time—or: in reality—I make an exception. “Eigentlich” appears to be the word to mean or to point to the should-be or ought-to-be, and at the same time, with no less emphasis, to that which is. What I am going to do here is to talk from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning only about method. Eigentlich I should do so by developing a new method, or making use of a well-established method that will allow me to think about method. But I don’t have any such meta-method, not even a new method of Eigentlichkeit with question marks or anything the like. Instead I try to help myself through the difficult task given by my title in the following way, which I recommend to you too: 1 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, in Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1976, 121.

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Imagine yourselves in the position of young Charles Ives, the composer of The Unanswered Question, and his father, standing on a wooden tower in the center of a big forest, watching out for and listening to several brassbands approaching this tower from several directions, playing different tunes and rhythms, marching in different tempos. Perhaps this imagination can help to trick out the speaker’s inability to spell out different elements of a structure or a fabric of meanings at the same time.

I. To claim that I knew what Judaism is, I wouldn’t dare. Who would? Rosenzweig engaged a lot of arguments against the question for the essence (das Wesen). Whatsoever he may have written on Judaism, he did not intend to inform his readers about the essence of Judaism.2 [. . .] With respect to Hermann Cohen he said that someone who would have written only about Judaism and only about Judaism could never have made his philosophical achievements.3 What Rosenzweig himself did in his Star of Redemption, according to his own self-commentary, was not at all writing about Judaism. Rosenzweig, instead, wrote philosophy in a Jewish way. With this, he at the same time re-wrote Judaism, he made Judaism a sort of “Schrift.” In fact, he did not give it a new Schrift, he “used” it as a Schrift, he made it a Schrift, and this Schrift was his method, his methodos, his way, a method qualified as “das Jüdische.” In a letter to Hans Ehrenberg, written September 1921, he says: “Ich bin so wenig Spezialist für Judaica wie Max Weber (das Jüdische ist meine Methode,

2 And even Cohen wrote: “Für das Wesen und die Natur Gottes interessiert sich der Mythos.[. . .] Sein [. . .] (Gottes, gp) Begriff und sein Dasein bedeutet nichts Anderes, als dass es kein Wahn sei, die Einheit der Menschen zu glauben, zu denken, zu erkennen. Gott hat es verkündet. Gott verbürgt es; sonst hat er Nichts zu bedeuten, Nichts zu besagen. Seine Eigenschaften, in die man sein Wesen entfaltet, sind nicht sowohl die Eigenschaften seiner Natur, als vielmehr die Richtungen, in welche jenes Verhältnis zu den Menschen und an den Menschen ausstrahlt,” Hermann Cohen Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907 (55). 3 Zweistromland, Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1984.

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nicht mein Gegenstand).”4 [I am so little an expert for Judaica as Max Weber (the Jewish is my method, not my subject)] But what is a “method” in philosophy, what can it possibly be? And, if we could tell something about it in reflexions on Kant and Hegel, Dilthey and Windelband, Popper and Wittgenstein, Pierce and Searle, Kuhn and Deconstruction, how could we conceive of an entire religion functioning as a philosophical method? And if we disclaim in the beginning to know what this religion is and in a second step disclaim to know, what a method in philosophy could possibly be, how can we, how can I still hope to set myself on to work under such a title? A question unanswered by Brassband No. One.

II. How do we usually think about method in philosophy or in the sciences concerning societies and their religions? Don’t we, without asking further, presuppose a scholar, A, sitting in a certain place, B, (or having a certain hypothesis B) thinking about an object, C, and having a certain telos in mind when thinking, D, which she wishes to approach in making use of a certain method E, which, used properly, will be the right way for philosopher A to arrive from hypothesis B (a hypothesis concerning C) at a true sentence D (a true sentence about C)? At least, as soon as we have to write proposals for scholarly projects, we always find ourselves forced into this scheme—as if nothing had happened in philosophy during the last hundred years. (Perhaps, as a matter of actual fact, nothing has happened?) If I draw into question E (asking: what can a method possibly be in philosophy?) and if I undertake to make precisely that thing a method, which is not to be described in terms of its being, yet which in our scientific order still is considered to be rather an object of thinking than its method, I seem to blow up this entire frame of thought. Rosenzweig already seems to have done so, though in the footsteps or on the shoulders of Hermann Cohen, who had written 4 Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1979 I, 2, S. 720.

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the strangest of philosophies that may be characterized as a Jewish reformation of the Kantian system. May it?

III. Rosenzweig’s sentence saying that the Jewish is his method stands, as it is, in contradistinction to Weber, whose thesis is all about a certain religion (as an object of scholarly research) that, in his eyes, is defined by the introduction of method into life, by inventing what Weber calls “methodische Lebensführung.” In these terms, Weber wrote about Protestantism and its being rooted in Judaism, and his expertise or his non-expertise brought to the fore a sentence about the essence of the religion that was the object of his research—while Rosenzweig says, for him Judaism is not an object of research but his method. Then what does Rosenzweig research by his method— does he research at all? And does he suggest with this sentence that for Weber himself Protestantism is a method rather than an object of research? The assumption that Protestantism has indeed become a method in science can be read out of a very famous sentence written by Hermann Cohen in his Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums: The idea of wanting to replace one religion by another is just as much an historical absurdity as it is a contradiction of the philosophy of history, which must ward off the idea of the absolute and study the part taken up by reason in the great variety of cultural phenomena. If religious bias becomes a scientific, a methodological bias, and Christianity is claimed to be absolute, then the controversy must not be engaged in the field of scientific methodology but in the question itself which is at issue.5

But this is quoted from his later work Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums. Here he indeed seems to recommend retreat 5 “Der Gedanke, eine Religion durch die andere ersetzen zu wollen, ist ebenso ein geschichtlicher Ungedanke, wie er der Geschichtsphilosophie widerspricht, welche den Gedanken der Absolutheit abzuwehren und in der Mannigfaltigkeit der Kulturerscheinungen den Anteil der Vernunft an ihnen zu erforschen hat. Wenn religiöse Befangenheit zu einer wissenschaftlichen, einer methodischen wird, und die Absolutheit des Christentums behauptet wird, so ist der Streit nicht auf dem Gebiet der wissenschaftlichen Methodik auszutragen, sondern schließlich am Streitproblem selbst.” Hermann Cohen, Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, Leipzig 1919, 429.

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from the methodological battlefield after proof has been made that several questions, at first sight appearing to be questions of method and science, are “eigentlich” nothing but “religious bias.” He seems to recommend return from the methodological battlefield to that of religious dialogue, as it may have existed during the middle ages— before something like “Religionswissenschaft” applied the methodized notions of one religion to every other and made them a concealed measure of values by using them as categories of classifications of religions in the scheme of, to give but one famous example, Gustav Mensching. (Mensching, under the notion of “development,” had hierarchized religions according to their universalism and their “Innerlichkeit” or individualism, of course he preferred monotheism from polytheism, and of course Christianity from Judaism and Protestantism from Catholicism by establishing, for instance, the difference between “Gesetzesreligion” and “Glaubensreligion.”) In his ethics, however, Cohen seems to introduce in his own way his Jewish thought as a method into philosophy. A proceeding that may have inspired Rosenzweig, who loved Cohen’s Religion of Reason, to do the opposite of what Cohen recommended, just as if he, Rosenzweig, were saying to Christian philosophers and scientists: you want to fight us in the battlefield of methodology? Bevaqashah, here we are: going beyond any Johannine Christianity (what for Cohen is “pantheism”) back and forth, freeing philosophy to its own best from Christian restrictions. This may be a method to be found also in the works of Lévinas and Derrida, and as a not completely conscious one, perhaps even with Freud, Marx and others. But how to discern Christian restrictions in philosophy, and in order to talk about Judaism as a method; does it suffice to call a certain critical distance to Pagan and Christian ideas “Jewish”?

IV. Some years ago, I took part in a conference in Heidelberg about sacrifice and its transformations. I gave a talk then about the theorem, shared by Sigmund Freud and Hermann Cohen, that in Judaism law was the substitute for sacrifice, and that Christianity, in reestablishing a sacrificial system, fell back behind the cultural advance achieved by the prophets. After my talk some colleagues seemed to have been impressed by everything I had quoted and paraphrased

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from Hermann Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willens, till then quite unknown to them. Some of them certainly would not mind to be described as doing their scholarly work precisely according to the A,B,C-scheme outlined in Paragraph II. For some reason, however, one scholar felt compelled to say: “As to Freud, you may be right in preferring Cohen” [a whole German school of Historians of Religion dislike Freud because of what they take to be his methodological vagueness]. But, he went on, “if we compare Weber to Cohen, you must admit that Weber is the greater because of his methodological precision and his notions of action and meaning dealt with in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.” At that time, I did away with the concept of greatness, saying that I don’t look at scholars of this rank like a watcher of Olympic games with Gold, Silver, and Bronze in philosophy and science. For this way of seeing presupposes that all of them were striving for the same thing, the highest jump, the quickest sprint, the greatest methodological innovation or security—to be judged by me as an external spectator. While eigentlich, that which makes me take one philosophical enterprise more seriously than the other, and what makes me feel that one philosophical language speaks more intensely to me than another, is already beginning with the different questions those scholars ask. But the very fact of this measuring left me with the following question, that I returned to the colleague instead of an answer: Can there be a plurality of truths, even if the very notion of truth seems to only allow for one truth? And whence the questions someone poses to religion? Why does one, Weber, ask for the essence of certain religions, while the other, Cohen, seems to win not only so called personal values but a valid method of posing problems from what can and cannot be called “his religion”?

V. Two of those scholars who exercised the most severe criticism towards Hermann Cohen’s Ethics when it came out as a second edition in 1907, had their critiques published in the journal Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, edited by Edgar Jaffe, in cooperation with Werner Sombart and Max Weber. Hermann Kantorowicz6 6 Hermann Kantorowicz, “Hermann Cohens Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907,” in: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik XXXI, 1910, S. 602–6.

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and Ferdinand Tönnies7 both missed in specific terms Cohen’s point at the very junction, at which Rosenzweig developed it further to the above quoted sentences. Perhaps the fundamental shift in the relationship between religion and method, brought about by Hermann Cohen in his Ethics, is too well hidden? In his Ethics Cohen seems, at first sight, to definitely eliminate religion as a source and even stricter as a methodology for ethics. This is comparatively new for himself at that time. In 1882 Cohen was already looking for a scientific foundation of ethics, for a scientific fact, but he thought to have no other resource to cling to than religion: . . . Wissenschaften, nach deren sie bedingenden Grundlagen geforscht werden könnte, sind bekanntlich für die ethischen Probleme nicht als Facta gegeben. [. . .] Da bleibt denn kein anderer Ausweg als das Factum analoger Culturerscheinungen anzusprechen, wo es am Factum der Wissenschaften fehlt. Ein solches Cultur-Factum, in welchem alle sittlichen Dinge sich zusammenfassen lassen, ist uns die Religion.8 [It is well known that for ethical problems there are no scientific facts given to provide for their foundations. For the sake of this lack of scientific facts there is no way out but to appeal to the fact of analogue cultural phenomena. Such a cultural fact, in which all moral things can be comprised/summarized, we take to be religion.]

7

Ferdinand Tönnies, “Ethik und Sozialismus I,” in: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik XXV, 1907, S. 573–612; “Ethik und Sozialismus II,” in: ebd., XXIX, 1909, 895–930. 8 Vorwort zu Friedrich-Albert Langes Geschichte des Materialismus, 4. Aufl., Iserlohn 1882, S. XI. In the new edition of the same text from 1896, the assertion about the lack of a scientific fact remains unchanged in the first paragraph. But it occurs as the sharper point of the problem of mathematical certainty and thus also with an alteration of the formulation in regard to religion: “. . . Wissenschaften, nach deren sie bedingenden Grundlagen geforscht werden könnte, sind bekanntlich für die ethischen Probleme nicht als Facta gegeben. . . . Da bleibt denn kein anderer Ausweg als das Factum analoger Culturerscheinungen und Wissenschaften anzusprechen, wo es am Factum einer Wissenschaften fehlt, welcher eine mathematische Gewissheit beiwohnt. [Absatz] Ein solches Analogon bieten diejenigen theoretischen und praktischen Richtungen der Cultur dar, welche als Geisteswissenschaften, als “sciences morales,” und als das Gebiet der religiös-sittlichen, wie der civil-sittlichen Einrichtungen sich bestimmen . . . Hence, Cohen’s new opinion is, “Wie ist all jenes Sittliche nach Art der Wissenschaft möglich?” (Vorwort zu Langes Geschichte des Materialismus, 5. Aufl., Leipzig 1896, S. XIf.)

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Twice he regrets that there is no scientific fact, hence that ethics appears to be without scientific foundation, left with but a cultural fact, which only can help to summarize moral things. The question of a methodological foundation, however, did not let him rest. In 1896, in his preface to the following edition of Lange’s work, he has dropped religion as the cultural fact, and he turned to the “Geisteswissenschaften” in general as an analogue. But this wasn’t enough either. Where could he find a hard methodology for ethics?

VI. In the first edition of his ethics, Cohen has found his scientific fact: he gives account now of legal science functioning as the mathematics to ethics, and ethics functioning as the logic of Geisteswissenschaften. Ethics can be considered to be the logics of the humanities.[?] The notions of the individual, of allness, of willing, and of action are its problems. All philosophy is depending on the factum of science [Wissenschaft]. This assignment to the fact of science is, with us, the eternal value of Kant’s system. The analogon to mathematics is legal science. The latter may be considered to be the mathematics of the humanities, in particular the mathematics of ethics.9

On the basis of this idea, in his Ethics Cohen emphatically disavows any foundation for ethics in religion. The fundamental task of ethics as a scientific enterprise is to elaborate the notion of man, “den Begriff des Menschen.” On this behalf, the question of the individual and the necessary correlative notion to the individual is being posed anew. For Cohen, as far as ethics is concerned, the notion correlating to that of the individual could not be the majority, but only the “Allheit,” all possible others, the principle of allness. State and religion are competing candidates to deliver the right concept of allness, “die richtige Allheit.” Here, Cohen clearly opts for the state10 as the idea—notabene the idea, there is no talk here about

9

Hermann Cohen Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907, S. 65f. “If religion claims to be something different and specific it holds back relations to law and state which are an intrinsic part of it; moreover it leaves the sphere of practical reason and establishes itself as science in disguise. With this, however, its 10

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some real state, as there is no talk about real legal systems in the foundational formula—he opts for the state as the idea on which to build the accurate notion of allness. Whatever seems to be particularistic in the notion of state is being corrected by the ideas of a confederation of states and international law. “Think of a similar confederation of religions. The idea seems to belong rather to a satirical utopia,” Cohen states.11 The ideas of a confederation of states and of international law, as it were, depend on the legal structure of the state. Legal structure, concludes Cohen, is the very structure to provide for the right method of ethical thought. As long as he then would have confined himself to natural law, his readers might have followed him somehow: Natural law has been the well established ethics of law, or the law of law: But unimpressed even by Kant’s authority, Cohen claims against him, that ethics will lead back to and must work with the formal structure and the notions of positive law (still not with the notions of really existing laws, but on the principle rationality of the method of law). Only this structure will provide for the central piece of Cohen’s ethical reasoning: the scientific evidence of a necessary notion of the other. In order to “produce” or to “generate” or to “beget” (Cohen uses the German word “erzeugen”) scientifically the other person, den Nebenmenschen, the methodological detour to positive law is unavoidable. A legal person is one party of a contract—hence, even if there were no evidence for the existence of a responsible individual all by herself, even if there “is” nobody: there has to be one as soon as a contract between different legal persons is to be made; to this purpose both parties have to be supposed to be capable of a constant will. It turns out that a legal person and a moral subject come into being because and insofar as they shall be, or should be. And in a similar way even logically, Cohen claims, the moral self is actually being generated by the other: according to the logic of origin [Logik des Ursprungs],

claim and objection vanish because religion is not scholarship. Only logic makes knowing into science. And only ethics, in connection with and on the foundation of logic, allows for morality according to the fundamental law of truth.” 11 Ibid., S. 60. “Man denke sich dementsprechend einen Bund der Religionen. Der Gedanke scheint einer satirischen Utopie anzugehören.”

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any notion that is being generated has to be won by the detour to its non-existence. The proper notion of the I [das Ich], (proper in explicit contradistinction to Fichte’s concept) depends on the proper notion of the non-I [das Nicht-Ich]. The proper notion of the non-I is the notion of the other to the I that generates the I. Thus the other is connected to the I not in any inclusive manner neither in the function of merely a strange object or a matter of experience. The connection is rather a necessary generative correlation. “Das Selbstbewusstsein ist in erster Linie bedingt durch das Bewusstsein des Andern.” (213) [self-consciousness is originally conditioned by the consciousness of the other]. Ethics and its notion of man have thus been saved from any dependence on emotions, religions and experience. How can I call this method “Jewish”? Isn’t Judaism “Cohen’s religion”?

VII. Kantorowicz in his first sentences seems to get Cohen’s point. Very accurately he quotes the function: mathematics: logic = legal science: ethics. But then he takes it as a matter of fact that the heart of Cohen’s construction will be done away with in the same way that his logic has been done away with by Nelson, i.e. by the proof that his claims concerning mathematics, especially legal science, are based on wrong assumptions and too little knowledge. For this reason he affirms that Cohen’s way of putting “action” (Handlung) (instead of “Gesinnung”) in the center of ethics is based on a misunderstanding of the juridical meaning of the Latin term actio (meaning “Klage,” [“accusation”?]). What comes to the fore in this kind of argumentation, however, is that Kantorowicz himself misunderstood the way a “wissenschaftliches Factum” works in Cohen’s terms. It is not a box full of “existing” and easily applicable methodological bites, ready for use in any context: for Cohen, there are, rather, certain kinds of problems being posed in legal science, which are the very problems ethics has to deal with—in a way of its own, but in correlation to the way legal sciences are dealing with them. In the very idea of law, there is demand or even a desire for the infinite in a way that is analogous to the need in mathematics for a category of the infinite. Hence legal language is the language to search and spell out possible relations between the infinite and the finite.

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With this turn, Cohen has developed the most consequent of renunciations as to sentences of “being” in “Geisteswissenschaften,” while he builds constructions of notions in terms of the “ought to be.” Kantorowicz criticizes the consequences of Cohen’s constructions in terms of a flat realism or empiricism and even claims that, if Cohen’s function would work out (which in Kantorowicz’s eyes it doesn’t) it could be very fruitful for empirical legal science. Only a little later Hans Kelsen remarked that the method in social and legal sciences taken for granted by Kantorowicz is itself comparatively new. Die Verwandlung, die die Lehre von den menschlichen Beziehungen aus einer Gerechtigkeitslehre zu einer die Wirklichkeit des tatsächlichen Verhaltens kausal erklärenden und sohin wertfreien Soziologie heute schon zu einem großen Teil durchgemacht hat, ist, im Grunde genommen, ein Ausweichen der Erkenntnis vor einem Gegenstand, den zu bewältigen sie die Hoffnung verloren, ist das—unfreiwillige—Eingeständnis einer jahrtausendealten Disziplin, daß sie ihr eigentlichstes Problem, vielleicht nur derzeit, als unlösbar aufgibt.12 [The change, which the theory of human relations has gone through today, the change from a theory of justice to a sociology which deals with the causal laws of actual human behavior in a value free manner, is basically knowledge’s evading from the face of a subject which to cope with knowledge has lost hope, it is the—unwilling/unconscious— admitting of a discipline that is thousands of years old, that it gave up its “eigentlichstes” problem as unsolvable, perhaps only for the time being.]

What made the Jew Cohen and the Jew Kelsen return to this eigentlichstem problem?

VIII. Ferdinand Tönnies in his critique displays a deeper understanding of Cohen’s fundamental seriousness concerning the ought-to-be. He writes: “It is infinitely difficult to paraphrase the thoughts of our philosopher without modifying them by approximation and adaptation to a way of thinking closer to one’s own or another thinking in terms of social sciences. This is because we have to deal here

12 Hans Kelsen, Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturrechtslehre und des Rechtspositivismus, Berlin 1928, S. 7.

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with a very special form of the Kantian practical philosophy, a form that makes every perspective on that which ‘is’ depending on that which ‘ought-to-be’.”13 Tönnies understands this out of sympathy. But as soon as it comes to the methodological meaning of legal sciences, his understanding comes to an end too. So strange is this idea to German and perhaps to Christian thinking in general that even a scholar of Tönnies’ rank, even someone who has sympathy with Cohen’s general ideal(ism) as long as it remains an abstract philosophical preference, falls back behind his own principal insight in Cohen’s way of thinking when it comes to the concrete idea—as if legal categories could prove to be helpful in dealing with ethical questions. That the term of a legal person (“juristische Person”) is conceived of as a basic category for moral responsibility seems to separate the idea of “Sittlichkeit” (morality) in too harsh a way from any natural or historical foundation, while at the same time connecting it and founding it on a system of notions which do have a very visible empirical context with which they can be easily confused. Tönnies, however, though not following Cohen wholeheartedly in everything, shows great respect to the consequence in question. Comparing Cohen’s theological extemporations to Kant’s system, he comes to the conclusion that the nucleus of Kantian philosophy shines through Cohen’s rewriting, while the difference between both philosophers is that Kant in his “praktischer Vernunft” only looks for the formula to a moral law given somehow, whereas Cohen in all seriousness tries to lay the foundation for the “Erkenntnis” of the moral law and to reestablish this “Erkenntnis” as the central problem of social sciences. If it is not this task in principle that seems to be all too strange to Tönnies, could it be the “Jewish” way of taking every little casual problem serious as to the language of the will for justice?

13 Tönnies 1909 (s. note 5), 909: “Es ist unendlich schwer, die Gedanken unseres Philosophen wiederzugeben, ohne sie durch Annäherung und Anpassung an eine Denkweise, die einem selber und anderen sozialwissenschaftlichen Denkenden näher steht, zu modifizieren. Denn wir haben es hier mit einer seht eigentümlichen Ausgestaltung der Kantischen, praktischen Philosophie zu tun, einer Ausgestaltung, die von dem, was ‘sein soll’ die gesamte Ansicht dessen was ‘ist,’ abhängig macht.”

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IX. There has been much ado about Rosenzweig’s concept of “Bewährung,” and his interpreters seldom miss mentioning that he had proved the truth of his philosophy by his life. With him, as with Cohen, as perhaps with every real thinker, no less meaningful than this sort of Bewährung, may be the other one: the readiness to have theoretical notions informed and modified by experiences of “real life.” In Cohen’s case, there was a very painful encounter with the contemporary legal system, and, at the same time, in the same context, with a scholar who had his own way of combining method and religion. Paul de Lagarde, a then (and somehow still) famous expert for the oriental languages and religions, had the idea of making the Gospel into a true method, a method to achieve what he called “morality physei,” and the method for the history of religions. Actually, Lagarde displays sound historical scholarship in questioning every single pretence of every existing church as to early Christianity, and we may accept as the result of comparatively unprejudiced inquiry what he presents as the very essence of the Gospel.14 He relates that there is discernible but one common principle of all the Gospels and the Apostolical Letters (while on all other subjects the opinions of the authors of the NT differ): it is the principle of new creation, of rebirth, or the principle of conversion, of man entering a new higher order of things that suspends guilt.15 This principle is thought of as embodied in one person, namely Jesus, with whose very person it is inextricably bound up. The effect of this close connection between religion and a certain person (to which, of all the religions of the world, according to Lagarde, Buddhism comes closest) is the avoiding of a very “garstig Ding,” the avoiding of coercion (Zwang),

14 By the way, all his arguments, inasmuch as they are critical towards the canon and towards the harmony of the NT, are derived from the english Deists (especially from Toland, but with an evaluation of things quite differing from his) whom he appears to have studied thoroughly. 15 “Even Paul knows about the new creation which appears with John as rebirth, with Peter as becoming participant of the divine nature. The entrance of a human being into a new, higher order of things abolishes his guilt: the human leaves his guilt behind with his earlier life and with[all] sin [soever] like a butterfly leaves its cocoon, from which it came. Having been articulated by Paul, Peter, and John alike, this idea [of a new creation] is likely to be the original Christian idea of humanity and sin,” Schriften für das deutsche Volk, Jena 1934, 54.

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since the person standing in the center of the religion does not demand anything but causes upheaval and a new Becoming by his mere being.16 While lawgivers like Moses or Zoroaster only produce a demanding or coercing law that is thesei and unable to further a new Becoming: “The Gospel is a survey of the laws of spiritual life, found by religious genius; as such it is, accordingly, substantially description, description in much the same way as chemistry and physics are description.”17 Thus, historical science proves that the Gospel itself functions as natural science. With Lagarde, the Gospel, with its essence summarized above, is the best method of describing the laws of spiritual life available. Hence, one could conclude, to focus attention on the description of the laws of “spiritual life,” makes Geisteswissenschaften a Christian sort of science. Lagarde became a personal opponent to Cohen due to a failure in the German legal system, and by a failure that only the attorney general tried to prevent, however, in vain. In 1888, there was a lawsuit in Marburg enacted by the Jewish community in a first attempt to make use of a law (§166) that forbade insults towards any religious community equipped with the rights of corporation—including Judaism. An antisemite with the name Ferdinand Fenner was accused of insulting the Jewish religion with his claim that every Jew following the Talmud is a rascal because Talmud allows the Jews to rob and defraud Goyyim. The court now did not discuss the actions of the accused and his relation to the law at hand, but decided—against the will of the attorney general Bertram—to obtain expert testimony from both parties about the following questions: 1. whether the prescriptions of belief and morals contained in the Talmud are to be considered as binding commands for believing Jews and whether an insult of the Talmud is to be considered as an insult of the Jewish religious community or one of its institutions.

16 In op. cit., 81 he states “that for every coercion there is something extremely nasty,” and while Buddhism does avoid coercion, too, he says about Zoroaster and Moses that “they are lawgivers, but they do not live what they teach, they demand: Jesus preaches and he Is what he preaches: the Gospel is in some way identical with the person that preaches it,” op. cit., 87. 17 Op. cit., 69, in German: “Das Evangelium ist eine durch religiöse Genialität gefundene Darlegung der Gesetze des geistigen Lebens; es ist also wesentlich Beschreibung, so sehr Beschreibung, wie die Chemie und die Physik Beschreibung sind.”

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2. Whether it is written in the Talmud: The Law of Moses is valid only between Jews, it is of no concern to “Gojims”, the Jews are allowed to rob and to defraud them.18

With the formulation of these questions, the court took up Fenner’s summary of the Talmud and burdened the Jews with proving that they were not incited by their own tradition to commit crimes. The accused and the accusers changed places, and the court inverted its task: it had to apply a particular law, but instead of doing so, it questioned this very law in principle. (The contradiction is this: If Judaism was a religious community, equipped with the rights of corporation, then the accusation of insulting such a community had to be proved from the text of the insulter and its probable effects on the insulted [this is, by the way, the proceeding proposed by the attorney general from the beginning, as can be seen from his pleading].19 Or the question is whether Judaism deserved the rights of corporation. But this discussion was even then not to be held in a court but in parliament [and Bertram took upon himself to affirm as a central task for the members of parliament the preservation of the rights of Jewish subjects]. The Marburg court, however, obtained expert testimonies on the Talmud.) The testimony for the antisemitic party was written by Paul de Lagarde, the testimony for the Jewish party by Hermann Cohen. Lagarde did not appear personally in court, while Cohen did expose his face to all sorts of questions meant to prove that the Talmud did pronounce a particularistic system of morality, for which reason, Jews were to be considered unreliable and even dangerous subjects. Cohen made an enormous effort to prove the Talmud to be the

18 These questions are in print as part of Cohen’s expert witness, Cohen 1888, 3, in German: “1. Ob die in dem Talmud enthaltenen Vorschriften des Glaubens und der Sitten als bindende Gebote für die gläubigen Juden anzusehen sind und eine Beschimpfung des Talmuds als eine Beschimpfung der jüdischen Religionsgemeinschaft oder einer Einrichtung derselben anzusehen ist. 2. Ob in dem Talmud steht: ‘Das Gesetz Mosis gilt nur vom Juden zum andern, auf Goijims hat es keinen Bezug, die dürfen sie bestehlen und betrügen’.” 19 The pleading is quoted at length and with polemical insertions in Otto Boeckel (anonymous): Der Prozeß Fenner nach den Akten dargestellt und beleuchtet, Marburg 1888, 41–47. I wish to thank SICSA for help with finding this book in Israel, and the Wiener Library Tel Aviv for sending a copy. Bertram asked, for instance: “And if the moral and religious law allowed to defraud Christians, would this mean that the expression ‘rascal’ would be allowed to the accused?” op. cit., 45.

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source of the precept of universal charity as having developed out of concern for the stranger.20 And he stressed both in the beginning and at the end of his explanations that the notion of ben noach is to be considered as a “staatsrechtliche Institution/Kategorie,” an institution/category relating to public law.21 Lagarde, on the contrary, forced to admit in his expert testimony that the allowance to rob and to defraud Gojim is not to be found literally in the Talmud, produced many quotations from Rohling, Eisenmenger, and Delitzsch in order to prove that it is nevertheless in accordance with the spirit of the Talmud.22 This spirit of the Talmud, however, is in Lagarde’s opinion not comparable with the spirit of any Christian Dogmatic or with any real Weltanschauung, since it does not at all contain “prescriptions of faith.” From the lack of prescriptions of faith Lagarde derives the following sentence concerning Jewish morals: “‘Morals’ in our sense is unknown to Israel in its most characteristic scriptures. The ‘morality’ of the Israelites is always thesei, not physei; it is always accompanied by an unreborn natural disposition, which is never touched by it.”23 (And here I could see one of the negative sources for Cohen’s idea of the recreation of the criminal by his autonomous subjection to a concrete, single, positive law). Bertram, in agreement with Cohen, did away with Lagarde’s expert testimony and concentrated on Fenner’s indicted statement, by which every Jew could feel insulted, and he reduced the impulse to the old Glaubenshaß.24 While Martin, counsel for the defense, could claim in

20 See especially Cohen 1888, 7f and 17–22. The several sources about Cohen’s bearing in court are enumerated with Sieg 1993, 224, note 4. 21 “The constitutional institution of the Noachide belongs to the oldest portions of the Mishnah,” Cohen 1888, 18. “For edifying considerations and excerpts from the collections of talmudic quotations, which have been delivered by experts from the times of Moses Mendelssohn onwards, if they were proper in this place, may be estimated superfluous as soon as the constitutional meaning of the Noachide is stated,” op. cit., 21f. 22 “The position of the accused changes, if we, as I think we must, abandon the form of his sentence and focus on its content.” Quoted according to Boeckel 1888, 30. The complete text of Lagarde’s expertise is not available, but Boeckel 1888 produces a large part of it probably in verbal quotation. 23 Quoted according to Boeckel 1888, 25, in German: “‘Sitte’ in unserem Sinne kennt Israel in seinen charakteristischen Schriften nicht. Die ‘Sittlichkeit’ der Israeliten ist stets thesei, nicht [the word ‘nicht’ is missing in Boeckel’s account, but quoted by Cohen, 1888, 26] physei da; sie geht allerdings stets neben einer unwiedergeborenen, von ihr niemals berührten Naturanlage her.” 24 “I am deeply convinced that only religious hatred triggers Antisemitism,” Boeckel 1888, 45.

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favor of his client that the antisemitic movement was a political party with all the rights of any political party. He referred to anti-Jewish statements of Herder, Kant, and Fichte in order to show that antisemitism was not “a monstrous excrescence of uneducation and mental coarseness,” and he insisted that his client had only attacked the Jewish Nation, taking no interest at all in their religion. In the end, Fenner was sentenced to the minimal punishment allowed in such cases: he had to spend a fortnight in jail and to pay for the lawsuit.25 Many aspects in this case would deserve further consideration. At least two may have had their consequences in Cohen’s Ethics: 1. Bertram, the public persecutor, had to take great pains in order to draw attention back from a general judgment over Jewish morals to the special case at hand. This was because the lawyers themselves, in spite of their everyday practice, were affected by a general tendency to prefer moral judgments about the entire being of persons, spirits, nations, and religions to the restricted judgment about single actions and their relations to a certain single law. I might say this was their “method,” against which the rational method of legal language had but little chance in the case at hand. 2. Lagarde, in his expert testimony, blames “the Israelites” that their morality (Sittlichkeit) is only thesei and never physei. Cohen, in his expert testimony, answers to this twice. First, he says: Law is always [. . .] physei and (hence) “wandelbar,” thus hinting that the law’s being physei does not prevent it from being changeable.26 Eternity is not an attribute of the physei, but if of any, then of the thesei. In the second comment he observes that the Lagardian manner of using the term thesei in connection with a morality that relates itself to certain commands of a God is unusual.27 The principle antagonism is this: while for Lagarde morality must be physei (and that means: not connected with particular “external” commandments) in order to be

25

The sentence is given with Boeckel 1888, 51. “Law, however firmly it might claim to be of divine origin, has its natural origin in history, and hence it is at the same time physei and changeable,” Cohen 1888, 15. 27 “Concerning the dogmatics of Judaism I restrain myself to the note that the use of the philosophical terms of thesei and physei ‘morality of Israelites and Jews is always thesei, never physei’ is unusual. The sophist says that the law is thesei: but that the morality of Israel is thesei because it stands ‘under the reign of certain commandments of its God,’ is a new use of the term,” Cohen 1888, 26. 26

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“echt,” Cohen begins to bind up morality precisely with special commandments of the laws that are thesei because these appeared to be the only opening for a rational language in the dense wall of irrational proceedings. This case is his experience of love and hate as leading categories in public, political and juridical matters. Is it because of this that he does not want to leave the rights of the other to the Lagardian and Christian “method of love?”

X. AT THE TOWER, where one meets the other To reduce Cohen’s ethics to its being motivated by the depressing experience of this law-suit would be stupid. But may it be allowed to take for granted that a man like Hermann Cohen could not go through it without thinking the whole thing through under the perspective of his moral philosophy. It may be understood now how the single action, “Handlung” could return into the center of moral reasoning, in spite of all Kantian preference for “Gesinnung.” The legal system itself stops functioning if it refuses to strictly confine the cases to cases of one acting against the other and the other acting against the one, and both or one acting against the very idea of justice. Hence by all the argumentations in the Ethics, not only ethics is being urged into a closer connection to legal science, but also to legal practise; and legal sciences as well as legal practise are being urged to their responsability first and foremost for actions between legal subjects.28 Die eigentliche Leistung, the real achievement of this step, however, is the methodological invention of the other as “thou.” Without whom there is, according to Cohen, no self and no action. The achievement is to make the very idea of a moral subject depend-

28 The relation between the Latin expression “actio” meaning action and, in a legal context, “Klage,” is exploited by Cohen this way: “It is, therefore, hardly by chance if the word for action becomes the foundational word of the whole legal technology; actio is action and law suit. A right which is not suable/actionable, is no right. Hence the notion of action is legally connected with actionability. The enaction of a law takes place in the trial. Hence the notion of law is connected, on the other side, with the notion of action. Action means, as actio, if not a claim to a right, but the claim to court’s judgment,” Hermann Cohen Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907, S. 64.

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ing on the subject’s acting towards his fellow-subjects. The moment in which the other is seen is the very moment in which a decision for a responsable, a responding self as the ethically demanded self, can be made: the very decision that generates for a moment an individual will, generating at the same time the space for the next opportunity to generate such an ethical person. This might sound like a Pre-LévinasTheorem. But the point with this theory is that it does not reduce responsbility to this moment, there is no claim made for mere Unmittelbarkeit. The other is methodologically generated by a very simple step belonging to the Ursprungslogik: In order to conceive of an I one has to first think of non-I. Non-I can be He, the other. So far logic. The other is no longer a mere fact of experience, but a necessary notion. The necessity of this notion guides every further step and justifies the search for a methodolgy of behaving towards the other; and the finding of contract as the means to make out of another person a thou. The contract turns the claim into an address. In this process the Other changes to I and Thou. Thou is not He. He runs the risk to be treated as It. Thou and I simply belong together. I cannot say Thou without relating you to myself; without unifying you in a relationship with me. But there is also the heightened demand: that I cannot even think I without thinking Thou. In self consciousness, therefore, the Other has turned into the dual of the I. (248)

It is contract, that makes the he to a Thou. “Es gibt keinen Anspruch ohne Ansprache.” Today I’d rather feel compelled to say the other way round: there is no Ansprache without Anspruch. But that is because a long history of individuation has deceived us into thinking that we have to be responsable only for ourselves. So we do agree to Ansprache, but we have difficulties to agree to Anspruch. We tend to take it as an error or an immaturity to think we could have an Anspruch towards anybody. In this we might find an answer to a question not yet asked: why read Cohen’s ethics today? Because he dared to teach that there is no Ansprache without Anspruch, no right without pleadability, no individual without an allness, and no autonomy without a given law, without a detailed language for the relations to others. Therefore religion as such is excluded from the methodology of ethics, which has not the task to prove any hypothesis but to generate an infinite possibility of moral selves. Nevertheless, if any religion

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can be made sense of in the frame of this task, it is supposed to be Mosaism, Jewish monotheism, the religion of the prophets, the very religion that does not reveal what God “is” but “what is good,” if we conceive it under the given idea of one God. There is nothing to be said about this being of the good, however, except that it shall be. How to say that it shall be—that is Hermann Cohen’s methodological question in his ethics. I’ll have the brassbands march off now. In the background of Paul de Lagarde’s expertise on the Talmud there was an elaborated theory that made true theology, natural science, the history of religions, and a German gospel one thing. Its methodolgy was an attempt to accommodate the essence of Christianity to the demands of a scientific pattern of description, excluding willing and prescription for the sake of avoiding coercion. In Judaism he sees a serious obstacle to his method, and he, as an envious person from the outside, is outing the very method of Judaism Cohen is going to apply then: “That the Jews wanted under all conditions to act according to the commands of their God, this has been their strength: by this they have been educated, not by their race or their being chosen or by the content of their religion.” And you can feel the entanglement he is in, if you read the following sentence, in which he tries to make of this again a set of qualities, a notion of Being: “The national qualities which were shaped by the talmudic training will remain and work on if the Talmud itself has been forgotten out of ingratitude by his people that has become modern. Here you have the advantage which a national religion offers to a people.”29 It is the eternal and universal foundation of an ethics of Doing on a specific, that is, a concrete and somewhat particular law, in other words on a system of prescriptions thesei, whose application can be debated anew in every case, that substantially challenges every

29 Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften 1934, 29f: “Daß die Juden unter allen Umständen Gottes Gebote tun wollten, das ist ihre Stärke gewesen: dadurch sind sie erzogen, und durch diese Religions-Erziehung, nicht durch ihre Rasse oder ihre Erwählung oder den Inhalt ihrer Religion, sind sie uns so furchtbar überlegen. Die durch die talmudische Schulung der Nation angebildeten Eigenschaften werden bleiben und wirken, wann der Talmud selbst vom Undanke seines modern gewordenen Volkes längst vergessen sein wird.”

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pretended ethics of Being and its claims to be Copernican or to be solely founded on a correct description of nature. Tönnies’ critique may stand as it does. He discerns many nuances of Cohen’s intention and has only one stumbling-block in his own favourite subject, the differentiation between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, by which he tries to integrate the natural into the formality of societies, and another in the very fact that Cohen seems to take detailed legal discussion about the tiniest problems seriously as a moral effort to do the right thing—an effort necessary for the generation of the individual. This last point, however, may be the one to make the difference between Christian and Jewish thinking on this level of discussion— a difference that leaves the Christian helpless in the face of the Jewish thinker. Still, in their understanding of humanity as a virtue, more “rational” than “love,” Tönnies and Cohen seem to share grounds. A misunderstanding of humanity is being “executed” in Kantorowicz’ sarcastic remarks on a central piece of Cohen’s notion of “Selbstbestimmung,” when it comes to the function of punishment for the criminal. Cohen claims that the criminal needs to accept in an autonomous act the measure of punishment for his crime and produce by his acceptance of guilt his own new striving for a new self. This, with Cohen, is central for the Selbsterhaltung, the upholding of readiness and ability to strive for a moral self. In consequence, the appearently “human” act of renunciation on punishment is an error, depriving the criminal from the chance and the means for repentance and a new creation of the self. Kantorowicz comments: “the poor fellow,” and goes on in dramatically wondering, how a liberal humanist like Cohen could be able to oversee the deep moral value of a tendency to abolish punishment. What point did he miss? Cohen develops the notion of how law taken seriously even in its Anwendung should function: and here it has to be a visible symbol of a concrete Allheit, throwing something into the way of a criminal in order to make himself see his error: and in order to help him clearing himself from his failures by repairing the violated measures. It may not escape this task for mere reasons of psychological convictions depriving man from his responsability for others: so it has to speak the other’s language and at the same time the language of eternal justice. He will have been more aware than anybody that actual law many times fails to fulfil this function and that therefore mildness is to be preferred over harshness. Nevertheless a principle dam against

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a tendency to eliminate questions of the ought from science, and to eliminate scientific method from questions of the ought according to Cohen can only be brought about by applying law in a manner that takes its principles seriously. A non-religious and almost unidentifiable (but to those who read the esoterical way, nevertheless unoverlookable) Judaism becomes method when Cohen has Socrates, a stranger to Judaism, prove the fundamental and substantial meaning of positive law for the moral self. Cohen’s interpretation of Socrates’ reason for not evading the death sentence is almost monstrous, and Cohen, usually standing in the tradition of prophetical criticism, makes out of the Socrates-story an inverted sacrificial story, an inversion of antinomian Paul-oriented Christology according to which Christ died for the sake of the end of the law. The eternal sense of Socrates’ sacrificial death30 for the moral world is, according to Cohen, that this martyrdom testifies for the following claim: in spite of the evident fact that written law can include bad and stupid laws, there is nothing but the written law to build a unified moral self upon. Socrates testifies with his death for the claim that a single, positive law is necessary and irreplaceable for pure will.31 Cohen places this, if I may call it so, “Midrash” on Socrates’ “Qidush HaShem” in the paragraph preceding his harsh critique against Kant’s distinction between morality and legality. While in a widespread understanding the difference between legality and morality is a necessary presupposition for any criticism towards existing laws, Cohen stresses that this criticism can only be done if positive law and moral law share grounds, a position taken up by Hans Kelsen in his essay on the philosophical foundations of natural law and legal positivism. The Kantian distinction of legality and morality is, of course, an obstacle to the methodological turn Cohen gives his ethics by building it through the scientific fact of legal sciences. In order to argue against it, Cohen has to take two steps. The first is to blame Kant’s distinction on a religious prejudice: its origin is to be found in Paul’s polemics against the Torah (268). The second is the question of 30 “Das ist der ewige Sinn, den der Opfertod des Sokrates für die sittliche Welt hat,” Hermann Cohen Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907, S. 264. 31 “Here, however, the single law in all its lowness, is still supposed to be a symbol of the eternal and true law. From this can be seen that the notion of the law as the notion of the single law, is necessary and irreplaceable for the pure will and the self consciousness,” Ibid., 267.

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coercion. Here Cohen comes to the conclusion that the distinction between a positive law, equipped with measures of coercion, and a moral law, equipped only with the notion of necessity given by its methodological coherence, is meaningless as soon as the coercion of the moral law has its foundation in the relationship between the one and the other no less than positive law, whose task it is to mediate between the one and the other (an idea that deserves far more discussion than it has raised until now). But for my purpose here the interesting turning point is the following: Cohen refuses religion any meaning in ethics, and consequently he criticizes Kant on the grounds of his adherence to a Christian prejudice. His distance to that Christian prejudice stems from his Jewish way of thinking as well as his capability to think that a positive law can offer the best methodology for ethical reasoning as well as a messianic idea strictly oriented to the future. But at the very core of his argumentation, he refrains from quoting any Jewish source; he argues philosophically, and the only personal example he gives is the Greek father of philosophy. If Judaism is to function as a universal method in the ethics, does it have to be stripped from its particular “religious” characters? Rosenzweig, Scholem and Benjamin solved this problem in another way: with them, Judaism indeed is not a religion. In his famous “Wissenschaft als Beruf ” Weber professes a certain nihilism of ideals when stating: what a man has as an actual ideal or demon does not matter, as long as he has any ideal at all. Because even for Weber, without any basic moral decision there will be no real science. But about the decision, there can be no science. Can Cohen provide for anything against this? Certainly not by the mere idea of his formal reasoning. But he has something to offer that seems, at close reading, to tear a hole in his methodological fabric: and davqa with this leads to the truest truth of the truest.32 Weber reduces morals of science to an imperative that there be an imperative of some sort. Perhaps one of the fundamental philosophical errors concerning law has always been and still seems to be the reduction of its language to the imperative form. Indeed, there is an imperative in law that claims in itself to say something about things that are not law. But legal thinking, in order to connect that which is not law to the law, is a thinking in and about and an ever new 32 At this point: listen to Dizzy Gillespie’s version of the bluest blues of the bluest! Which he sings!

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evaluating of conditions. So, perhaps the most Jewish way, or at least the closest to halachic way in Cohen’s ethics is that which he enters when he begins to reevaluate condition as such (1907, pp. 179–194): Kant himself, he writes, has urged against his will the prejudice, as if intellectual activity were sufficiently described by the laws of causality, as if causality were the center of all thinking. For the purpose of establishing condition as a necessary category even in terms of his logic, Cohen knowingly and on purpose steps back behind the consequences he himself drew from infinitesimal mathematics. He says that condition is not possibly expressible as a function under the perspective of infinitesimal-math, but very well as what had been thought of as function before this new development occurred. And I can see the head shaking of every possible reader who sees himself confronted with a sentence like this: But is ethics then, and even legal science, to renounce the notion of condition because it cannot be formulated in mathematical sentence? Had not legal science to calculate with numbers and proportions as they were at hand as functions before the invention of infinitesimal calculus?33

Perhaps this is one of the real holes in the fabric of his rational argumentations, but a significant hole it is; an incorrectness leading to the truest truth of the truest.34 Pure will with Cohen is expressly never an unconditioned will. Perhaps that does not settle the problem of greatness posed by this band. But to me, Cohen’s answer to the seeming emptiness of the Kantian Imperative convinces me more than the Weberian for two reasons: 1. It says: it matters what you strive for and when and where and how you do it; striving for something is striving for nothing is no striving at all is no act of will is dead. 2. It opens a space for thinking between the Is and the Ought, between actual reality, ideal notion, and the ways to conceal them, instead of exluding the If-questions from every rational relevance: and being arrived at only by a step back behind a cultural achievement, it even breaks a hole for hope into the wall, into which rationality can change as well as irrationality. In Rosenzweig’s view, Cohen arrived at the Jewishness of his

33 34

Ibid., 180. According to Rosenzweig it is repetition in which man speaks his very truth.

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method only in his Religion of Reason, when he spells out the possible relations between Judaism and Philosophy by creating a new “Judaism proper.” But to this work, the Religion of Reason, Rosenzweig ascribes the universal value of the discovery of the continent of the New Thinking, particularizing: In the same kind of error, that made Columbus believe, that he had arrived at the Eastern coast of the old world, while in reality he had discovered a new continent, thus Cohen believed, that he had discovered an addition to the old philosophy by construing “Eigenart” for religion and its particular care for the individual, while eigentlich he had discovered the lost paradise of mankind, from whose grounds out of the cracks of his and all the systems in the world the new, the new built city of natural thinking will rise.35 But what is this “natural thinking”? Apparently it returns from the should-be sentences to a great ecce realitas, for whose sake Rosenzweig tore down the great A = B exchanges and allows to think and to realize the B = B, A = B exchanges? A = B sentences are, according to the methodological scheme, demanded by societies for the financial support of research projects outlined above, the goals of research: C-sentences as hypotheses in the beginning of, Dsentences as results in the end of research. If we take Weber again as an example, his A = B sentence would be: Capitalism as an economic system of a certain rationalism has its irrational sources in the ethics of Protestantism. This is surely not the sort of sentence Rosenzweig had in mind. Natural thinking, with Rosenzweig, does not mean to explain and describe the causal ways of nature or to explain and describe man’s and society’s ways in a similar way (as Freud thought he was doing). If the stubborn B = B is called real human being, it is nevertheless a real human being who has been generated by the logic of origin: by that which he is not. In his B = B stubbornness, he is the only possible address for any A = A, and what happens between the two is not far away from Cohen’s notion of correlation between two eternally different beings who nevertheless come into being only because they are depending on their mutual dependency. A Weberian sentence is one that tries to ignore the ought-to-be-sentences or makes them subject to the is-sentences. A Cohenian sentence is a sentence that generates the notions for anything between men as forms of the

35

Ibid.

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ought-to-be: legal language is the language for any ethical talk and for any talk in the realm of humanities at all. A Rosenzweigian sentence comes after this methodological demand and has the properly generated individuals and their counterparts and their natural rests speak now in any possible proper and foreign language. The work of Cohen and Rosenzweig is done. It is left to us, their readers to talk about their method. But how talk about method after work has been done? Walter Benjamin, as we have seen, a busy reader of Cohen, and, as I may add, a respectful reader of Rosenzweig too, in his book on the Trauerspiel had his own way of drawing into question method in philosophy, that may be or may be not Jewish: The methodological element in philosophical projects is not simply part of their didactic mechanism. Its method is essentially representation. Method is a digression. Representation as digression—such is the methodological nature of the treatise. . . . For knowledge, method is a way of acquiring its object—even by creating it in the consciousness; for truth it is self-representation, and is therefore immanent in it as form. 28–30 (Origin of the German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne, Verso, New York, 1985).36

The metaphor of “Umweg,” of circumvention or detour, I take to be due to his criticism towards Cohen’s system. But through the backdoor a notion of truth as a given enters a notion that makes him fall back behind the Cohen, who wrote in his ethics: “Das Suchen der Wahrheit, das allein ist Wahrheit. Die Methode allein, mittelst deren Logik und Ethik, beide zugleich, nicht eine allein, erzeugbar werden, diese vereinigende, einheitliche Methode, sie vollbringt und verbürgt die Wahrheit.37 (The quest for truth alone is truth. Only that method by which logic and ethic, both together and not one of them alone, is generatable, this unifying and in itself one method, fulfils and guarantees truth). And doesn’t Cohen “fall back” behind himself, when he talks about a method that would guarantee truth? And what for heaven’s sake does Rosenzweig do when stating that Judaism is always already with the truth?

36 Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Erkenntniskritische Vorrede, GS ed. Suhrkamp, I, 1, 207–9. 37 Hermann Cohen Ethik des reinen Willens, 2. Aufl. 1907, 91.

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I suggest to return to Rosenzweig’s very special use of “eigentlich,” a use that is far from any Jargon of Eigentlichkeit if you read him as I read him: Und zwar ist das Verhältnis von B = B zu A = B ein aggressives, auf Umwandlung gerichtetes, das von A = B zu B = B hingegen nur ein theoretisch-skeptisches (ungläubiges), das sich mit bloßer Umdeutung, mit Erklärung von B = B als “eigentlich” A = B zufrieden gibt.38 (Actually, the relation from B = B to A = B is an aggressive one, striving for change, while the relation from A = B to B = B is only a theoretical, sceptical (unbelieving) one that is satisfied with a mere change of meaning, with the explanation that B = B means “eigentlich” A = B.)

Eigentlich, Rosenzweig turns out to be the one who most seriously calls into question method as such, precisely with the claim that for him Judaism is a method. He would provoke the question: Isn’t it eigentlich against all truth of human beings to take anything for granted, even truth? Eigentlich this will be the case—but no less eigentlich we will cease to be and as we ought to be human if we ever stop our endeavors to ask for truth. Here we are at the ever new beginning of speaking this and that and what not. . . . .?

38 FR, “Urzelle” des Stern der Erlösung, Brief an Rudolf Ehrenberg vom 18.11.1917, in Zweistromland, Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1984, 3, 125–38, p. 135.

THE EXISTENCE OF THE IDEAL IN HERMANN COHEN’S ETHICS Andrea Poma

Positing the existence of ideas, and especially of the ethical ideal, has always been a serious problem for idealism. Since Plato, every kind of idealism has counted on the certainty that ideas are real, or rather that they are the sole constituent of true reality. However, the objection of those who insisted that this reality be exhibited in an existence also needed to be met. This objection, originating in both philosophical thought and common sense, is at once a serious and inevitable one, since existence is the fundamental criterion for what is, and is thus indispensable, both for common sense and philosophical reason, even though the truth of the a priori be acknowledged, to expect exhibition of its empirical actuality, without which the a priori itself runs the risk of appearing empty, illusory and, in the end, fallacious. Yet the ethical ideal constitutively resists the yardstick of empirical ascertainment, since its conformity with any empirical given would also involve its being emptied and falsified, inevitably depriving it of the character of infinity and perfection which constitute its idealness. Therefore, an ethical category of “existence”, analogous but not identical to the logical one, needs to be thought, thus allowing this difficulty to be overcome. Here my aim is to set out briefly the significant steps taken by Cohen in this direction. The ambiguous notion of “existence” has several meanings, in line with which it must be evaluated so as to identify a possible ethical analogue. Putting aside the ontological meanings, which belong to pre-critical thinking (the etymology of the words used both in English and Italian having common roots in the Latin ex-sistere), I shall restrict my considerations here to three main meanings: existence as correspondence with the sensible given; existence as being there, as presence; existence as the ability to produce effects in the actual world. Taking these meanings into account, I propose to examine briefly the contributions of Cohen’s philosophy to the determination of a category of existence for the ideal.

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Correspondence with the sensible given not only does not appear to be attributable to the ideal but is even denied it, so that its purity may be preserved. A fundamental principle of Kant’s ethics is that the moral phenomenon is not given. It is of interest to note that, whereas in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft Kant defined as “existing (wirklich)” “that which is connected with the material conditions of experience (of sensation),”1 in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, setting up a table of categories, whose symmetry with the theoretical one is certainly partial and, to a certain extent, artificial, though still intentional, he made the ethical category correspond with the logical one of “existence”: “duty and the opposite of duty.”2 He recognized the “exclusion of all the determining motives originating in inclination,”3 i.e. any determining connection with sensation, as the latter’s defining character. This is certainly coherent with his fundamental distinction between the theoretical use of reason, for which it determines an object “given on the other hand,” and its practical use, for which it realizes its own object,4 while leaving open a serious difficulty in the conception of history, in judgment on historical progress, as is shown, for example, by the complex, problematic nature of Kant’s view of the French Revolution.5 The problem was certainly less serious for Cohen than for Kant, inasmuch as, in view of the fundamental orientation of the former’s philosophy, the difference between logical reality and ethical realization is substantially reduced by the conception also of logical reality as realization. As is well known, in his works on the interpretation of Kant, and later in Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Cohen denied the non-deducible givenness of perception and turned sensibility itself into a category of pure productive thought.6 Although there is a clear difference between Kant’s viewpoint and the reworking of the problem of reality in the sense of realization in Cohen’s logic,

1 Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2. Auflage 1787, Akademie Ausgabe, Bd. 3, p. 185. 2 Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Akademie Ausgabe, Bd. 5, p. 66. 3 Cf. ibid., p. 80. 4 Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, cit., p. 8. 5 Cf. I. Kant, Erneuerte Frage: Ob das menschliche Geschlecht im beständigen Fortschreiten zum Besseren sei, in Id., Der Streit der Fakultäten, Akademie Ausgabe, Bd. 7, pp. 83ff. 6 On this see H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, Bd. 1: Ursprung und Einheit. Die Geschichte der ‘Marburger Schule’ als Auseinandersetzung um die Logik des Denkens, Schwabe & Co. AG Verlag, Basel-Stuttgart 1986, pp. 156ff.

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the fact should not be overlooked that the problem of sensation is still present, as is that of the difference between logical and ethical existence. Although, in Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Cohen saw the givenness of sensation independent of thought as mere psychological appearance, a prejudice of empirical consciousness (Bewußtheit),7 and thus, rejected the uncritical inclusion of this prejudice in philosophical argument,8 nevertheless he did acknowledge the importance of the “requirement” (Anspruch) of sensation for knowledge: “But our motto is: against the independence of sensation; but in favour of the requirement of sensation.”9 Sensation, inasmuch as it is a requirement of content as individual, is an unavoidable problem not only for the category of “effectual existence” (Wirklichkeit), but also for the category of possibility (Möglichkeit), since “A problem which is incapable of founding the requirement of sensation— the requirement not its satisfaction—is an impossible problem (. . .). If the requirement of sensation cannot be founded—the requirement not its solution and satisfaction—then impossibility is obvious.”10 In judgment of “effectual existence” pure thought also reaches the solution of the requirement of sensation, by means of the concept of “greatness” (Größe).11 But this conceptual determination of effectual existence as individuality would not be possible without a “demand of the individual”,12 without the request, however indeterminate, of the “obscure impulse”13 of sensation. In Logik der reinen Erkenntnis Cohen was already aware of the problem of transposing this request of sensation and this concept of effectual existence on the ethical level. With reference to Plato, for example, he wrote: Thus ethics also posits the problem of being present in an entirely necessary way: that morality become effectual existence on earth. Ethics, as a system of concepts, may well be fully constructed. If its laws have effectual existence among men, peoples and in states, it is of no importance whether this be the case now or in the future: it can express no judgment on this. Being there or effectual existence posits this problem

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Cf. LRE 456. Cf. ibid., pp. 151f. Ibid., p. 472. Ibid., pp. 452f. Cf. ibid., pp. 478ff. Ibid., p. 470. Ibid., p. 469.

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andrea poma to it. Sensation lies in this problem, in conformity with its concept, affirming the requirement, or leaving it to others to affirm it. The difference is noteworthy, but the request of sensation cannot be outflanked, even though it is incapable of representing its right by itself.14

Nevertheless what concept, analogous to “greatness,” can be turned to for the problem of effectual ethical existence? In Logik der reinen Erkenntnis Cohen referred explicitly to “chronology,”15 but this choice, as a mere historiographical method, seems insufficient and unsatisfactory to address the complexity of the problem. Let us put this question aside for the moment, to take it up again later, and turn to another aspect and meaning of the existence of the ideal. From the Einleitung to Ethik des reinen Willens Cohen had forcefully maintained the difference between Being (Sein) and What Ought to Be (Sollen), as a fundamental, unsurmountable principle of systematic philosophy. He did, on the other hand, with equal rigour, claim that there was a Being of the What Ought to Be which is different from the Being of Nature, but just as real. This is required to avoid ambiguity which would reduce the ethical ideal to “a catechism of duties” or “a fantastic realm of pious hopes.”16 The question is an important one, since the difference between ethical ideal and utopia is involved. Kant, in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, had already highlighted the difference between What Ought to Be and Being in the expression, also referred to by Cohen,17 “what must happen, even though it never happens.”18 Cohen goes further than Kant in foregrounding not only the value of the ideal, independent of its realization, but also the character of specific reality of What Ought to Be in respect of the Being of Nature. In his letter to Louis and Helene Lewandowsky, dated 19 August 1871, Cohen had already written: “The idealist conception of the world does not consist of the fact that things are believed to become as they should be, but of the fact that they are believed to have to become as they should be.”19

14

Ibid., pp. 459f. Cf. ibid., p. 495. 16 ERW 24. 17 Cf. KBE 22, 124. 18 I. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie Ausgabe, Bd. 4, p. 427. 19 H. Cohen, Briefe, ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Bertha und Bruno Strauß, Schocken Verlag/Jüdischer Buchverlag, Berlin 1939, pp. 32f. 15

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In Vom ewigen Frieden, Cohen pointed out that if idea must be distinguished “from any real existence of nature and from any historical experience,” it, however, “establishes its specific meaning” inasmuch as “it takes charge of effectual reality.”20 It is here that Cohen placed the decisive difference between ethics and utopia: The irreplaceable, very deep ground of the ethics of humanity can no longer lie in the prophetic hope of the future, but, in accordance with its method, in the reality of the future. This reality is idea, ethical idea: the idea where the idealism of ethics separates from the utopia of a transcendent bucolic world, as Jean Paul once called the hereafter (. . .). If ethical reality is an idea, then it is grounded in idealism, and therefore in knowledge. The knowledge of morality needs the guarantee of the certainty of that future for humanity.21

Reality is thus an essential category of being, not only of the being of nature, but also of that of the ideal. Reality cannot do without a dimension of “presence” (Gegenwart), of “being present” (Dasein) of the “object” (Gegenstand ), as content of thought: “The object has its ground in reality.”22 But the ethical ideal, What Ought to Be, cannot be reduced to the Being of nature, in this sense either. The reality of What Ought to Be cannot be constituted or recognized as mere “being there” (Dasein); an analogous, but not identical category needs to be thought for it: “ought to be there” (Dasollen).23 Cohen’s view of logical reality as realization makes the problem a less thorny one than in Kant, in this case as well. However, for this aspect, even more than for the relationship with sensation, it is useful to try to understand precisely both the analogy and difference between logic and ethics, in a tricky balance which has not always been upheld by Cohen’s interpreters. This is my aim from now

20 21

Cf. H. Cohen, Vom ewigen Frieden, in S 2 343/W 16 314f. H. Cohen, Religion und Sittlichkeit. Eine Betrachtung zur Religionsphilosophie, in J 3

148. 22

LRE 139. Although I am normally against neologisms in philosophical argument, I submit this term at this point, since, in this case, it appears to me to be necessary for defining a specific category of ethical “existence.” I believe that this particular case is justified by an important precedent: the Italian historian of religion and philosopher Ernesto De Martino, in his excellent posthumous work, La fine del mondo. Contributo all’analisi delle apocalissi culturali, ed. by Clara Gallini, Einaudi, Torino 1977, used the expression “doverci essere” (ought to be there). 23

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onwards, especially with a view to exact understanding of the notion of “eternity.” Here reference is required to Cohen’s theory of time and space, as formulated in Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, and to its further elaboration in Ethik des reinen Willens. Many interpreters have correctly highlighted and thoroughly analyzed the primacy of the future and the reduction of the present to space in Cohen’s philosophy,24 though, in my view, the importance of this spatial presence in his logic and of its analogue in ethics has generally been underestimated. Without reference to this, the reality of being, which is realized as “anticipation of the future” lacks the necessary prospect of “Allness” (Allheit). Admittedly, in Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Cohen defined the present as “a moment of space”25 and the relationship between space and time as “resolution of space in time,”26 but the correlation between time and space would not be completely and correctly understood unless sufficient importance were attributed to the consideration that “it is not that space is now dismissed, so that only time remains. Actually, it is only now that the background, principally constituted by space, becomes effective.”27 The “Plurality” (Mehrheit) of time would be a mere precondition for the reality of objective content without correlation with the “Allness” (Allheit) of space: If only time were in charge, the disposition for content would certainly be made ready, but a true content would not be constituted. Plurality in general has proved to be a preparation, but only a preparation for content. It is relativity, like the finite number. One continues uninterruptedly with it and in accordance with it; there can be no conclusion anywhere. Allness comes to the aid of this relativity without a conclusion. It brings integration (. . .). Now future and past do not whirl round in a changing no longer. Space fixes these unities; it no longer consumes them

24 I shall limit reference to P. Fiorato, Geschichtliche Ewigkeit. Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1993. During the recent congress on Cohen in Zurich the theme was re-examined by R. Gibbs, Hermann Cohen’s Messianism: The History of the Future, in “Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums” Tradition und Ursprungsdenken in Hermann Cohens Spätwerk. Internationale Konferenz in Zürich 1998, hg. von H. Holzhey, Gabriel Motzkin und Hartwig Wiedebach, Georg Olms, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York 2000, pp. 331ff. 25 LRE 228. 26 Ibid., p. 231. 27 Ibidem.

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only as unities of a plurality; its allness unites them in a whole. Juxtaposition, or rather togetherness is the new contribution required of space, and which space fulfils.28

Thus space has its premise in time, but time also, inasmuch as it is the future, in the sense of anticipation of the future, has its premise in space, “inasmuch as its ambit develops from the infinite series to integral calculus.”29 Therefore, if, in the ambit of the being of nature, the reality of content as realization and anticipation of the future does not have a meaning independent of its presence, as spatial co-presence, but is correlative to it, the meaning of the anticipation of the future cannot be immediately extended by identity in the ethical ambit of the being of the ideal, but an analogous, though not identical concept to the logical one of spatial co-presence, to which the ethical anticipation of the future is to be correlated, needs to be identified. This concept for Cohen is “eternity,” which, as an ethical analogue of space, provides the concept of future with a “new meaning.”30 One of the reasons why Cohen’s concept of “eternity” is difficult to understand correctly and completely lies in a lack of homogeneity between the first and second parts of the chapter entitled Das Ideal in Ethik des reinen Willens, where Cohen dealt with the theme of eternity. A unified meaning of these two parts can, however, be traced if they are interpreted in the above mentioned perspective of the difference and analogy between the reality of the being of nature and that of the being of What Ought to Be. In the first part of the chapter, Cohen underlined the analogy between logic and ethics in respect of the conception of time and, at the same time, the difference between them concerning reference to the Allness of space.31 He also reintroduced for ethics a conception of time as anticipation of the future, to which the anticipation of the past is correlated and consequent, in opposition to the anticipation of the present peculiar to “fantasy” and utopian “hope.”32 The realization of will as an “anticipation” of the future cannot,

28 29 30 31 32

Ibid., pp. 193f. Ibid., p. 199. Cf. ERW 294. Cf. ibid., pp. 395ff. Cf. ibid., pp. 398ff.

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however, make reference and find a ground, like thought, in the Allness of space. The intent to make this difference explicit forced Cohen into unilateral, imprecise statements, unless they are amplified and improved in the light of successive development. I shall quote the two most obviously problematic passages: “While the determination of the effectual reality of nature is based on space, the concept of pure will is fully realized in the fundamental concept of time. The problem of the effectual reality of pure will thus refers not to space but time.”33 “An analogon of infinity in time, opposed to Allness, lines up with the infinity of space indicated by Allness. This is the meaning of the concept of eternity.”34 Two serious ambiguities could arise both from these passages and the general tenor of the first part of the chapter dealing with Das Ideal: firstly ethical reality could be believed to be entirely resolved in time, and thus in becoming; secondly eternity could be believed to be resolved in Plurality, in the infinite, undefined series of particular realizations, with no reference to Allness, which founds its meaning. Actually here Cohen was concerned with clarifying the point that time in the ethical, in contrast with logic, is not in correlation with space and the infinite process of action is not in correlation with Allness understood as the sum and co-presence of moments. This does not mean, however, that he was not aware that the reality of ethics, like that of logic, cannot be reduced to Plurality and time either, but must be grounded in a correlation with an Allness, different from space, but analogous to it. Otherwise time, as “anticipation,” would lose its foundation: “This anticipation is, on the contrary, the real problem.”35 Further on Cohen developed his argument and overcame the ambiguity. He showed how the proper, determining meaning of “eternity” is not its temporal dimension, which was already present in the Greek concept of aflÒn, but the idea of messianic peace, announced by Jewish prophecy as “the time to come towards which all politics must aim, towards which the whole of effectual reality must be oriented,” as “the beginning of a new time, a new world, a new humanity, a new humanity on earth.”36 33 34 35 36

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. p. p. p.

398. 400. 399. 406.

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This essential clarification allowed Cohen to develop the meaning of eternity more correctly and thoroughly. Thinking eternity “nevertheless as a measure of time” inevitably implies falling back on a conception of time as “Allness,” of the future “as the infinite sum of the whole of future time,”37 and thus as “anticipated present,”38 proper to utopia.39 In this sense, though Cohen, in Ethik des reinen Willens, recognized the essential value of the messianic ideal of Jewish prophecy, he pointed out its limit as a static poetic representation of peace.40 As we know, in his subsequent works, especially Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls and Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judntums, he further developed his interpretation of prophetic messianism and overcame this criticism of the religious ideal of peace.41 Though provisional, Cohen’s partial criticism of the prophetic conception of peace is a clarifying passage, in the economy of this chapter of Ethik des reinen Willens, which brings out the meaning of eternity as an ethical category which cannot be reduced to time, but is in correlation with it, as the foundation of “a new meaning”42 for the concept of the future, as an answer to the problem: “what effectual reality is ensured by ethics?”43 as “the perspective of the incessant, infinite trend to go forward on the part of pure will.”44 In this complete, integral meaning, ethical eternity represents the dimension of Allness, different from and analogous to space, that correlatively founds the possibility of the ethical anticipation of the future, i.e. of “progress”: We recognize the effectual reality of the ethical (. . .) in the purpose imposed on ethical activity: being infinite. (. . .) Certainly, in this development, the single level does not represent the effectual reality of the ethical perfectly, but this single level 37

Ibid., p. 409. Ibid., p. 399. 39 P. A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik. Systematische Untersuchungen zu Hermann Cohens Rechts- und Tugendlehre, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, pp. 190ff. acknowledges the character of Allness of eternity, though taking it to be a “temporal Allness” (p. 192). 40 Cf. ERW 405, 407f. 41 On the theme of peace as a fundamental concept, not only of Cohen’s ethics and philosophy of religion, but also of the whole system, see the fundamental work by D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewußtseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens, Diss., Heidelberg 1968. 42 ERW 408. 43 Ibid., p. 409. 44 Ibid., p. 410. 38

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should not be considered separately, if the problem is its relationship with the question of effectual reality. The infinitely far off point to which it conceptually refers is included in each single level. Eternity is this infinitely far off point for each single point. They need to be taken together so as to explain that eternity is the effectual reality of the ethical, and that the finite point of realization is not a contradiction.45

As the reality of nature consists in the correlation between time and space, ethical reality takes place in the progress-eternity correlation, for which eternity is only real in the infinite anticipation of the future and, on the other hand, the latter is not authentically so (but rather mythical nostalgia of the past or a utopian anticipation of the present) except for inasmuch as the future is determined and ensured as eternity. Complementariness is set up in the progress-eternity correlation between becoming and being, analogous, though different, in respect of that which is represented in logic by the time-space correlation: Progress concerns the becoming of pure will, while eternity points to a being. Though splitting this being off from the concept of time, how can it be thought except as a type of being? In eternity a being, totally comparable with nature in its relationship with thought, is thus opposed to progress. New hope for the problem of the effectual reality of the ethical could arise from this confrontation, as long as eternity can bear this confrontation with nature; as long as it is capable of satisfying the desire for effectual reality just as much as nature does for thought.46

The anticipating reference of future time to a Allness that is not time (though it is not space either) is the essential distinction between ethical will and “desire”: Desire lacks the objective of eternity. Only trivially can one compare the enjoyment of yearning for desire to eternity. Desire looks towards temporality. Pure will detaches itself from the finiteness of temporality, searching for what gives it strength in infinite penetrating, with its thought and trend, to the utmost in time, beneath the guiding star of eternity. In it all that is temporal must thus become a mirror to eternity, and transform into eternal.47

Cohen explicitly treats “eternity” and “ideal” as synonyms, substituting and developing the notions of “What Ought to Be,” “law”

45 46 47

Ibid., pp. 410f. Ibid., p. 417. Ibid., p. 412.

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and “task,”48 for indicating the non temporal Allness of ethics.49 It is clear that eternity, in its correlation with progress, gives entirely adequate expression to the content (which, rather than dialectical, so as to keep the analogy with logic,50 we can call “integral”) of the ethical ideal: “completeness, fulfilment, the incompleteness of fulfilment.”51 We must now turn to one last, unavoidable meaning of existence: effectuality (Wirklichkeit). The reality of the ideal would remain empty rhetoric, if it could not be guaranteed effectuality, though this cannot be the effectuality of nature. We can start off from an important analogy with the aesthetic ideal, which is retained by Cohen, not forgetting a clear distinction made to avoid the much feared ambiguity of the aestheticization of ethics. He wrote that the aesthetic ideal “is not effect but creation.”52 Similarly, concerning the ethical ideal, he pointed out that: “Effectual reality connected with pure will can only be sought in the production of this pure will. The concept of effectual reality needs therefore to be modified, so as to transfer its sense to will.”53 If we return to the themes which have emerged during analysis of the first two meanings of existence, in an attempt to determine the third meaning, effectuality, for ethics, we accept that, on the one hand, ethical effectuality cannot be reduced to phenomenic reality, to the given of sensible perception, though it must satisfy, in its own specific way, the requirement of sensation. On the other hand, it cannot be reduced to a mere effectual being there, to the given present, though its anticipation of the future cannot be a utopian flight in an anticipated present. If the difference between the effectuality of nature and that of ethics is the unsurpassable unavailability of the ethical phenomenon, a common level of reality can, nevertheless, be found in “happening.” By also reflecting on the Kantian formula mentioned above, it could be said that even though what must happen never does, it must really happen nonetheless. A conceptual

48

Cf. ibid., p. 424. Cf. ibid., p. 423. 50 Cf. LRE 182. 51 ERW 424. On “eternity” and “ideal” cf. especially S. Kaplan, Das Geschichtsproblem in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens, Reuther & Reichard Verlag, Berlin 1930, pp. 74ff. 52 ERW 419. 53 Ibid., p. 422. 49

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space is opened up here for understanding and interpreting ethical realization as transformation of reality,54 i.e. for the elaboration of politics grounded in the ideal. With the seriousness and rigour always shown by Cohen in his further approach to the problem of the “realization of the ethical,” he does not sidestep the trial of sceptical doubt: What do we still require, to reach effectual reality, if the eternity of realization, in accordance with the purity of will, means, at the same time, the progress of this realization? Can we continue to fear that this eternity be an illusion, and that ethicity not have that effectual reality without which it is nothing more than an illusion? Does everything in man’s history, in law and the state appear to work towards ethicity, ought it to strengthen our suspicion that everything is only the result of natural impulses, of instinct, that there is no reason to suppose the presence of a thrust in the direction of eternity in all this, to which ethical culture moves?55

Cohen’s answer had a definite orientation: “Those who only see instinct and the power impulse in the creations of ethical culture; those who do not see there a point of departure and sign to see whether, thanks to the foundation of pure will, this hypothesis does not allow a correct formulation of the problem of ethicity, and thus a satisfactory solution, cannot be acquainted with ethicity. They see nothing but nature in it.”56 Ethical realization is not determination of given effective reality, but the production of a new effective reality. It is authentic politics, i.e. not the economic management of the present following the “power impulse,” but the real anticipation, by means of action, of the eternal ideal. With the mythical conception of politics, which “does not think much beyond the following dawn,”57 Cohen contrasted a prophetic conception, for which the ideal of peace opposes war, not as an abstract model, as a utopian dream, but as a political programme: The ethical value of messianism consists in this political meaning it has, we could almost say a meaning of philosophy of history. The history of peoples, as the history of humanity, this is the problem of the prophets’ messianism. Here on earth peace must reign among men,

54 55 56 57

Cf. ibid., p. 391. Ibid., p. 416. Ibidem. Ibid., p. 401.

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among peoples. Swords must be melted down and turned into pruning knives. This irrevocable opposition to what history calls international politics is the prophets’ messianism.58

Contrasting the eternal ideal of peace with the effective reality of war, for Cohen, did not mean an empty utopia of “perpetual peace,”59 but rather contrasting politics as the anticipation of the future and infinite but effective progress in the fulfilment of the eternal ideal of humanity with politics as economic management of the present and as an affirmation of power. Complaints are made—Cohen wrote—that ethicity lacks, as is commonly said, effectual reality. Only natural beings are recognized in men and the peoples of history. The best representation of the life of men and peoples seems to be the image thanks to which Darwin updated old Heraclitus. War is the father of All (. . .). Here lie the roots of the materialist conception of history: history is reduced to the level of nature. Therefore, humanity is no more than an empty abstraction. And the future is nothing more than the dragging on of the present, where romantic inspiration, which at least looks back to the past, is also missing. The past is also only taken up again if it can be of help to the omnipotence of the present. Eternity, on the other hand, returns to catechism and is silenced in immortality. In the struggle for existence there is no victory for eternity. Ethics does posit this purpose, however. The eternity of moral self consciousness, the eternity of humanity which bears this self consciousness: this is the ideal; this is the being of will, this the highest being of idealism.”60

The analogy with logic also needs to be sought in connection with the problem of the effectuality of the ideal. In Logik der reinen Erkenntnis Cohen had pointed to the “individual” (das Einzelne) as the critical category representing the requirement of sensation61 and to “greatness” (Größe) as the category by means of which pure thought can satisfy this requirement and produce the individual62 and had, finally, determined “greatness” by means of “connection” (Zusammenhang) with “equality” (Gleichheit),63 which constitutes its “premise.” An analogy with this logical orientation cannot be just glimpsed in Cohen’s ethics;

58 59 60 61 62 63

Ibid., pp. 406f. Cf. ibid., p. 408. Ibid., pp. 426f. Cf. LRE 471f. Cf. ibid., pp. 476, 478f. Cf. ibid., p. 483.

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it is explicitly stated. Cohen began the chapter of Ethik des reinen Willens entitled Die Gerechtigkeit precisely with a discussion of the requirement of effectual reality of sensation and pointed to justice as the ethical analogue of “greatness,” so as to satisfy this requirement.64 In the next chapter on Humanität Cohen posited this virtue, explicitly considered, firstly, in the meaning of “aequitas” i.e. “equality,”65 as a necessary complement to justice for realization in connection with the “individual” (der Einzelne).66 The formulation of this close analogy is not a mere abstract, artificial architectural construction for the delight of an empty exterior symmetry. In fact it is the conceptual foundation of ethical effectuality as a concrete political programme grounded in the ideal and transforming the present, in opposition to politics as the pragmatics of power and economic management of the present. In the chapter on justice Cohen set out a political programme where the entire conceptual foundation of ethics is finally realized. He attained this result through two conceptually significant stages. Firstly he turned the frequently stated principle of the ethical foundation of law into the latter’s foundation as the “science of law.”67 He did not mean this in the common sense of metareflection on law, but rather a conception of law itself, not as “technique” but as “science”: Justice is directly built on truthfulness, since it sets up a method, a science of law. Law is not only, as it were, a particular technique, it is a true, specific science flanking the sciences of nature and history. A specific science is one that possesses and constructs specific concepts. From this point of view technique which elaborates already given concepts, differs from method which creates concepts, and, in them, creates science. The science of law is a methodological system of concepts which are proper and peculiar to it.68

64

Cf. ERW 591. Aequitas “means equality”: cf. ibid., p. 622. 66 Cf. ibid., pp. 617ff. 67 Cf. ibid., p. 599. The importance of referece to Judaism for Cohen’s conception of the “science of law” is upheld and explained by D. Novak, Das noachidische Naturrecht bei Hermann Cohen, in “Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums” Tradition und Ursprungsdenken in Hermann Cohens Spätwerk. Internationale Konferenz in Zürich 1998, cit., pp. 226f., 230ff. 68 ERW 599. Therefore, I am unable to accept the objection made by E. Winter, Ethik und Rechtswissenschaft. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zur Ethik-Konzeption des Marburger Neukantianismus im Werke Hermann Cohens, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 65

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Secondly, in the chapter on justice, Cohen set out a somewhat radical socialist political programme, suggesting serious limitations on the right of property and the elimination of hereditary law. He was not too distant from the more radical forms of socialism, such as those of Lassalle and Marx. He had always criticized the latter less for the content of his works than for his materialist foundation. The important point to make is that this programme was grounded in a critique of legal mystification consisting in the attribution to capital of a juridic person.69 Here the ethical foundation of law is realized in a concrete political programme which goes beyond the ethical, in advance of the economic, alienation of the individual from his personality, through legal return of the moral concept of person to its real subject: But what is the situation when dealing with profit from work, if it is the same concept of capital which is to be applied, or used with the worker? Does the worker become the owner of the profit from his work? Or, behind all these various façades, does an outsider remain, who is forced into an obligation by a work contract?

1980, p. 262, that Cohen’s ethics runs the risk of degenerating into a “theory of the science of law.” Peter Schmid, who also criticized this view of Winter (cf. P. A. Schmid, op. cit., p. 89), correctly pointed out: “Nevertheless, Cohen’s ethics of law does not become a scientific theory of the science of law. Rather it largely becomes a philosophical theory of law, i.e. a critical explanation of the rational principles of positive law” (ibid., pp. 53f.). On this topic cf. also H. Holzhey, Rechtserfahrung oder Rechtswissenschaft—eine fragwürdige Alternative. Zu Sanders Streit mit Kelsen, in Reine Rechtslehre im Spiegel ihrer Fortsetzer und Kritiker, hg. von Ota Weinberger – Werner Krawietz, Springer, Wien 1988, pp. 167–192; G. Gigliotti, Dalle facoltà alle forme. Introduzione al concetto di volontà in Cohen, in H. Cohen, Etica della volontà pura, a cura di Gianna Gigliotti, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli 1994, pp. xlvii ff. This meaning Cohen gave to “law” as the “science of law” needs to be kept in mind in reflection on the problem of his methodological anomaly of a transcendental foundation of ethics, without reference to the “fact of a science.” The problem is admittedly a real one and is still there after Cohen’s conception of law as the science of law has been clarified, since this science of law, as understood by Cohen, finds its reality in politics, which we could call science in contrast with politics as mere technique. This is certainly a programme which has yet to be realized and thus cannot be considered the “fact of science.” On the other hand, socialism for Cohen was the concrete expression of this programme and the authentic strength of its historical realization. Taking into account historicity as an undeniable dynamic component also attributed to the “fact of science” in the realm of nature by Cohen, this conception of socialism as the political and historical reality of the “science of law” can, in my view, contribute to the consideration, in a new light, of the problem, which remains a problem, of the “fact of science” as a point of reference for the transcendental foundation of ethics. 69 Cf. ERW 609.

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andrea poma Like that of the Sphinx, this question originates in law itself. Law is obliged to question this problem, profound concern on the part of the State. It becomes the main problem of ethical culture. Here economic interests become cultural interests. Law again appears as the eternal creation of ethicity. The virtue of justice has pointed to and planned its path here. Law is no longer only at the service of the furtive subterfuges of economic power. It has returned to its relationship with ethics. Law has come back into its own as the law of justice. The rebirth of the State, as ethical self consciousness, begins and ends in this clarification, in this concentration of law on its true purpose. The idea that had comforted Kant that the evil of culture contains the seeds of its salvation appears to be confirmed. The mythology of capital holds within itself the redemption of the person who works.70

It is on this basis that, in the subsequent parts, Cohen formulated the opposition between “Power State” (Machtsstaat) and “Law State” (Rechtsstaat), not as an alternative between two possible political conceptions, nor as a utopian contraposition of the idea of de facto reality, but as the position of the sole ideal, the “Law State,” as a principle of political transformation of the “Empirical State.”71 The ideal is the being of eternity. Thus justice becomes the virtue of eternity. Its being is eternal, every virtue is eternal. Without justice, however, all virtues lose value. As the virtue of the ideal it also goes beyond all scepticism and any weak conservative opportunism, for whose worldly wisdom faith in a new world is an illusion of ideology. Justice is the virtue of man, as a man of the new rather than the other world. The double meaning of man, as an individual and allness, is fully realized thanks to it.72

The beginning of the following chapter of Ethik des reinen Willens, entitled Die Humanität, may lead one to believe that Cohen conceived this virtue as a completion of justice in the sense of an addition for understanding of the reality of the individual, of the “specificity of a case of effectual reality.”73 Taking up this meaning would underestimate

70

Ibid., p. 611. Cf. ibid., p. 615. 72 Ibid., p. 616. On these themes see: H. Holzhey, Hermann Cohen: der Philosoph in Auseinandersetzung mit den politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen seiner Zeit, in Philosophisches Denken—Politisches Wirken. Hermann-Cohen-Kolloquium Marburg 1992, hg. von Reinhard Brandt und Franz Orlik, Georg Olms, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York 1993, pp. 30ff. 73 ERW 617. 71

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the untiring philosophical pursuit of realization on Cohen’s part as a continuous, further attempt to get closer to the foundation and understanding of effective reality, which would indirectly confirm the originative abstractness of the ideal, in the end its formalism. In fact, Humaneness is in correlation with justice and, in this correlative meaning, is the condition of the possibility of justice itself, besides being grounded in it. It is indeed the condition of all virtues, inasmuch as it constitutes the “limit” of ethics, the horizon and perspective condition, only with reference to which the production of all content is possible: “If humaneness means a virtue which has the task of showing the unilaterality of all virtues, then it leads to the limit of an idea which is actually the limit of ethics.”74 This is coherent with the authentic general layout of Cohen’s ethics and entire philosophy, for which the requirement of effective reality and the trend towards realization are not artificial, constrained extensions of an essentially formalist founding theory, but a true originative stimulus and regulative principle of a theory of form as the sole authentic principle of real content, in line with Cohen’s well known statement: Nothing could be further from the truth than the layman’s suspicion that “pure” is empty, freed of its content. Impure content, which is not real content, it is the sole opposite of “pure;” and this is only the case in the sense of the extension of “pure” to impure content, in order to turn it into pure content. This is the inevitable relationship of “pure” with content. Without this “pure” becomes senseless.75

At the beginning of the chapter, Cohen did actually write that Humaneness does not concern “the legal principle,” but only the “legal demonstration.”76 This could lead one to think of an extrinsic addition on the level of mere empirical application. However, shortly afterwards, he specified that the problem answered by Humaneness, in the legal field, is not simply the appropriateness of evaluation, by the judge, of possible “attenuating circumstances” to be applied in a specific case.77 Humaneness is, however, necessary in the ambit of the very foundation of law, for “determinations of the

74 75 76 77

Ibid., p. 632; cf. ibid., p. 628. LRE 5. Cf. ERW 620. Cf. ibidem.

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universal problem of the particular.”78 For this reason, though it remains true that Humaneness is not involved in the determination of the principles of law, it is important to point out that it is not only an applicative instrument of law, but a critical category of it,79 and as such itself a part of law.80 It is easy to see how Cohen, in this context, made use of the concept of humaneness, in its meaning of aequitas, to address not only the problem of the application of law, but the fundamental question of an ethical category of existence (Wirklichkeit). In total analogy with logic, he found in Humaneness the meaning of “equality,” with which to set up a “connection” with “greatness” and the measure proper to justice. He also found the “requirement” of the “individual” (das Einzelne), which in ethics is the “individual person” (der Einzelne).81 As in logic, also in ethics the category of effectual existence is not a mere applicative appendix of the founding theory, but an integral part of the latter. In the case of ethics, Humaneness is an integral part of law, not inasmuch as it determines its principles, but inasmuch as it allows adequate consideration of “the Sphinx constituted by the impenetrability of the particular.”82 Cohen also theorized the intrinsic correlative relationship in ethics between foundation and application, which, as I have already mentioned, is implicit in the very meaning of “purity.” He wrote this about law: “The principle of law only serves—but this is necessary—to teach, and as a guide for finding the particular.”83 Justice cannot do without correlation with Humaneness because law cannot do without reference to realization in politics. It was on this basis that Cohen developed the meaning of Humaneness as the foundation of the partly political relationship with the other man as an individual, with the “face of man,”84 inasmuch as, thanks to it, it is possible to treat the other without judging him and before judging him. He thus had already introduced into ethics the foundation of the realization of “peace” in negation of any justification of hatred:85

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid., p. 621. Cf. ibid., p. 622. Cf. ibid., p. 620. “Das Einzelne ist hier schliesslich der Einzelne”: ibid., p. 619. Ibid., p. 620. Ibidem. Ibid., p. 627. Cf. ibid., pp. 627ff.

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an orientation that would be significantly developed in Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums.86 The politics of peace thus became concrete in a programme founded on the columns of justice and Humaneness, or rather, justice in Humaneness. Thus ethics, already profoundly linked to logic, opens up to aesthetics, and politics becomes the full expression of culture. The path followed by psychology, wrote Cohen, is also similarly marked: “Representing this macrocosm of human essence in the microcosm of the man of culture is the great task of psychology.”87 Lastly politics is the concrete figure of the convergence of ethics and religion, since it is conceived as the realization of the messianic ideal of the prophets: peace as the realization of justice and mercy. As a conclusion to these considerations of mine on the existence of the ideal, I should like to devote a few words to our common research. I should like to underline the fact that the importance of Cohen’s political demand has always been highlighted. In his 1968 dissertation88 Dieter Adelmann suggested it was one of the main keys to the interpretation of Cohen. Steven Schwarzschild89 also foregrounded the political importance of Cohen’s thought. Helmut Holzhey, in the important introductory paper at the Marburg congress in 1992,90 placed it at the centre of his reflections. Nevertheless, Cohen has still to become a reference point for new political reflection. A small but significant group of scholars engaged in research on Cohen’s thought is meeting here. These congresses, which are attended by most of those involved in this research, have now become stimulating regular events. Our work on the study and interpretation of Cohen is certainly useful and important, but it will never be able to reconstruct and revive Cohen’s thought completely unless it is also

86

Cf. RV 520ff. On this subject cf. D. Adelmann, op. cit., pp. 222ff. ERW 637. 88 Cf. D. Adelmann, op. cit. 89 Cf. S. Schwarzschild, The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen, in “Hebrew Union College Annual” 27 (1956), pp. 417–38; Id., “Germanism and Judaism”—Hermann Cohen’s Normative Paradigm of the German-Jewish Symbiosis, in Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis, ed. by David Bronsen, Carl Winter-Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1979, pp. 129–72. 90 Cf. H. Holzhey, Hermann Cohen: der Philosoph in Auseinandersetzung mit den politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen seiner Zeit, cit. The problem is also a central one for Holzhey’s pupil P. A. Schmid, op. cit. and H. Wiedebach, Die Bedeutung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen, Georg Olms, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York 1997. 87

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an active testimony of political engagement inspired by the ideal. Admittedly our social and political situation is rather different from Cohen’s, but certainly today too, perhaps more now than then, do we need a critique of politics which has declined to an economic management of the present and a new positing of political truthfulness in the light of the ethical ideal. Perhaps we too, today, “have again reached the point when we must bear witness.”91

91

Cf. H. Cohen, Ein Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage, in J 2 73.

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE PURE WILL: CONCEPTS OF MORAL ENERGY IN HERMANN COHEN’S ETHICS Hartwig Wiedebach

I “The questions of consciousness in relation to biological matter” are the “fundamental problems of philosophy, where the entire philosophical interest has its center of gravity.”1 In 1911, when the German philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) published this claim, nobody was really interested in it.2 Today, as is well known, the situation is totally different. In particular, the anthropological aspects of current genetics, medicine, and other related sciences have led us to reformulate Cohen’s claim. Nevertheless, at the first glance Cohen would seem to present himself as exceedingly outdated. What, if anything, should interest us in an idealistic philosopher, who created a system of “pure thinking,” “pure will,” “pure feeling,” and, last but not least, of “ethical monotheism”?—“The stars are not given in Heaven,” but as “objects in the science of astronomy.” “Experience” is to be found “in printed books.” These are two of Hermann Cohen’s essential claims.3 And human life? Is it also given in books? Let us begin with one of Cohen’s most striking sentences, posthumously published, from Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (1919). In reply to the short question “how is it possible to love an

1 “Die Fragen des Bewußtseins im Verhältnis zur biologischen Materie” sind die “philosophischen Grundprobleme, welche [. . .] den Schwerpunkt aller philosophischen Interessen bilden.” Hermann Cohen: “Über die Bedeutung einer philosophischen Jugendschrift Ludwig Philippsons,” in: L. Philippson: Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Leipzig, Gustav Fock 1911, vol. 2, 461–86, cit. 482. 2 Just to give one example: the passage is missing in Bruno Strauß’ partial reprint in Cohen’s very influential Jüdische Schriften. Berlin, Schwetschke 1924, vol. 2, 439– 45.—The entire essay will be republished with commentary in Cohen: Kleinere Schriften, vol. IV (Werke, ed. Helmut Holzhey et al. Hildesheim, Olms 1977 ff., vol. 15). 3 Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte, 1883 (Werke, vol. 5/I), 127, cf. Robert Gibbs: “The Limits of Thought: Rosenzweig, Schelling, and Cohen”, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 43 (1989), 618–40, cit. 633; and Kants Begründung der Ethik, 1st ed. 1877, 27; 2nd ed. 1910 (Werke, vol. 2), 35.

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idea?,” Cohen asks: “how is it possible to love anything but an idea? Does one not love, even in the case of sensual love, only the idealized person, only the idea of the person?”4 The Israeli historian of philosophy Gabriel Motzkin once interpreted this puzzling answer as an attempt “to differentiate the physical person from some other ideal aspect.”5 According to this reading, Cohen tried to arrive at “a solely intellectual love,” and, therefore, “had to conclude that man is not a sensual being, and that despite this non-sensuality he has actuality, one that can be a subject for an ideal love.”6—Indeed, one must concede: Cohen’s main work on man, his Ethics of the Pure Will (1904), seems to confirm Motzkin’s claim. But, in fact, it does not. I will try to give an idea of Cohen’s deep alliance with the tradition of European physiology, especially with its energetic interpretation of sensual perception and biological motion.7 Despite his dependence on partially outdated concepts, Cohen’s philosophical physiology remains relevant, due to its dialectic rigor, to this day. Cohen rejected all tendencies of modern psychology to play down the difference between the cognition of nature—including biology—and the cognition of ethical ideas. At the same time, however, he opposed the almost complete separation of these two domains by any kind of physicalistic ideology. In his System of Philosophy, he makes a clear distinction between natural sciences and ethics, while unifying them in a single principle of truth. Truth means “the harmony between the theoretical and the ethical problem.”8 The use of physiological concepts within the framework of Ethics is an attempt to speak the language of truth.

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Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, tr. Simon Kaplan. New York, Ungar 1972, p. 160/Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, 2nd ed., Frankfurt a.M., Kauffmann 1929, p. 185. [Hereafter cited as: Religion of Reason, p. . . ./. . .]— Except from the Religion of Reason, all translations of Cohen’s words are mine. 5 Gabriel Motzkin: “Love and Knowledge in Cohen’s Religion of Reason”, in: ‘Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism’. Tradition and the Concept of Origin in Hermann Cohen’s Later Work. International Conference in Zurich 1998, ed. H. Holzhey, G. Motzkin, H. Wiedebach. Hildesheim, Olms 2000, 89–104, cit. 98. 6 Ibid. 7 With respect to general history, see Karl Eduard Rothschuh: Geschichte der Physiologie. Berlin/Göttingen/Heidelberg, Springer 1953; Fritz Lieben: Geschichte der physiologischen Chemie. Hildesheim/New York, Olms 1970; Theodor Leiber: Vom mechanischen Weltbild zur Selbstorganisation des Lebens. Helmholtz’ und Boltzmanns Forschungsprogramme und ihre Bedeutung für Physik, Chemie, Biologie und Philosophie. Freiburg/München, Alber 2000. 8 Ethik des reinen Willens [Ethics of the Pure Will], 2nd ed. 1907 (Werke, vol. 7 [hereafter: Ethics]), 89.

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II The basic principle of Cohen’s philosophy is genetic. “Origin” means production rather than description. One of the methodological essentials is that Cohen wants to expose the genesis of truth not only in terms of transcendental analysis but also in the light of historical development. In an early book, Kant’s Foundation of Ethics of 1877, Cohen refers to Kant’s concept of purity, to his rejection of any empirical definition of autonomy: “anthroponomy is not anthropology.”9 A few sentences later, however, Cohen asks how to apply such an abstract “anthroponomy” to the historical human being. “Posing this question, ethics ceases, strictly speaking, to be a discipline which is limited to the discovering and the exposition of a peculiar a priori. Properly speaking, the question of possible application [. . .] is a theoretical one, it is a problem of the cognition of nature.”10 Kant treated the ethical a priori and the historical anthropology at different stages of his development and in various books. Cohen, however, tries to unify anthroponomy and anthropology in a single hypothesis of human nature. Unlike Kant, Cohen uses narrative elements, exemplifying the historical development of morality both collectively and individually: he tells us stories about the Greek, the German, and the Jewish collective achievements, about Socrates’, Kant’s, and Moses’ individual contributions. But in order to create notions adequate to these stories, he needs psychological know-how based on empirical investigation. Cohen accepted principally two sciences for delivering relevant material: “moral statistics” and physiology.11 Physiology, like many other sciences, developed into its modern version in Europe during the 19th century. Some of the great figures

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Kants Begründung der Ethik, 1st ed. 1877, 273; 2nd ed. 1910 (Werke, vol. 2), 310. “Mit dieser Frage [nach der Anwendung] aber hört, streng genommen, die Ethik auf, eine auf die Entdeckung und Darstellung des ihr eigentümlichen a priori eingeschränkte Disziplin zu sein. Die Frage der Anwendbarkeit [. . .] ist eigentlich eine theoretische Frage, ein Problem der Naturerkenntnis.” Kants Begründung der Ethik, 2nd ed., 311 (in the 1st ed. the formulation differs slightly). Cf. Peter A. Schmid: Ethik als Hermeneutik. Systematische Untersuchungen zu Hermann Cohens Rechts- und Tugendlehre. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann 1995, 181–90. 11 About “moral statistics” cf. Logik der reinen Erkenntnis [Logic of the Pure Cognition], 2nd ed. 1914 (Werke, vol. 6 [hereafter: Logic]), 302; Ethics, 290 f.; with respect to psychology and physiology: Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag zur ‚Geschichte des Materialismus‘ von F. A. Lange, 3rd ed. 1914 (Werke, vol. 5/II), 52 ff. 10

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of influence on Hermann Cohen were Johannes Müller, Rudolf Hermann Lotze, Emil Du-Bois Reymond, and Hermann von Helmholtz. They brought Cohen to his conviction that experimental psychology can only be acceptable as an “accessory to physiology.”12 The most important of these scholars with respect to Cohen’s methodology was Johannes Müller, with his concept of “specific sensory energies.”13 Helmholtz was one of his famous pupils and professor of physics in Berlin since 1871, where Cohen came into contact with him. He developed Müller’s energetic principles, applying them to the problem of muscular motion. In 1847, without depending on Robert Mayer’s investigations, he found the principle of the preservation of energy.14 One of the many other sources for Cohen was the Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane. In his personal copy (today in Jerusalem), we can see how intensively he studied the volumes which had appeared between 1890 and 1899.15 Johannes Müller discovered that sensory qualities (seeing, hearing etc.) cannot be derived in a rigorous and stringent manner from specific kinds of physical stimuli: optical phenomena are not exclusively correlated to the perception of electromagnetic waves in the eye, acoustic phenomena are not exclusively tied to specific vibrations in the ear, and so on. External application of electricity as well as mechanical pressure at the eye or at the ear will also cause optical or acoustic impressions. The eye can only see, the ear can only hear; touching a tuning-fork with our hand, we feel vibrations but we do not hear anything. Müller, therefore, assumed that special qualities or—as Helmholtz puts it16—“modalities” of perception are

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“Zubehör der Physiologie,” Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 57. Cf. Johannes Müller: Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen für Vorlesungen, 4th ed., 2 vols. Coblenz, Hölscher 1840 (vol. 2), and 1844 (vol. 1), esp. the preface to his chapter on the ‘senses’: “Nothwendige Vorbegriffe”, vol. 2, 249–75.—Cf. some important references to this book in Cohen’s Logic, 464, 466; Ethics, 156; Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, 2 vols., 1912, (Werke, vols. 8 and 9 [hereafter: Aesthetics]), vol. 1, 133–35, 139. 14 Cf. Rothschuh: Geschichte der Physiologie, 123–27; a detailed (and critical) discussion is given in Leiber’s Vom mechanischen Weltbild zur Selbstorganisation des Lebens, esp. 215–35, 303–28. One of Helmholtz’ most famous essays was: Über die Erhaltung der Kraft. Eine physikalische Abhandlung. Berlin, Reimer 1847. 15 H. Wiedebach: Die Hermann-Cohen-Bibliothek (H. Cohen: Werke, Supplementa 2), Hildesheim, Olms 2000, 214–17; cf. “Anatomie”, “Neurologie”, “Physik”, “Physiologie” etc. in the general index. 16 Helmholtz: Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, 2nd revised ed. Hamburg/Leipzig, 13

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by definition the outcome of “specific sensory energies,” which are linked to different parts of neuronal “texture.” Historically based on Aristotle’s notions of ‘energeia’ and ‘entelécheia,’17 Müller’s “energies” denote an active principle of realization of something potential, an intelligible motion bringing forth reality out of non-reality. Neuronal function is defined as a creative spontaneity within the living organism, even if we normally need stimuli giving rise to such spontaneity. Müller explicitly states that “the essence” of these phenomena remains “unknown forever: one cannot sophisticate anymore about the perception of the ‘blue’; it is a fact, like many others, denoting the limits of our intelligence.”18 Cohen adopted Müller’s concept of physiological energies as an outstanding example for his own method. He puts it as follows: if it is true that “consciousness cannot just be defined as stimulated reaction,” then we must by definition turn it into its opposite. Now “consciousness” is placed first. It works as a “disposition within the nervous system,” which must be taken as “the basis for the perception of stimuli.” The stimuli cannot be “the first principle, in the sense of external causes, but rather a kind of continuation. In this way, the principle of origin [!] was realized by this founder of modern physiology.”19 But there is another problem to solve. The concept of “specific sensory energies” indicates the subjective element in every perception. Subjectivity, however, remains deeply ambivalent. If the structure of the correlation between subjectivity and the physically defined

Leopold Voss 1896, § 26, cit. 584. Cf. Helmholtz: Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik, 3rd revised ed. Braunschweig, Friedrich Vieweg & son 1870, 13; with respect to Cohen’s personal copy, including annotations, cf. Wiedebach: Cohen-Bibliothek, 109. 17 Cf. Müller: Handbuch, vol. 2, 255. 18 “Das Wesen dieser Zustände der Nerven [. . .] bleibt wie die letzten Ursachen in der Naturlehre ewig unbekannt. Ueber die Empfindung des Blauen lässt sich nicht weiter räsoniren; sie ist eine Thatsache, wie viele andere, die die Grenze unseres Witzes bezeichnen.” Müller: Handbuch, vol. 2, 256. Cf. Cohen: Logic, 469f.: “Wie es zugeht, daß wir blau, und daß wir cis empfinden, das darf uns nicht weiter interessieren.” 19 “. . . man [darf ] das Bewußtsein nicht lediglich als Reaktion der Reize bestimmen.” “Die Disposition innerhalb des Nervensystems für die Aufnahme von Reizen muß [. . .] zugrunde gelegt werden, damit diese nicht als äußere Ursachen das Erste bleiben, sondern gleichsam nur eine Fortsetzung bilden. So wird das Prinzip des Ursprungs bei diesem Begründer der neuern Physiologie wirksam gemacht.” Aesthetics, vol. 1, 133f.

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stimulus remains unknown, a sort of agnosticism seems to be inevitable. The correlation as such cannot define “an objective standard” of cognition.20 At this point, we can see Cohen’s fundamental philosophical gesture, turning a negative result, epistemologically speaking a kind of ‘me-on,’ into its positive counterpart. As we have seen, he uses Müller’s “specific sensory energies” for his deconstruction of sensualism, defining consciousness as the primary energetic disposition of perception. But this is just the first step. The fact of specific perception is turned into a “claim of perception,”21 calling for the appropriate logic of objectivity. By definition— and we have to acknowledge here Cohen’s defiance toward any affirmation of skepticism—the energetic event of perception in itself includes the tendency towards spiritual knowledge. “Pure cognition” means to rely on the energetic power of consciousness in order to build structures of objectivity. The primary act of definition is crucial: facing the lack of cognition, man has to redefine cognition. Only in a second step must he prove his new concepts, using organized methods of observation. This is what Cohen calls hypothesis. In the Religion of Reason, he condensed the formal structure of this method to the expression “negation of privation,” an act which he found traditionally ascribed to God’s everlasting creativity.22 Of course, Müller’s “specific sensory energies” can be no more than the first step on a long path toward defining true knowledge. “The sensation stammers; only thinking creates the word. The sensation signifies just a vague urge (dunklen Drang); only thinking is able to elucidate its aim.”23 Hermann Lotze’s psycho-physiological semiotics of space, his theory of “local signs,”24 and Helmholtz’ concept of an “unconscious syllogism” in every perception,25 were two other famous attempts to bring together actual perception and general

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Logic, 466. “Anspruch der Empfindung,” Logic, 436, and passim. 22 Religion of Reason, 66–66/73–76. 23 “Die Empfindung stammelt; das Denken erst erschafft das Wort. Die Empfindung bezeichnet einen dunklen Drang; wohin sie zielt, das kann erst das Denken beleuchten.” Logic, 469. 24 Lotze: Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele. Leipzig, Weidmann 1852, esp. II, cap. 4: “Von den räumlichen Anschauungen”. Cohen called it Lotze’s “probably most important book” (Aesthetics, vol. 2, 429); cf. Wiedebach: Cohen-Bibliothek, 142. 25 Helmholtz: Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, § 26, pp. 582, 600–3; cf. Cohen’s critique in: Logic, 467 f. 21

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logic. Cohen’s System of Philosophy can to a certain extent be read as a critical continuation of these forerunners. The epistemological basis is given by the concept of “investigation” (Forschung) within the Logic.26 The most detailed presentation can be found in the Aesthetics.27 But the problem comes to its highest degree of serious exposition within the Ethics of the Pure Will. Here the very question of the human being must be answered.

III The first and most important claim of Cohen’s Ethics is: willing and acting are inseparable. Any kind of “Gesinnungsethik,” emphasizing only the “inner” motivation of acting, and neglecting physical doing, must be rejected.28 Cohen’s decision follows from his general concept of motion. The old ontological division between motion as an attribute of thought or volition, and motion as an attribute of matter is rejected. Realizing motion, either in perception or in physical doing, we execute forms of specific energy. Willing and acting must, therefore, be defined as a single energetic event. The defining power of consciousness attains its purest form in formulating different kinds of law. Modern scientific thought owes the invention of its concept of motion to Galileo Galilei. It received its classical form in the foundation of infinitesimal mathematics and modern thermodynamics. Cohen for his part does not hesitate to use it within the domain of ethics as well. Within Cohen’s theory of physics, the mathematical definition of the infinitesimal serves as a philosophical concept of the everlasting realization of things. The ethical analogy to this “judgment of reality” is called “tendency.”29 “Tendency” is not a “given” element of human nature, like a sort of “innate” mental power leading to ethical acts. Historically based on Leibniz’ concepts of conatus and appetitus,30

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Cf. the chapters about “The Judgments of Method,” Logic, 404ff. Cf. the passages beginning with “The Construction of the Esthetic Consciousness,” Aesthetics, vol. 1, 125ff. 28 Cf. Ethics, 123. 29 Ethics, 133. 30 Cf. e.g. Leibniz: Nouveaux Essais, II 21,5; 22,11; Monadology § 15;—Cohen’s Ethics, 133 (“Bestrebung” = lat. ‘conatus’), and 134 (“appetitus”). 27

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Cohen’s definition of “tendency” stands in a similar relation to 19th century psycho-physics, as infinitesimal mathematics stands in relation to Galilei’s mechanics. Both Galilei’s mechanics and 19th century psycho-physics are considered as important steps away from the metaphysical question about the essence of motion. The new problem was: what is motion defined as measurable quantity with respect to a certain function? This question is identical with another: what kind of rule or law do we need in order to make measurements? Cohen’s infinitesimal “reality” denotes the fictional starting-point of measurable motion within a continuous mathematical curve of possible measurements. This “point,” considered as “origin of the curve, [. . .] includes the law of direction both of its own and of the curve.”31 Similar to this originative point, “tendency” includes both the selfmoving individual and the quasi-mathematical curve of possible ethical values. On the one hand, this leads to Cohen’s theory of the ethical emotion (affect), on the other to his theory of juridical law. Ethical emotion and the law are in a relation of continuity. Affect is defined as the “motor” of the acting will.32 Despite its similarity to Müller’s “energies,” affect on its first level seemingly lacks any specification. In his chapter “The Foundation of the Pure Will,” Cohen speaks at length about the connotation of moral emotion by like or dislike, and passion (Lust, Unlust, Leidenschaft), excluding all of them as acceptable concepts. An ethics based on these notions cannot avoid the suspicion of external “pathological” causality.33 Ethical emotion, therefore, has to be “isolated”34 from these categories. Cohen negates concepts of “essence” while reconstructing them within a functional framework of measurable values. 31 “[. . .] dieser Ursprung der Kurve enthält in sich das Gesetz seiner und eo ipso ihrer Richtung.” Logic, 129.—This is again a construction very similar to Leibniz, cf. Friedrich Kaulbach: [art.] “Punkt, Punktualität,” in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel, Schwabe, 1971ff., vol. 7, col. 1711–14. 32 Ethics, 199, and passim.—I will not touch here on the complicated problem of Cohen’s relation to Spinoza; cf. Helmut Holzhey: “Pantheismus, Ethik und Politik: Hermann Cohens Spinozakritik,” in: Ethik, Recht und Politik bei Spinoza. Vorträge gehalten anlässlich des 6. Internationalen Kongresses der Spinoza-Gesellschaft, ed. M. Senn and M. Walther. Zurich, Schulthess 2001, 239–54.—Johannes Müller, in his chapter “Von den Seelenäusserungen,” quotes extensively from Spinoza’s Ethics, part 3 (cf. Handbuch, vol. 2, 543–48), saying that with respect to certain relations of passions “it is impossible to teach something better than Spinoza did with unsurpassable mastery [mit unübertrefflicher Meisterschaft]” (p. 543). 33 Cf. Ethics, 134. 34 Cf. Ethics, 150.

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Affect, considered as quasi-infinitesimal “origin,” realizes the acting will together with its integration into a law, which provides a specific standard of evaluation. The standard is taken from the sphere of juridical judgment, and affect, according to the appropriate terminology, receives its final definition as “intent” (Vorsatz).35 Now the ethical emotion gets its form as a kind of “specific energy” within the coordinates of a historical legal system. The confluence of infinitesimal reality with judicial judgment is the reason why Cohen calls jurisprudence (Rechtswissenschaft) “the mathematics of the humanities.”36—The institution establishing these coordinates and organizing the administration of justice is called the state. The energetic concept of “intent” must, therefore, include by definition the concept of the state. The notion of “law,” which is linked to the state, “has to become the leading concept for personal self-consciousness.”37 But what about physiology at this point? Do we need to assume a physiological dimension with respect to the state? This is obviously not the case in the sense of a political “organism” or in the sense of economic substructures representing a kind of vital “traffic.”38 Cohen’s usage of the word “energy” points to another direction, i.e., to his concept of self-development: “the pure self-consciousness must be dependent upon [. . .] different levels and degrees of its energy in order to realize itself.”39 The humanity of a person is realized as broadening of one’s moral horizon and, as such, it means an increase of energy. This provides an ongoing source of satisfaction, “raising self-consciousness beyond the coercion of material sensuality and beyond the accidental conditions of milieu.” The so-called “material” conditions, at first sight an exogenous source of subjugation, are to be changed into an immanent factor of increasing perfection, called the “ideal.” Proceeding down this path means for Cohen “freedom.” It exempts a person from the spiritual “magic of an absolute

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Ethics, 122f. Ethics, 66. 37 “[Der] Staatsbegriff des Gesetzes muss der Leitbegriff werden für das persönliche Selbstbewusstsein.” Ethics, 262. 38 Cf. with respect to sociology and economy: Ethics, 40f., 309f. 39 “Das Selbst ist nur eine Stufe in seiner Selbstverwirklichung. [. . . Aber] es darf darüber gar kein Zweifel entstehen, dass das reine Selbstbewusstsein für seine Verwirklichung auf diese einzelnen Stufen und Grade seiner Energie angewiesen sein muss.” Ethics, 350. 36

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ego with an absolute freedom.”40 It is obvious that such an energy of freedom indicates a concept of physiology which cannot be restricted to individuals. What does this mean in concrete reality and in terms of measurable values? Cohen recounts the example of a person who has got a machine with dynamite but leaves it to an external mechanism to release the bomb at a pre-determined moment.41 After the explosion has taken place one cannot say, in terms of mechanical causality, that this person actually triggered the explosion. Not even psychological causality could be stated clearly: possibly the person fell asleep or, even more viciously, he told a child to push the button. The juridical definition of affect, however, makes causation independent of the restriction on physical things. Moreover: “the energy of the intent does not [even] depend on the psychological actuality of thinking.”42 The energetic “intent” describes the will as an integrative action, including all kinds of mediation until it achieves its result. Cohen’s ethical “totality” (Allheit), historically represented in the state, seems, in a quasi holistic way, to include the bodies, the muscles, the hands of all citizens. But what about the specific physical mechanism triggering the single bomb at hand? Is it part of this physiology of the “Allheit” as well? At this point, we must take into account Cohen’s strict restriction of affect and action to juridical terms. The archetype of action is found in the ancient concept of “actio,” which is taken from Roman law. It seems to be preserved in the English language: action means both (criminal) doing and the procedure “to bring an action.” Cohen unifies the two aspects. The juridical action “is bound to the concept of possible indictment.”43 This means: the action is defined only

40 “Diese Befriedigung erhebt das Selbstbewusstsein über den Zwang der Sinnlichkeit und über den Zufall des Milieus. Und sie enthebt ihn zugleich des Zaubers von einem absoluten Ich mit einer absoluten Freiheit.” Ethics, 350f. 41 Cf. Ethics, 354–56. 42 “Die Energie des Vorsatzes [. . .] ist keineswegs abhängig von der psychologischen Aktualität.” Ethics, 354. 43 “Ein Recht, welches nicht klagbar ist, ist kein Recht. Daher ist auch der Begriff der Handlung rechtlich an den Begriff der Klagbarkeit geknüpft.” Ethics, 289. The most comprehensive study on Cohen’s “constitution of the moral subject” with respect to the contemporary debate is Eggert Winter’s Ethik und Rechtswissenschaft. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zur Ethik-Konzeption des Marburger Neukantianismus im Werke Hermann Cohens. Berlin, Duncker & Humblot 1980, 277ff.; the Latin “actio” cf. 288f.

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by the judicial system of contracts and rights, not by its physical determinants. There is no reason to consider the physical process terminating in an exploding bomb as an “action”—until it impinges on the sphere of somebody’s personal rights. Only the modification of the juridically defined relation between the involved persons is called action. Both its energy and its physiological substrate are largely independent of special attributes of separated physical entities. Not even “the somatic material of the person” can be used “directly” in order to derive strict special attributes of the pure will.44 We see it is a very consistently constructed extension of Müller’s “specific sensory energies.” The peculiar ethical aspect of this energy can be found, first, in its independence from the restriction to physically separated entities, and, second, in its above-mentioned expansion towards the “ideal.”

IV In Cohen’s system, the juridical mathematics of ethics functions in a negative manner. This becomes obvious with respect to the required concept of measurable quantity. According to Cohen, personal rights are grounded in human contracts. If they are violated, we ask for imputation, i.e., for personal responsibility. This brings us to the question of practical administration of justice, which comes along with the required dimension of measurement. Administration of justice means first to locate the source of violation, which comes with an understanding of its function within the network of involved individuals. Second, it entails measuring its quantity by using the appropriate scale of punishment. The required measurement is realized only in a negative mode. Juridical law is largely defined by its application to criminal action. One can say: Cohen’s Ethics needs the criminal because it requires a quantitative notion of personal action. Having reached this systematic position of juridically measurable indictment, which seems to be the furthest from any positive ethical guidance, we arrive at the turning point. Administration of justice

44 “Der reine Wille ist nicht unmittelbar von dem leiblichen Material der Person abgezogen.” Ethics, 222.

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includes a third step: the execution of punishment. Here the philosophical reflection turns back to the “natural” person. The pure will requires the abstract concept of the “juridical person” as its “foundation,” but its “final task”45 must be its application to the psychosomatic individual. The juridical shape of the criminal belongs to the system of jurisprudence, but he/she “himself,” the living person, seems to be more than this. The very notion where the juridical “mathematics of the humanities” reaches its end and crucial test is the idea of “self-preservation” (Selbsterhaltung).46 In Cohen’s terminology, self-preservation does not refer to the biological urge to survive dangerous situations or to the questions about the inevitableness of individual death. It means the preservation of the Self, considered as a basic claim within juridical organized communities. Again, we enter the domain of energetic relations, now constructed in an analogy to thermodynamics. Cohen’s hypothesis of ethical totality (Allheit) is grounded in the concept of the preservation of energy. Allheit, as a dynamic notion, means, as we have seen, the realization of an energetic evolution. The criminal serves as the prototype for this motion. Entering the punishment, the criminal performs an “exchange of his subject. The [old] subject of the criminal is put aside; the moral self-consciousness is recovered.”47 It is important to note that Cohen is not primarily interested in psychological aspects at this point. His psychological (and mythological) problem kat" exokhen, the question of guilt, is strictly excluded from the administration of justice.48 The criminal’s metamorphosis is considered only as the realized task of jurisprudence. Self-preservation “remains not merely the fundament for all his forms or energy in general; there is realized an analogy to chemical energy as well. Corresponding to the physiological metabolism the Self of the criminal is about to be changed.”49

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Ethics, 384. Cf. Hans-Ludwig Ollig: “Hermann Cohen und das Problem der Selbsterhaltung”, in: Theologie und Philosophie 56 (1981), 507–34. 47 “Mit der Abbüssung der Strafe vollzieht sich ein Subjektswechsel. Das Subjekt des Verbrechers wird abgetan; das sittliche Selbstbewusstsein wird wiedergewonnen.” Ethics, 378. 48 Cf. Ethics, 374. In other texts, within different contexts, the problem of guilt becomes much more significant, sometimes even prevalent. Nevertheless, the strict correspondence with the judicial methodological substructure, exposed in the Ethics, is always kept, cf. e.g. Religion of Reason, 167ff./194ff. 49 Selbsterhaltung “bleibt [. . .] nicht nur die Grundlage für alle seine Energieformen 46

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Such a physiological “jurisprudence” brings us close to the notion of a single person, even if, at this point, it remains a merely criminological definition. This is clearly shown by Cohen’s rejection of the death penalty which plays an integral role in his ethics. The concept of general preservation of energy is senseless without concretely realized single forms of energy.50 No individual within an energetic system can be annihilated in accordance with the logic of that system. The biological appearance of the person, although it cannot serve as positive definiens of the pure will, must nevertheless be preserved as its “negative precondition.” Based on this dialectics of preservation, Cohen formulates his ethical concept of the soul. An “ethical sense” can, therefore, be given to “the soul [. . .] only with respect to the living person.”51 In our context, the soul can be called the specific energy of human physiology. The legal organization of human action lays the groundwork for its own annihilation if criminals can be sentenced to death. But how can we translate this theory of preservation, which is still based on the negative notion of criminal offence, into its positive counterpart? One needs a certain kind of “hodegetics,” i.e. “pathleading,” serving as the hypothesis of a historically constant psychosomatic disposition for morality.52 Cohen makes an important step

überhaupt; sondern es tritt auch eine Analogie zur chemischen Energie in Kraft. Dem physiologischen Stoffwechsel entsprechend, kann sich nunmehr das Selbst des Verbrechers verwandeln.” Ethics, 383.—In the 1840s, Justus von Liebig (Organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie, 1842) applied the physical “Prinzip der konstanten Wärmesummen” (Heß 1840) to physiology; cf. Fritz Lieben: Geschichte der physiologischen Chemie, 105ff. (cf. above, note 14, on Helmholtz). Another important figure within the context of chemical physiology was Carl Ludwig. Cohen had studied his Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, vol. 1: Physiologie der Atome, der Aggregatzustände, der Nerven und Muskeln, 2nd rev. ed. Leipzig/Heidelberg, C. F. Winter 1858 (cf. Wiedebach: Cohen-Bibliothek, 143). 50 Cf. Ethics, 383. 51 Die Seele kann einen ethischen Sinn rechtlich nur haben, als die Seele des lebendigen Menschen.” Ethics, 382. Cf. H. Wiedebach: “Unsterblichkeit und Auferstehung im Denken H. Cohens,” in: ‘Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism’. Tradition and the Concept of Origin in Hermann Cohen’s Later Work, ed. H. Holzhey, G. Motzkin, H. Wiedebach. Hildesheim etc., Olms 2000, 442f. 52 The foundation of a “hodegetic encyclopedia of the cultural consciousness” (Aesthetics, vol. 2, 432) was Cohen’s project for the never written 4th part of his System of Philosophy, which, according to his friend Robert Arnold Fritzsche, probably should have been entitled Psychology of the Pure Consciousness (cf. H. Wiedebach: “Das Problem eines einheitlichen Kulturbewußtseins. Zur Person des jüdisch-deutschen Philosophen Hermann Cohen,” in: Aschkenas 10 [2000], 417–41, esp. 418f.; and Dieter Adelmann: Einheit des Bewußseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens [diss.] Heidelberg 1968, 25f.).

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towards an answer in his theory of virtues. There he proceeds beyond the exposition of quasi-mathematical elements towards a concrete psychology of personal morality. In a way, this “positive turn” requires a re-meditation of the entire construction of the pure will. Once more, Cohen has to face the problem of the pure physiological affective energy, though not in order to describe its mathematical substructure. Now he has to apply it in everyday life.

V If it is true that Cohen’s teaching about the origin of affect reveals the transcendental a priori of human will, then it should be possible to reformulate its structure in terms of ordinary language. This is necessary because within the domain of concrete application, the quasi-mathematical continuum between individuality and Allheit tends to be hidden. In psychological reality, Cohenian terms like “individuality” or “Allheit” cannot be more than abstract ciphers. He must risk the use of distinct common names for various aspects of something, that is—mathematically speaking—only one thing. Together with this, another problem arises. On the surface of psychological experience, the two sides, individuality and Allheit, seem to produce a serious conflict between the needs of the ego and the interest of the community: “Virtues are in conflict with one another.”53 They require two different ways of moral behavior, although the philosopher knows that in fact only one pure will stands behind them. In everyday life, the various aspects of the hidden continuity tend to appear as a destructive contradiction. Consequently, one of the most important tasks of philosophy is to find the right names for these aspects, because finding the right names means: to open up separate and thus not contradictory areas within the hermeneutical topology of human life. Cohen’s virtues represent such an organized topology. Together with this, his abstract physiology of energies receives its somatic interpretation. Cohen defines two different groups of virtues: the first, under the Allheit, originates from an affect called in the Hebrew bible kavod,

53 “Unter den Tugenden selber ist Streit. Das ist die Tragödie des sittlichen Denkens.” Ethics, 487.

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“honor.”54 At least in part, Cohen’s hermeneutical topology of virtues is a biblical one. The other group, taking into account the individual condition of man, originates from “love.”55 Each of them has its distinctive direction. Honor integrates the human being into the eternal curve towards true knowledge and political justice. Following the way of honor, the ego feels reduced to an infinitesimal nothing. Love represents the everlasting point of origin within the living human being and its physical, commercial, etc. interaction with other single persons or groups. Here the causality of biological existence, of the character and milieu, is taken into account. Let us take into consideration one pair of virtues where the question of somatic existence is prevalent. “Courage,” for example, one of the virtues of “honor,” determines the pure intent as engagement for the diminution of political suffering within humanity. It is not by chance that such an engagement demands the acceptance of increasing suffering in one’s own personal existence. Socrates, the prophets, and other martyrs had negated their physical well being for the sake of the general evolution of justice. They are prototypes of what Cohen calls “ethical socialism.” Their martyrdom does not extinguish personal suffering, “but it is diminished with respect to mankind.”56 The aspect of Allheit is represented by the idea of the law. Socrates in ancient Greece accepted his death sentence in order to avoid any difference between his “self-feeling” and the law, however reprehensible it might be in historical reality.57 The complete submission of personal physiological appearance under the idea of the law realizes “humankind” as a specific form of moral energy. On the other hand, “faithfulness,” the counterpart to “courage,” arises from the affirmation of personal physiological appearance, i.e., of somatic life. Here the necessity of sexual reproduction has its

54 Cf. Ethics, 490f., for the link to the bible cf. 491; Avi Bernstein-Nahar: “Hermann Cohen’s Teaching Concerning Modern Jewish Identity (1904–1918),” in: LBI Year Book 43 (1998), 25–46, cit. 38, note 57. 55 Cf. Ethics, 487. In the last six chapters of the book, three pairs of virtues are presented, each of them including a virtue of “honor” and a virtue of “love”: “veracity” (Wahrhaftigkeit) and “modesty” (Bescheidenheit), “courage” (Tapferkeit) and “faithfulness” (Treue), “justice” (Gerechtigkeit) and “humanity” (Humanität). 56 So wird das Leiden zwar nicht aufgehoben [. . .]; aber es wird für das Menschengeschlecht verringert.” Ethics, 557. 57 Ethics, 560f.

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place. Again the dialectical relation between individuality and legal organization is discussed. But at this point one can see a slight modification in Cohen’s ethical construction: his turn away from Platonic etatism towards a combination of Leibnizian monadology and aesthetical lyricism. Plato had justified sexual reproduction only for the sake of the polis. The idea of the individual received its hypothesis only by the community. In this very point, Cohen differs strongly from the ancient prototype of idealistic methodology. Faithfulness serves as the hypothesis of personal alliances which in no way are defined by the state. Nevertheless, the systematic framework remains valid. The various aspects of human physiological structure represent different modalities of moral energies. The scientific notion of the biological “body” needs to be enriched by moral attributes. But obviously one must avoid all kinds of heterogeneous mixtures. Thus, the fundamental division between the knowledge of nature and the knowledge of what ought to be requires the entire metamorphosis of biological reflection. What emerges from this change is Cohen’s Aesthetics. He calls the virtues of “love” “ways of art” within ethics,58 and I would like to add: they are also presentiments of religion. In the final chapters of the Religion of Reason, we find a reformulation of the ethical virtues, yielding, as Rosenzweig once called it, “a Jewish psychology.”59 And this Jewish psychology ends in “two physiological signs” of the “life of peace in man: the feeling of being moved, and joy.”60 In English (as in German and Hebrew), the peculiar sense of the concept is expressed by the poetic term “heart.” The fundamental idea that Cohen rediscovered in his late years prevalent in one of the most important books of the medieval Judaeo-Arabic tradition, in Bachya ibn Paquda’s Sefer Chovot ha-Levavot (Book of the duties of the heart, 11th cent.), is: the “unity of the heart,” which is nothing but the hypothesis of specific moral energies of human somatic existence. Cohen’s ethical theory of faithfulness could be read as a practical application of his con-

58

“Wege der Kunst,” Aesthetics, vol. 1, 178. Franz Rosenzweig: “Hermann Cohens Nachlasswerk,” in: Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken (Gesammelte Schriften III). Dordrecht: Nijhoff 1984, 229–33, cit. 232. It is not by chance that the Jewish “law” here is called “the soma,” prayer is called “the heart” of the Jewish people. 60 Religion of Reason, 454/525. 59

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cept of unity of the heart. In order to give an example, let us finally look on Cohen’s phenomenology of the erotic sense of shame. Erotic shame is a deeply ambivalent feeling. It includes both sexual willingness and the need of protection. Only the unification of both raises human sexuality beyond the crude biological level. It is a question of behavior. Cohen fears that people treat sexual satisfaction as an isolated natural phenomenon, without integrating it into the energetic process of morality. The idea of the developing self-consciousness, which is identical with the idea of the future, would then go astray. The other side of shame, therefore, the need of protection, does not primarily emerge from the wish to remain physically untouched. It is the need to protect one’s own humanity, the quality of being more than just biological matter. Nevertheless, “facing the infinite idea of the human genus, shame is a positive feeling, not a negative one”; it works as a kind of “magic glue” attracting one person to the other.61 But this positive quality intensifies the question: “What happens to man after having executed the idea of the infinity of the human genus? Should there remain only a kind of depression, which the human being might have in common with the animal [. . .]? Would such an end do justice to love [. . .]—the love, which demands and hopes for an everlasting living together,” being nothing else than the “hope for this eternity?”62 According to Cohen, the physiological condition of man itself gives the answer, revealing the “original urge” (Urtrieb) of faithfulness.63 It is pointed out very clearly that faithfulness should not be considered an old-fashioned moral dogma. It belongs to human nature as probably the innermost phenomenon of moral self-definition.64 Transposed into common life with its contractual concepts, the urge of faithfulness

61 “Die Scham vor der unendlichen Idee der Menschengattung ist ein positives, nicht ein negatives Gefühl; der Schauder [. . .] zieht mit zauberhafter Glut die Menschen zueinander hin.” Ethics, 581. 62 “Was wird aber aus den Menschen, wenn sie nun mit ihrem menschlichen Schamgefühl die Idee der Unendlichkeit des Menschengeschlechts vollzogen haben; soll es etwa bei der Depression verbleiben, die der Mensch mit dem Tiere gemein haben mag [. . .]? Würde ein solches Ende [. . .] der Liebe gerecht, welche in der Sehnsucht erzittert, und welche ein ewiges Zusammensein fordert und erhofft; welche in der Hoffnung dieser Ewigkeit besteht?” Ethics, 581. 63 Ethics, 582. 64 Cf. Reiner Wiehl: “Das Prinzip Treue in Hermann Cohens Ethik und Religionsphilosophie,” in: Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion, ed. Stéphane Moses and H. Wiedebach. Hildesheim etc., Olms 1997, 245–61.

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is confirmed by the institution of marriage. The vector of the originative process is directed from faithfulness towards marriage, and not vice versa: “it is not true that for the sake of marriage one must claim faithfulness”; on the contrary: “the [institution of ] marriage has to exist for the sake of faithfulness; if it did not exist, marriage would have to be invented.”65 In his concept of faithfulness, Cohen attempts to bring together somatic life with jurisprudence and its mathematical substructure. This virtue, therefore, stands close to the concept of truth, which means—as already mentioned in the beginning—“the harmony between the theoretical and the ethical problem.”66 That is why, in his Religion of Reason, Cohen identifies faithfulness with "emet (truth) and "emunah (faith): “faithfulness is based objectively on truth and subjectively on truthfulness.”67 But even so, there remains the unbalanced nature of human existence: on the one hand, the idealistic physiology of an energetic continuum between individuality and law; on the other, the psychological experience of an inevitable conflict between these two aspects. This “historical experience”68 is not to be considered simply the outcome of intellectual shortcomings. Cohen attributes it to the unbalanced economy of human physiology itself. The physiological argument constitutes a continuous preoccupation in Cohen’s work, reaching from his early reflections on Kant’s “radical evil” to his late adoption of Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the “evil drive,” yezer ha-r'a, in biblical language called the “drive of the heart,” yezer ha-lev (Gen 8:21).69 With respect to the physiology of the “heart,” Cohen indeed accepts a kind of agnosticism (shegagah denotes an inevitable though unwitting transgression),70 but he strongly rejects the metaphysics of an “innate” evil, defiantly insisting on the autonomy of human ethical responsibility.

65 “Nicht wegen der Ehe ist die Treue zu fordern; sondern der Treue wegen muss die Ehe da sein; wäre sie nicht da, so müsste sie erfunden werden.” Ethics, 582. 66 Ethics, 89. 67 Religion of Reason, 441/509. 68 Cohen: “Über das Eigentümliche des deutschen Geistes,” Kleinere Schriften, vol. 5 (Werke, vol. 16), 274; Religion of Reason, 131ff. 69 Cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 1st ed., 298ff.; 2nd ed., 336ff.; Religion of Reason, 181f./212. Abraham Ibn Ezra (died 1164) was a famous Jewish exegete of the Hebrew Bible. 70 Religion of Reason, 199/232.

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There is no doubt: Cohen’s ethical physiology is part of an idealistic endeavor in a neo-Kantian vein. In its logical foundation, his System of Philosophy was, more than almost all comparable projects of his time, tied to natural science. Following the thread down through Cohen’s systematic exposition, one can therefore experience that it is indeed possible to take the paradigm of natural science fully into account without becoming a slave to all conclusions drawn from the “hard sciences” and extended to the realm of the humanities. In some of its elements, Cohen’s moral energetics might serve as one of the missing links between these two quite often either totally separated or far too easily united areas of research.

ON THE IDEA OF GOD IN COHEN’S ETHIK Reinier Munk Leiden University/Vrije Universiteit

This article offers a discussion of the conception of God. The leading question of the article is: what, if any, is the need to introduce the concept of God in systematic philosophy; why do we think God? And in the context of the present volume I will address this question of the quid iuris with respect to Hermann Cohen’s discussion of the problem in his System of philosophy and the earlier writings on Kant. Obviously a concept or an idea cannot be justified without specifying its contents, at least to some extent. True as this may be, the focus of the present article is on the problem of justification, nevertheless.1 In this article I will, first of all, make some preliminary observations with respect to Cohen’s idea of God (I). Next Cohen’s warrant for the idea of God in the Ethik is analysed (II). And since the warrant turns out to be problematic, the third section will discuss an argument that may serve as an alternative (III).

I By way of starting our discussion of the quid iuris for the idea of God, let me make three observations. First of all, in the present discussion we are dealing with an idea. The idea has a regulative meaning or function in Cohen’s transcendental idealism, and the unity that is (to be) established by the idea has the character of a projected unity. The idea thus serves as a focus imaginarius for establishing the projected unity.2 The question of the quid iuris of the idea can consequently be phrased as the question of the logical principle that supports the regulative function of the projected unity.3 1 For a discussion on the question of how to think God, see, among others: Julius Guttmann, Die Philosophie des Judentums (München, 1933), 345–362. 2 Cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik (2nd ed. New York, 1910), XL 96. 3 Cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik (2nd ed. New York, 1910), XL 91.

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Furthermore, the discussion of the idea of God is part of the discussion of ethics in Cohen’s writings (Kants Begründung der Ethik and Ethik). The works on the methodology of knowledge, and more specifically the knowledge of nature (Kants Theorie der Erfahrung and Logik), likewise introduce the idea of God in the context of ethics only. The argument for this locus is, that God can be known through ethics only. At this point Cohen is in line with Kant. Thirdly, Cohen has offered at least two different answers to the problem of the quid iuris for the idea of God in ethics, and these answers are not entirely compatible with one another, as the following section will demonstrate.

II This section will discuss two of Cohen’s answers to the problem of the quid iuris for the idea of God in ethics. According to the first, the System’s methodological principle of pureness does not allow for the idea of God in the Ethik, nor in the System for that matter. The principle of pureness affirms the logical priority of thought over perceptions, intuition, imagination, sensation, affect, and the like. And in its connotation of the autonomy of reason this principle is considered to be incompatible with the idea of God as, for instance, the Urgrund of morality. Instead the idea of God is a supplement for ethics,4 which is superfluous according to the methodology and the architecture of the Logik and the Ethik: “Die Logik der Naturerkenntnis bedarf seiner [der Begriff Gottes, rm] nicht. Die Ethik hat sich errichten lassen, ohne auf ihn irgendwie Rücksicht zu nehmen.”5 And as a supplement, the idea of God “has to be adjusted” to the methodology of the Ethik in order to be included in the System.6 In contradistinction to the first, the second answer to our problem is the well known claim in the Ethik, according to which the transcendental warrant for the idea of God is the principle of truth.

4

“[E]ine Ergänzung”, Hermann Cohens jüdische Schriften III, 18. Ethik, 439. 6 “Einleitung,” 107: “Indem sie [sc. die Idee Gottes, rm] in die Ethik eintritt, wird sie dem Gliederbau des Systems sich anzupassen haben. Sie wird nicht Fundament sein können; denn dieses liegt im Prinzip der Autonomie. Die Ethik muss dennoch die Gottesidee in ihren Lehrgehalt aufnehmen.” 5

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This is to say that the idea of God is conceived as the guarantee for the connection between nature and morality, or between the Logik and the Ethik, for that matter. It is the guarantee that morality can be realised, and will be realised indeed, in the future (which is ever to come by definition). On account of this guarantee the idea of God is conceived as the principle of truth.7 One of the problems with attributing this idea the guarantee for the connection between these two realms of reason is that reason itself, viz., the unity of reason, is the warrant for this connection, already. This is to say that the unity of reason invalidates the warrant of the idea of God by turning the idea to be superfluous in the construction of the System of philosophy. The second answer is presented again, albeit in a slightly different form, in the discussion of the limits of theoretical and practical reason, and their mutual correspondence. There Cohen maintains, to start with, that the correspondence between the theoretical and the practical reason is inherent to the teleological nature of both realms of reason. And the idea of God is conceived as both the representation of this teleological unity, and, what is more, as its origin. First of all, Cohen can be quoted as saying: “[T]he idea of God is the substitute for the systematic unity of ends”: “die Gottesidee [endlich] vertritt die systematische Einheit der Zwecke.”8 This is to say that the idea is the substitute for one of the characteristics of pure reason, and this one only, viz., its being directed at an end. However, secondly, Cohen rather remarkably claims just as well that the idea of God is the original foundation (Urgrund ) of the teleology of both nature and morality. Cohen can thus be quoted as saying: (Aber) als Urgrund der grenznotwendig zu denkenden Übereinstimmung zwischen der natürlichen und der moralischen Teleologie ist die Gottesidee nach der kritischen Methode unabwendlich: sie ist, wenn jene intelligibeln Ideen selbst schon ein Unbedingtes darstellen, deren Unbedingtes, mithin eine Maxime höhern Grades, erweiterten Umfangs.9

This is to say that there is, first of all, a correspondence in the teleology of nature and morality. This correspondence is inherent to the

7

Cf. Ethik, Chapters One and Nine. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 103. Cf. idem, 110: “die Identität der Zweckidee mit der Gottesidee.” 9 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 365–366. 8

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nature of reason, as it is “grenznotwendig zu denken,” i.e. the correspondence is necessarily conceived, on account of the limits to which reason is bound in both realms. The two realms of reason each point to the other, as is exemplified when focusing on their respective limits, the being of what ought-to-be, das Sein des Sollens, and the ought-to-be of being, das Sollen des Seins. This, I take it, is the meaning of the words “[die] grenznotwendig zu denkenden Übereinstimmung.” Cohen would agree to the conclusion that the correspondence is inherent to the nature of thought. Rather surprisingly, however, he subsequently turns the focus on the substitute for reason’s teleological character, and elaborates on this substitute, claiming that the correspondence has its “original foundation” in the idea of God. Having arrived at this point, let us return to our leading question again: what is the need to introduce the idea of God in the discussion of the teleological character of reason? There is, I am afraid, no need for a warrant as offered by the idea of God at this point, since the correspondence is warranted by the unity of reason, already, and the idea of God is a substitute of this characteristic of reason, only. Yet, the critique of the idea of God, its being superfluous, invalidates the warrant of the idea of God just as well, as stated above already. If this analysis is correct, Cohen’s idea of God falls short of the same objection which Cohen launched against Kant’s conception of God as a postulate of practical reason, viz., that it is not anchored in the methodology of ethics and logic but remains hovering in the System. The idea is included ad libitum, instead of serving as a necessary component in ethics. Cohen, so it seems, did not succeed in avoiding the pitfall of what, by way of analogy, can be called “a hovering idea of God” either.10 One way to get out of this impasse is to point to the two distinctive definitions of Cohen’s System as, first of all, a System of transcendental idealism, and, secondly, a System of critical philosophy of culture. According to the first, the System’s principle and

10

On the notion of schweben see Ethik, 440, and my “An Hypothesis, and More Than an Hypothesis. The Idea of God in Herman Cohen’s Logik and Ethik,” in Jüdisches Denken in einer Welt ohne Gott. Festschrift für Stéphane Mosès, ed. by Jens Mattern, et al. (Berlin, 2000), 39–52, esp. 43–45.

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methodology of pureness does not allow to introduce the idea of God. This possibility is discussed above, already. According to the second, the System offers a critical hermeneutics of all components of culture, including religion and its discussion of the relation between God and man. With respect to the second definition of philosophy it can be argued that there is a circumstantial need for the idea of God in the System, since religion and its idea of God are part of culture. This is to say that the idea of God somehow has to be included in the System once it is introduced in ethics by religion. (Religion is included in ethics as both ethics and religion deal with the concept of man, as will be discussed below.) I take Cohen’s choice of the word “to be adjusted” (sich anpassen) in “the conception of God has to be adjusted to the architecture of the System,”11 as a hint to this definition of the System, and as an indication that the idea of God is not generated by the principle of pure thought but is introduced from outside and included subsequently. This is to say that the need to introduce the idea in the System is of a circumstantial character. On account of what is said so far, the problem with respect to the quid iuris turns out to be that the methodology of transcendental thought renders the idea of God superfluous, whereas the sublation of religion into ethics makes it necessary to have the idea included in the System. Cohen was of the opinion to have solved the problem by drawing a distinction between philosophy as the System of transcendental thought, and philosophy as critical hermeneutics. In the former there is no need for the conception of God, whereas it is necessary to have it included in the latter.

III The methodology of Cohen’s System, however, offers at least one alternative possibility to get out of the impasse with respect to our leading question. This possibility starts with the key-term of the System as the notion of origin, and this notion is specified, among others, as, first of all, the System’s founding principle, and, secondly,

11

See note 6, above.

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a judgement.12 Origin is, first of all, the founding principle of pure generating thought, and indicates that thinking is a pure, generating activity which has no beginning or first cause but is self-originating motion. This is to say that thinking primarily originates in and by itself. Thinking is set in motion by its own legal nature and not by an external influence; hence its designation of “pure.” The characterisation of thinking as originating by itself and in itself indicates that the principle of origin generates the foundation or form of thought as well as its construction, that is, the content of thought culminating in the System of knowledge. This is to say that origin is a judgement as well, in addition to the founding and guiding principle in the construction of thought. Furthermore, origin as judgement is defined as a correlation of alternating motions, viz., the motions of division and unification. The implication of the correlation of these alternating motions is that this type of Ursprungsdenken (thinking-of-origin) is a thinking in terms of alterity.13 This is to say that otherness and the other are generated in principle by thought on account of the nature of thought. Or to quote Cohen at this point: “Der Andere wird von den realen Mächten des wissenschaftlichen Denkens gefordert.”14 If this conclusion is correct, the alternative to our leading problem is offered by the principle of pure generating (= scientific) thought. The definition of thinking-of-origin in terms of alterity offers the possibility to introduce God as the alternating concept of man in the System. But, once again, what is the need to specify this possible correlate of man as God, instead of, for instance, mankind, or instead of the infinite number pi ? At this point time comes into play, and more specifically time in the meaning of both future (the alternating image of messianic times) and history (the history of culture, including the history of philosophy). The function of time includes that systematic philosophy is articulated in the course of time. Systematic philoso-

12 A more substantial discussion of the notion of origin in Cohen’s System is offered in my “Origin, Continuity, and Anticipation in Cohen’s Opus,” in: Archivio di Filosofia 71 (2003), 295–307. 13 Cf. my “Who is the Other? Alterity in Cohen’s ‘Religion der Vernunft’,” in: H. Holzhey et al., Religion of Reason Out Of The Sources of Judaism. Tradition and the Concept of Origin in Hermann Cohen’s Late Work (Hildesheim, 2000), 275–86. 14 Ethik, 216.

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phy has an historical element to it, as conceptions arise, develop and change in the course of time.15 Furthermore, with respect to history as a science, the status of history in the Ethik is that history offers knowledge of reality (die Wirklichkeit), and ethics is in need of this knowledge in order to have a fundamentum in re. The function of the science of history in ethics is clarified in the Logik by way of an analogy between history and physics (natural science). The common denominator in this analogy is that history and natural science both aim to offer knowledge of reality. This is to say that just as there is an analogy of mathematics and jurisprudence in the Logik and the Ethik, in the sense that mathematics and jurisprudence serve as the methodological paradigm of Logik and Ethik, respectively; likewise there is an analogy of physics and history as both sciences offer the road to reality for these two realms of reason. The analogy between history and natural science can be expanded even when taking into consideration that both have to deal with “the illusion of perception” in the process of generating knowledge. The problem with perceptions is that they do not, and, what is more, cannot offer what perceptions often, and mistakenly, are considered to do, viz., to offer immediate knowledge of reality. Perceptions cannot be regarded as an independent source of knowledge, on account of the criterion of pureness.16 One of the functions of pure(ness) in Cohen is, to keep the given at bay. And in line with this function of pureness, Cohen can be quoted as saying, with respect to natural science: “gegen die Selbständigkeit der Empfindung; aber für den Anspruch der Empfindung.”17 The claim (Anspruch) of perceptions Cohen refers to is that perceptions present the particular; they are “the organ of the particular.”18 Correct as this claim may be, the problem with perceptions is that they are characterised as a plurality, first of all, and, secondly, that perceptions cannot present all of actuality. As a consequence they are insufficient for understanding phenomena.19 Cohen’s point is that perceptions indeed present the particular in thought, but they are not presented to our minds

15 16 17 18 19

Logik, 50, 595. “Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag,” 8–9. Cf. Logik, 450. Logik, 472. Logik, 434, cf. 455–56, 469–72. Logik, 436.

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independently, that is, without a mediator.20 This is why Cohen’s conception of pure thought can aptly be defined as a “constructing mediator” in which the act of construction is emphasised if pureness of thought is taken to indicate the exclusion of a given, whereas the act of mediation is laid stress on if pureness of thought is taken to mean the inclusion of reality in the pure generating motion of thought. Similar to natural science, history, too, has to face “the illusion of perception” when dealing with the (written) sources of history. These written sources, i.e. the images (die Vorstellungen) included in the sources, claim to present reality in time, viz., the particular. And this claim has to be analysed and purified, again. In Cohen’s words: “[Die Vorstellungen in den Quellen der Geschichte] erheben den Anspruch der Wirklichkeit; und dieser Anspruch darf nicht überhört, aber er muss verhört und geprüft werden”.21 Correct as this claim vis-a-vis the images in the sources of history may be, their perception is, again, not presented to our mind without mediator. What is presented as reality in the sources of history has to be examined critically in order to generate historical-systematic knowledge. In brief, history is the science that offers moral knowledge the fundamentum in re in the Ethik, analogous to natural science in the Logik. Hence, the images of God in the historical sources (religion and philosophy) have to be analysed and purified in order to see whether there is a need to have their contents included in the System. One of the conclusions of this analysis of Cohen’s is that the science of history demonstrates that the content of ethics is mainly the product of religion, whereas philosophy has elevated this content to the level of science: Nicht die Philosophen waren die ersten, welche die Gedanken der Sittlichkeit ergrübelten; sondern bevor Sokrates seinen Zweckbegriff des Menschen demonstrierte und Platon die Idee des Guten ersann, hat der Prophet gepredigt: ‘Er hat dir gesagt, o Mensch, was gut sei’.” (. . .) Als Erkenntis, als Wissenschaft, ist die Ethik das Werk der Philosophie; als Inhalt von ewigen Gedanken und Geboten ist sie der Hauptsache nach das Erzeugnis der Religion. Historisch besteht in der Sache, in dem Gehalt der Gedanken die entschiedenste Abhängigkeit der Ethik von der Religion. Nur prinzipiell und methodisch ist die Ethik toto coelo von der Religion verschieden, . . . .22 20 21 22

Logik, 450. Logik, 495. Einleitung, 100. The term “religion” in this quotation is not be confused with

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Ethics has derived its contents from religion, in casu Moses and the other prophets of Israel. And ethics, for its part, has sublated this contents to the level of moral philosophy as a science. Historical (traditionally Jewish) images of God are likewise (to be) sublated to the level of moral, scientific knowledge. And in the process of sublation, no element is to be lost but all are included at a higher level in the process. The images of God as source of morality is taken to mean that the idea of God refers to the normativity of the law. Cohen’s calling God “das Urgesetz der Sittlichkeit”, ‘the orginal law of morality’ does not refer to the one who ordered the law. Instead, it points to the principle of law, to that what characterises a law as law. The idea of God refers to the law’s normativity. The law and its normativity are, first of all, extrapolated or constructed by reason; the law is a law of reason by definition, as we have no other tools for generating laws. Secondly, because of its teleological character, the moral law will ever (infinitely long) have to be realised. The moral law finds its culmination and its telos in the unity of mankind, which, again, is ever to be realised by definition, and, as a projected unity, is put on a par with the everlasting ideal of the messianic future, and der Staatenbund der Menschheit.23 The traditional images of God and the messianic future are sublated into the regulative ideas and the focus imaginarius of the idea of God and of mankind. This is to say that the idea denotes the normative binding character of this construction of reason; it denotes what ought to be, and will be in the future. The regulative function of these ideas, the idea of God and the idea of mankind, binds critical idealism to its fundamentum in re, viz., the sources of Judaism. This is not to say that the binding to Judaism is an exclusive one, of course. History nevertheless demonstrates it is there. By way of summary, let me conclude that an alternative answer to the leading question of the present article is offered by three core elements in the methodology of Cohen’s System, viz. the principle and the judgement of origin, the definition of pure thought as constructing mediator, and the function of science, viz., the science of

the religion of reason, of course, as ethics and the religion of reason are not at all “toto coelo verschieden” in principal and in methodology. 23 Cf. “Die religiösen Bewegungen der Gegenwart” (1914), in: Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften I, 36–65, quote 59.

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history, in the System. And in this alternative, the two characteristics of the System, as System of transcendental idealism, and System of critical hermeneutics of the history of culture, and especially philosophy, correlate with one another.

HERMANN COHEN. ETHICS OF MAIMONIDES: RESIDUES OF JEWISH PHILOSOPHY—TRAUMATIZED Almut Sh. Bruckstein

In this contribution I would like to challenge the gist of a commentary that is my own and that appeared not long ago, namely the first English translation and commentary on Hermann Cohen’s much-cited essay on Maimonides’ Ethics of 1908.1 As it is the case with any commentary, overwriting my own commentary means to question or even efface the commentary beneath, i.e. the commentary flanking Cohen’s important essay on Maimonides in the recently published edition. Commentaries assume to be more primary than the texts that surrender to its margins—as we know that the meaning of any text originates with commentary and translation.2 It is the English translation and commentary of Cohen’s great essay on “Maimonides’ Ethics” of 1908 that comes under scrutiny here.

Recollection Cohen’s essay on “Maimonides’ Ethics,” Die Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis of 1908,3 is no doubt to be counted among the most influential and important texts in Jewish philosophy of the 20th century. Its title announces a treatment of Maimonides’ Ethics, but what we find is an exemplary discussion of the Platonic Good Beyond Being

1 Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, Translated with Commentary by Almut Sh. Bruckstein, Forward by Robert Gibbs, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 2 Cf. Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., xxxii–xxxvii; also Almut Sh. Bruckstein, Die Maske des Moses. Studien zur jüdischen Hermeneutik, (Berlin: Philo, 2001) “Über den Sinn des Rückwärtslesens”, 61–77. 3 Originally published in Moses ben Maimon. Sein Leben, seine Werke und sein Einfluss. Eds. W. Bacher, M. Brann, D. Simonsen, Vol. I, Leipzig: G. Fock, 1908, 63–134 (reprinted in Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1971); also in Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften III. Zur jüdischen Religionsphilosophie und ihrer Geschichte, Ed. Bruno Strauß, Intr. Franz Rosenzweig (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke), 1924, 221–89.

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as guarantor of the Kantian and prophetic ideals of messianism and universal humanity. Cohen’s discussion of Maimonides is based on a detailed analysis of the medieval theory of negative and actional attributes, whose intricacies I have engaged in on different occasions.4 Here it suffices to say that Maimonides’ distinction between negative and privative attributes—placing an Aristotelian distinction at the centre of a Platonic argument—5 serves to illustrate the ethical bent of Cohen’s own philosophy. At the very heart of Maimonides’ theory of attributes, Cohen discloses a logical argument, a movement called “anticipation”: emulating God’s goodness means to anticipate the human good, a messianic move, claimed as the methodological key to Cohen’s reading of the Jewish sources.6 Cohen proposes a logical method of origin that is called ethical in that it predicates reality upon ideality, past upon future, world upon God. In his essay on Maimonides, Cohen mirrors his critical idealism in the medieval structures of negative theology, advancing an activity of negation, in which Being originates in and is ruptured by nothingness, in which presence originates in absence, in which totality is ruptured by infinity, ontology by ethics, Self by Other, past by future, text by commentary. Love and justice, according to Cohen the two virtues that constitute humanity,7 are reflected in the Jewish canonical formulation of the attributes of action, “rachum ve chanun,” “gracious and longsuffering, full of compassion,” etc.,8 the “thirteen attributes” serve as “ur-bilder”—origins for human action.9 Cohen’s essay on “Maimonides Ethics” more explicitly than any other text demonstrates the hermeneutical correlation between Cohen’s Platonic philosophy and what he calls Judaism. The essay on

4 Bruckstein, “How Can Ethics be Taught: ‘Socratic’ and ‘Post-Socratic’ Methods in Maimonides’ Theory of Emulation,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 4, no. 3, 1997, 268–84 and literature cited there. Also Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., 67–78. 5 Cf. “ ‘This Man is Inhuman’: Privations, Origins, and the Principle of Anticipation“, Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., 12. 6 Ibid, “Socrates and Plato. Founders of Ethics,” 1–22. Also Almut Sh. Bruckstein, “On Jewish Hermeneutics: Maimonides and Bachya as Vectors in Cohen’s Philosophy of Origin,” in Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion. International Conference in Jerusalem 1996, Eds. Stephane Moses, Hartwig Wiedebach (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1997), 38–40. 7 Hermann Cohen, “Liebe und Gerechtigkeit in den Begriffen Gott und Mensch,” in Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften III, ibid., 43–97. 8 Ex. 34, 6–7. 9 Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., 68–70.

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Maimonides argues and performs this correlation as one between Greek and Jewish sources, between Plato’s idea of the Good beyond Being and Maimonides’ theory of divine attributes, between human reasoning and traditional Jewish hermeneutics, between reader and text.10 It is in this essay that Cohen first suggests a philosophy of I and Thou that constitutes the foundations of the Self,11 leading to his later teaching concerning the suffering face that moves and commands because its privations leave a mark that is physically felt.12 In this essay Cohen predicates his philosophy of alterity on concepts of infinity, purity, and holiness, concepts claiming these concept to figure centrally in Jewish tradition. In this essay Cohen most explicitly correlates his “principle of origin” with the traditional hermeneutics of Jewish oral tradition. Cohen attributes to Maimonides the inspirational role of warranting “authentic Judaism” as neo-Kantian autonomous ethics. It is through the philosophical and rabbinic work of Maimonides that Cohen constructs a philosophical humanism drawing abundantly from the Jewish literary sources.

Omissions/Anamnesis When Derrida speaks of “negative theology” and “How not to speak” at Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem 1986, he demonstrates the centrality of the medieval debate on negative attributes for the constitution of a contemporary epistemology, referring to Plato, Dionysius (or pseudoDionysius) Areopagita, Meister Eckhart, and Heidegger while remaining silent about the Platonic Maimonides of Hermann Cohen.13 Derrida’s non-speaking about Maimonides in a talk about negative theology in Jerusalem is of political significance. It is the significance of an omission that serves as starting point for the self-critique here performed. But let me first address another anamnesis referring to my own commentary on Maimonides’ Ethics. In one of Cohen’s later essays 10

Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., xxix–xxxi. Ibid., 152–54. 12 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York, 1972), 16–17. 13 Jacques Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” in Stanford Budick, Wolfgang Iser (Eds.), Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 3–70, esp. 66, n.13. 11

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we find a sentence that I have always found disturbing. Its significance, I think, discloses itself now—not then in Cohen’s time—that the existence of the Jewish State constitutes a political fact: “Maimonides represents the seal testifying to protestantism in medieval Judaism.”14 My friend and colleague Michael Zank published an important work on Cohen’s embedment in the structures of Protestant thought.15 This fact together with Cohen’s appraisal of Maimonides as the “Protestant avantgarde” in medieval Judaism is deliberately absent from my commentary on Cohen’s Maimonides. There is a reason for this kind of anamnesis. The book under scrutiny here performs in an emphatic voice a transcendental characterization of Judaism whose triumphalism is sublime. It lays claim to a messianism that advances an activity of the differential as its own method, that assigns and sets up the futurity of origin as a promise and a task, and which claims différance to be its an-archic, an-hypothetical Platonic ground.16 On this score, I believe, the book under scrutiny is in accord with the work of Shmuel Trigano who— like Levinas—narrates Jewish philosophy along the lines of an absent first grounding in which all subsequent readings and creativity originate, conscious of an inner gap ever at work in the process of a thinking that commits itself to what is truly humane.17

Protestant Maimonides Such a perspective will avoid mention of a Protestant tradition with Maimonides as its avantgarde, a Protestantism that on first view seems to be a Jewish construction. Protestantism in the work of Hermann Cohen, Leo Strauss, Jacques Derrida, tends to be a chiffre. Protestantism represents Kantian cosmopolitanism, unity of God and mankind in ethical reasoning, freedom of the individual and his/her duty to act according to the moral law. Protestantism stands for the rejection of

14 Hermann Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum,” Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften II, ibid., 244. 15 Michael Zank, The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Providence, Rhode Island: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 324. 16 Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., 9–14. 17 Cf. e.g. Shmuel Trigano, La demeure oubliee. Genese religieuse du politique (Gallimard, 1985).

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all external, heteronomous, institutional authority. Even the Platonic demand to “render an account” is itself taken from the banners of Protestantism. “Die Rechenschaft wird . . . zum Schlagwort der Reformation.”18 “Rendering account”—Rechenschaft ablegen—according to Cohen, constitutes the core of modern scientific method. It refers to the activity of the logos giving account of all underlying hypotheses in science, art, and religion. “With the Reformation, the German spirit emerges as the centre of world’s history,” says Cohen in 1915.19 We see that the Platonic demand, logon didonai, rationem reddere in the language of the Reformation, figures centrally in Cohen’s essay on Maimonides.20 In requiring knowledge of God that rests on episteme rather than doxa, Cohen places the Platonic demand of logon didonai at the very core of his constructing a medieval transcendental rationalism of which Maimonides is the epitomic example.

Leo Strauss: “Cohen and Maimuni” Leo Strauss in his own reading Cohen’s Maimonides—entitled “Cohen and Maimuni,” delivered as public lecture to the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in May, 193121—aims to get rid of this Protestant grounding. Strauss challenges Cohen through a competing Platonic move in the opposite direction, namely by demanding the heteronomy of revelation on Platonic grounds. It is Plato, according to Strauss, who “transforms the ‘divine laws’ of Greek antiquity into truly divine laws,” thereby furnishing “the medieval [Islamic and Judeo-Arabic] thinkers with the starting-point from which they could understand the revelation philosophically.”22 The Platonic (“Protestant”) demand to “render account” (logon didonai ) is replaced by Leo Strauss by another Platonic pretext, calling for a heteronomy of law that protects a political and spiritual elitism whatever its

18

Hermann Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum”, ibid., 241. Ibid., 242. 20 Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid., 5, et al. 21 Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften. Philosophie und Gesetz—Frühe Schriften, edited by Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1997), 393–436. Also in Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law. Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and his Predeccesors, trans. Eve Adler (New York: New York University Press, 1995). 22 Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, ibid., 76. 19

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kind.23 Strauss’s sentence that “in this way, ultimately, justice will be done to Hermann Cohen’s profound surmise that Maimonides was ‘in deeper harmony with Plato than with Aristotle’24 seems painfully ironic, when considering that it is Strauss’s nod to Carl Schmitt’s fascist interpretation of the law that is implied in his Platonic reading of Maimonides, featuring a heteronomous grounding of the Jewish and Islamic legal traditions. The detour through Leo Strauss’s Philosophy and Law is essential in order to understand the significance of Cohen’s “Protestant Maimonides.”25 Protestantism in Leo Strauss’s judgment signifies the appeal to an inner religious and scientific consciousness: “The task of ‘philosophy of religion’ [he says in his critique of Cohen and Guttmann] no longer consists in the harmonization of the doctrines of revelation with the doctrines of reason, but in the analysis of the religious consciousness.”26 It is for good reasons, I think, that in Levinas’ discussion of the eschaton that accuses and demands account,27 the Protestant geneology of this entire Jewish discussion about the Platonic ‘good beyond Being’ that demands account (logon didonai ) is not mentioned, although the concept of the Good plays a central role in Levinas’ writings precisely in this sense. After the Shoa it became increasingly difficult, or, in fact, impossible for Jewish thinkers to adopt German Protestantism even fictitiously. For Cohen, however, Protestantism represented an ideal quality of the soul, die Innerlichkeit der Seele, referring to the innermost part of one’s being, demanding the uniqueness of religious expression. The “purity of the soul” and the uniqueness of God, according to Cohen, are the two concepts upon which Judaism is built.28 The prayer upon awakening, “Adonai, haneshama shenatata bi, tehora he”—“God, the soul you have given me is pure,” is cited by Cohen in the midst of his 23 On Leo Strauss’s critique of Cohen’s reading of Maimonides, cf. also Leora Batnitzky, “Leo Strauss and Hermann Cohen,” below 187–212. 24 Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, ibid., 79. Cf. also Hermann Cohen. Ethics of Maimonides, ibid. 25 Strauss’ rejection of Julius Guttmann’s canonical Philosophies of Judaism might well be due to the fact that Guttmann’s construction of medieval epistemology follows Cohen very closely, predicating mediaval Jewish philosophy upon the Platonic (Protestant) ethos of “rendering account” (logon didonai ). 26 Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, ibid., 45. 27 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1992), 21–23. 28 Hermann Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum”, ibid., 244. “True Platonic idealism” is here intimately related to the “seal of Protestantism”.

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text on Deutschtum und Judentum.29 On a different occasion I have shown, how these two Kantian presuppositions, the autonomy of the moral law and the aesthetic quality of religious experience is expressed in Cohen’s reading of Maimonides’ ethics and of Bachya ibn Pakuda’s Duties of the Heart.30

Spinoza: Christian versus Jewish Love-of-mankind It is evident from reading Deutschtum und Judentum that Cohen discusses the body of traditional Jewish sources within a universe of discourse predicated upon the political conditions of a liberal state. Only such a state, Cohen knows, may allow the ethos of critical idealism exemplified in his reading of the Jewish sources to play a significant social role. Not unlike Spinoza, Cohen demands of the liberal State to embrace the universal ethos of ideal mankind; that very idea which Spinoza (betraying its Jewish sources) determines as the spiritual form of political Christianity and that Kant subsequently develops into the ideal of the Völkerbund as political messianism. Clearly, as my friend Hartwig Wiedebach argues both in personal conversation as well as in the conclusion of his penetrating study on the concept of nationality in Hermann Cohen: “Cohen mystifies German culture in that he entrusts it with the unfailing power of a cultural knowledge that safeguards the universal.”31 Unlike Spinoza, however, Cohen did not tire of the struggle over the question of where the true universalism of human culture is rooted. The tradition of the Hebrew prophets, mediated through Luther’s translation of the Bible as well as Lutheran theology, and philosophically expounded by Kant, remains for Cohen Jewish messianism even when predicated upon the historical and political circumstances of the Reformation. Spinoza’s conclusion when realizing this predicament was to relinquish and attack the teaching of Maimonides and to garb Mosaic and Maimonidean prophecy in the image of Christ,32

29

Hermann Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum”, ibid., 244. Bruckstein, “On Jewish Hermeneutics: Maimonides and Bachya as Vectors in Cohen’s Philosophy of Origin”, ibid., esp. 38–40, 46–50. 31 Hartwig Wiedebach, Die Bedeutung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997), 317–18 (translations are my own). 32 Benedictus des Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trans. Samuel Shirley (Brill, 1997). 30

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a logos allegedly more ubiquitous than the Jewish one, neglecting the body of the Jewish literary sources as well as his own body, the body of Spinoza, the Jew. Whereas Cohen, on the contrary, constructs Protestantism in the Platonic image of a Kantian Maimonides, keeping the ubiquity of the spirit within the Jewish fold, celebrating an a-historical kind of reasoning: Cohen is unconcerned with the “objectivity” of historical genealogy and fatefully forgets the violence of Christianity’s political ubiquity, the violent side of (Christian) power, outside and beyond all idealist constructions.

“Interpretations at War” Cohen’s concepts of Protestantism, Judaism, and Deutschtum are grounded in what Derrida terms a Judeo-Graeco-Christian psyche,33 wanting to safeguard the “inner sanctum of the German spirit,” which means the inner congeniality between Platonic Kantianism and prophetic messianism, of which Maimonides was to be the guarantor within Jewish tradition.34 Upon this congeniality, Cohen constructs the national character of the Jewish people. Even the question of what is to be included in the body of Jewish literary sources is predicated upon this German-Jewish congeniality: The literature of the Jews . . . is a national literature. . . . to the extent to which the primacy of origin is preserved in it as a methodological principle, to that extent the national character of Jewish literature is preserved. [Cohen here invokes the Kantian implications of “Hear, o Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One” (Dt 6:4)] The national spirit of Israel is determined by the idea of the one (unique) God.35

Cohen’s Platonic Maimonides, the embodiment of messianic epistemology, is summoned to testify to a Jewish Reformation before the Reformation. Two years after Derrida’s talk on “negative theology” and on “how not to speak,” Derrida invokes Maimonides on Mt. Scopus again. Interestingly enough, he does so in a discussion of Cohen’s Deutschtum 33 Jacques Derrida, “Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German,” New Literary History 22 (1991), 52. 34 Cf. Hermann Cohen, “Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum,” in Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften I, ibid., 284–305. 35 Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1995), 28 (my translation).

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und Judentum, starting out by an acknowledgment of JewishPalestinian hostilities, calling his lecture “Interpretations at War.” There he says: Oh, if Maimonides had only known, if he had only seen himself in advance carried away along the course of this fantastic cavalcade, this galloping of a Jewish-German historian of philosophy, running through all of Western history in one breath without stopping for a single moment, all in front of an American public! If he had only known, he who considered himself rather Judeo-Maghrebian, Judeo-Arab, or Judeo-Spanish, that one day he would see himself recruited for this strange struggle, having unwittingly signed an alliance with post-Lutheran Germany, having consigned the great Jewish alliance between the two alleged Reformations, would his soul rest in peace? I mean, would his psyche? And if only Plato had known? If all of them had?36

“If all of them had”—we know that all literary histories inevitably drag their sources into the world of commentary, obscuring their traces of origin, with commentators non-empathic when it comes to the purity of original intentions. There is a reason for Derrida invoking the “purity of author’s intent” against the distortion of interpretation precisely in this place, invoking Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic identity over against his German-Protestant, Judeo-Kantian interpreters on Mt. Scopus. Teaching on Mt. Scopus, as I did for many years, we are embattled in “switched fronts”—Paris, Berlin and Jerusalem, exile and homecoming, homecoming to exile: JewishGerman Kantianism in the midst of Jewish-Arab war ceases to safeguard the universal, its (counter-) history vanishes. Maimonides and with him all of the Jewish literary sources tend to be occupied territory if not for the “foreigner” whose being out-of-place is placed central: Maimonides, the Arab, Cohen, the Protestant. Only a Protestant Cohen and a “Muslim” Maimonides at Mt. Scopus can safeguard an ethos of universality that does not fall prey to the political and philosophical fallacies of Cohen’s Deutschtum und Judentum.

Homecoming to Exile Cohen himself could not hold on to the purity of his own teaching when, in the midst of World War I, divine attributes—“Urbilder 36

Derrida, “Interpretations at War”, ibid., 66.

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menschlicher Handlung”—became ideals of the German spirit, archetypes of German culture in the midst of a war in which Cohen took a side. How to retain a teaching of exteriority in the midst of a war that hijacks a prophetic Kantian into violent nationalism? How to retain a teaching of exteriority at Mt. Scopus where national power renders Jewish an-archic power invisible, how to convey its emphasis on marginality, transcendence, and alterity, when “prophetic messianism,” the autonomy of Jewish law, and Jewish eschatology became key terms in a violent struggle over political hegemony, and in national curricula of Jewish learning in which few of the old hyphens (German-Jewish, Judeo-Graecean, Judeo-Protestant, Judeo-Muslim) are remembered, and in which few new hyphens are being added. Hyphens disrupt the national canon, whose builders, according to Cohen, have erased an entire history of (exilic) Jewish literary creativity, judged to be “unauthentic and fictitious”: Only in Palestine, only in a Jewish state [so they think], can the “unauthentic and fictitious” Judaism of the diaspora be overcome and annihilated. The entire history of Judaism up to this time is being distorted as mere ideology. Ghetto-consciousness for them is no specter, it rather reveals to them the true spirit of Judaism, a Judaism that is believed to be real [and not fictitious]. All [diaspora] initiatives of culture in Jewish history fall prey to this verdict: they only produce abstractions, they do not create anything real.37

Residues The question for us who are engaged in Cohen scholarship emerges as follows: How to retain the creative power of that which is fictitious when Jewish literary history has been occupied by a language of national homecoming? How to reveal the power of a teaching that seems “out of place,” like that of “Cohen and Maimuni” in Jerusalem, where this teaching can no longer engender a disruption? At a place, where one bears the silence of what can no longer be named, Jewish theology has become illegible. A hyperbolic gesture, from hyper— ballein, “throwing oneself beyond,” however remains. Invoking Maimonides, the Judeo-Arab and Cohen, the Judeo-German on Mt. Scopus,

37 Antwort auf das offene Schreiben des Herrn Dr. Martin Buber an Hermann Cohen, (Frankfurt: K.C.-Blätter, 1916), 9.

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does not vote for historic objectivity, it rather anticipates a human freedom. According to Kant, all thinking that bears the imprint of a divine teaching is brought forward in high-pitched voices, in a scream. Speaking in a high-pitched voice in Jerusalem with none to hear is the residue of a Jewish philosophy, out of place.

THE TIES BETWEEN WALTER BENJAMIN AND HERMANN COHEN: A GENERALLY NEGLECTED CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE IMPACT OF COHEN’S PHILOSOPHY Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky Translated by Joel Golb

Considering the ties between Walter Benjamin and Hermann Cohen means more than offering one more assessment of the work of each of these German and Jewish philosophers. This is the case because the question of what links the thought of such different figures illuminates a generally neglected chapter in the history of the impact of Cohen’s ideas. In thus opening an important vista on Cohen, the question also casts Benjamin’s early work in a fresh light. In his early engagement with Hermann Cohen’s philosophical system, Benjamin was struggling to clarify a specific set of conceptual problems—problems that loomed in the context of his generation’s historical experience on the threshold of the Great War. Put more pointedly: the philosophical questions Benjamin formulated early in his career, through an engagement with Cohen’s system, stemmed directly from an effort to furnish that experience with its philosophical reflection. Adorno once observed that the young Benjamin was “a genius” who “came to himself ” by “swimming despairingly against the tide” of his generation.1 But Benjamin’s repeated grappling with Cohen furnishes a more solid explanation than this unsettling contribution to a cult of genius (or of what Adorno also called Superiorität). It points to Benjamin as a willful young philosopher whose programmatically formulated texts take up Cohen’s linkage of critical philosophy and Judaism; this he did in search of a method for philosophically articulating his generation’s experience. To a great extent, the consistent actuality of Benjamin’s texts emerges from his

1 Theodor W. Adorno, Über Walter Benjamin, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt a.M. 1970), p. 97f.

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steady confrontation with questions of cognitive theory and systematic philosophy. The confrontation is present in all his efforts at describing the modern epoch. It forms the foundation for relating historical phenomena—indeed history itself—to the present, and for arriving at a fruitful philosophical criticism (and self-criticism) of modernity. To cite only the better-known writings: In the unfinished late text known as the Passagenwerk, this emerges in convolute N, concerned as it is with “Cognitive-theoretical material. Theory of progress.” In the Origin of the German Play of Mourning (dating from 1925) this confrontation is presented as the treatise’s “cognitive-theoretical preface.” Benjamin also integrated this confrontation into the rigorously composed essay on “Goethe’s ‘Elective Affinities’” (1922).2 Benjamin here takes up ideas from both his dissertation “The Concept of Art Criticism in Romanticism” (1919) and the essay “Two Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin” (which he wrote at the end of 1914). In the latter, very early text, Benjamin makes use of Cohen’s ideas to implicitly distance himself from Stefan George’s religion of art. In this context, he stresses that openness to criticism is part and parcel of the concept of the artwork—which corresponds to a philosophically legitimated concept of art criticism.3 The text on Hölderlin is the first in which Benjamin confronts an aestheticization of life with the concept of a philosophically grounded art criticism. His encounter with Cohen centers on three of Cohen’s motifs: first, an insistence on the philosophical system’s structure, and hence on a discontinuity between ethics, logic, and aesthetics;4 second, the orientation toward a Jewish philosophy legitimating its claim to universality through ethics and through a sympathy with life; and third, a fusion of cognitive critique, transcendence, and Judaism.5

2 Cf. Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen. Jüdische Werte. Kritische Philosophie, vergängliche Erfahrung (Berlin 2000), pp. 234–82. 3 Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, pp. 203–34. 4 This point is emphasized in the “cognitive-theoretical prologue” of the Origin of the German Play of Mourning. (Gesammelte Schriften, unter Mitwirkung von Theodor W. Adorno und Gershom Scholem, ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Frankfurt a.M. 1986f. I.1, p. 213). 5 This fusion culminates in Cohen’s interpretation of Jewish law. He sees its main purpose as maintaining the “barrier between God and human beings,” the source of its role as “basic law of the moral world.” Cf. Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums. Nach dem Manuskript des Verfassers neu durchgearbeitet und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Bruno Strauß, Frankfurt a.M. 1929. Reprint, Wiesbaden 1995, p. 393.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 129 Cohen’s project was to defend philosophy’s independent status vis-à-vis the positive sciences—especially psychology.6 At the same time, Benjamin’s linkage of philosophy with Judaism takes place against the backdrop of a crisis facing philosophy at the start of the 20th century. The most prominent symptom of this crisis was the growing strength of Lebensphilosophie, which soon penetrated all realms of thought. What Gershom Scholem referred to as Benjamin’s “philosophy of Judaism”7 emerged from direct contact with this influential movement, on the one hand, and a desire for distance from it, on the other. The epistemological critique of an abstract and speculative use of the concept of life is an inversion of the above-mentioned sympathy for life.8 Connected with it is a critique of the transfer of concepts from the natural sciences and aesthetics to the realm Benjamin terms the “human being’s moral essence,”9 and which Cohen calls the “possibility for self-transformation” rendering the “individual an I.”10 The distinction between the concepts of nature and history is tied very closely to this theoretically legitimated safeguarding of the moral life. In his Ethics, Cohen argues that the concept of history emerges from the question of the reality of the moral sphere, and hence that of freedom. Fixed limitations on the realm of logic’s validity, which are grounded in critical cognitive theory, also explain Benjamin’s use of the concept of mythos, which was to take on a central role in his thinking. The negation of freedom, and hence of morals, is mythical—morals being conceivable by both Cohen and Benjamin only in the framework of transcendence, meaning the difference between human beings and God.11

6

Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, p. 5; ibid. p. 380ff. Cf. Scholem, Walter Benjamin—die Geschichte einer Freundschaft, Frankfurt a.M. 1975, p. 45. 8 Cf. GS VI., p. 56. 9 GS I.1, p. 284. 10 Cohen, Die Religion der Vernunft, p. 225. 11 Cf. Benjamin, “Critique of Violence”; Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, “Walter Benjamin’s Theological-Political Fragment Read as a Response to Ernst Bloch’s Spirit of Utopia,” in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 2002, ed. Gross Grenville, Raphael Gross, J. A. S. Grenville (Berghahn Books, 2002). Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, “Das Gesetz und die Suspension des Ethischen. Jacob Taubes und Hermann Cohen,” in Torah, Nomos, Jus. Abendländischer Antinomismus und der Traum vom herrschaftsfreien Raum. ed. Gesine Palmer et al., (Berlin 1999), pp. 243–63. 7

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For Benjamin as for Cohen, history itself is at stake in the sheltering of ethics from interference by scientific or aesthetic concepts.12 Both figures explain history in terms of the taking on of a task, viewing it in connection with an ethically understood concept of humanity. My thesis, then, is that both the actuality and the breadth of Benjamin’s critical analysis of his age is owed, not least of all, to an intense encounter early on with Cohen’s critical Jewish thinking. Schooled by Cohen, Benjamin’s philosophical stance found its concrete expression in the following critical complex: a critique of George’s religion of art; a critique of historicism’s aesthetization of history; a critique of Bergson’s Lebensphilosophie; and to this we need to add— no less importantly—a critique of Baudelaire’s L’art pour L’art and Catholic-rooted decadence. We thus find the following eloquent remark in a letter to Adorno written in 1940: I’m having my Christian Baudelaire lifted to heaven by a bunch of Jewish angels. But arrangements have already been made so that, in the last third of the ascent to heaven, shortly before the entrance into glory, they let him fall, as by accident.13

Oriented toward the discontinuous structure of Cohen’s system, Benjamin’s approach found its most explosive political application in his confrontation with fascism. Formulated in the reviews collected under the title “Theories of German Fascism” (1930) and in the now famous treatise “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), this confrontation is, of course, closely tied to the critique of Lebenphilosophie’s aestheticization of life. It is the basis for the above-mentioned review of Jünger in which Benjamin reproaches Jünger for aestheticizing war; and it culminates in his thesis that fascism aestheticizes political life14—a process he wished to replace with a “politicization of politics.”

Historical Experience: The Great War and Lebensphilosophie Running alongside the similarities between Benjamin and Cohen, the conceptual differences between them are equally striking. 12 Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, “Sprachformen der Apokalypse bei Hermann Cohen,” in Jürgen Brokoff, Joachim Jacob, Apokalypse und Erinnerung, Göttingen 2002, S. 16–30. 13 Theodor W. Adorno – Walter Benjamin. Briefwechsel 1928–1940. Ed. Lonitz, Henri. (Frankfurt a.M. 1994), p. 413. 14 GS I.2, p. 467.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 131 These differences are based in part on their dissimilar historical experiences, which are all the more important since Benjamin took their articulation and rescue to be a philosophical task. Two experiences above all stamped Benjamin’s generation, the first of these being, of course, the Great War. In a short article of 1933 called “Experience and Poverty” (“Erfahrung und Armut”) that appeared in Willy Haas’s journal Die Welt im Wort,15 the forty-one year old Benjamin reflected on the war’s meaning for his generation. The quintessence of this famous text lies in the insight that the same generation that had shared “one of the most horrible experiences in world history” had been reduced to silence by that same horror. Never, Benjamin stressed, had the strategic, economic, corporeal, and moral life been more completely called into question than now, through power brokers, inflation, hunger, and trench warfare. Those in the field had not returned home richer, but “poorer in communicable experiences.” Benjamin summarizes: A generation, that still went to school by horse-drawn tram stood beneath the open sky in a landscape where nothing had remained unchanged but the clouds; and in the middle, within a force-field of destructive streams and explosions, the tiny vulnerable human body!16

A “monstrous unfolding of technology” had stripped human beings bare in a yet-represented way. In a penetrating image, Benjamin describes this new poverty as having endowed the epoch with the face of a beggar. Tradition had been lost—there was no longer a bridge from the present to the past; no treasure of lived phenomena to which one might have recourse for grasping things that have happened. This is the precise meaning of Benjamin’s expression “poverty of experiences of humanity”—Armut an Menschheitserfahrungen.17 At stake here was not only the concept of experience, but humanity itself. Another text from 1933, also written on Ibiza, addresses the same theme of generational experience. But this text—“A retrospective look at Stefan George”—focuses on the prewar years 1913–1914: the period around Benjamin’s 22nd birthday, when—as he wrote to

15

GS II.1, pp. 213–19. GS II.1, p. 214. 17 GS II.1, p. 215. Benjamin describes in his famous essay “The Storyteller” (GS, II.2, S. 439), in almost the same words, the loss of value of experience as the reason for the loss of the art of narrating. 16

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Scholem in 1933—“magnificent foundations” were laid upon which he could not, however, build his entire life.18 Unfolding in this earlier period, the second formative experience is a more general one. It is the confrontation with a violence inherent in the aestheticism that blossomed in various forms around the fin-de-siècle. For Benjamin and his contemporaries, the extent of the violence culminates in a sense of belonging to a generation “predestined to death.”19 As “Theories of German Fascism” makes clear, the violence is directly linked to the deathly fascination drawing so many young people of the time enthusiastically into the war.20 Aestheticism’s variants included the cult around Stefan George and the range of rapturous nationalisms tied to the ideals of the youth movement. It thus seems consistent that Benjamin used his review of two new books on George as an occasion for critically discussing the poet’s impact on German youth as the Great War loomed. Other than in “Experience and Poverty,” the experience being described here is in the realm of personal memory: Benjamin did not himself participate in the war, but he was among the youth for whom—as he describes it—George was not the “‘foreteller’ of ‘prophecies,’” but rather “a minstrel, who stirred it [i.e. the youth] like the wind stirs ‘the flowers of the early homeland’ that smilingly beckoned outside to a long slumber.”21 He was among those who, in his words, found no “echo of the voice conveying the ‘Dwarf ’s Song’ or the ‘Abduction’”—the reference is to two poems of George from the start of the 1890s that Benjamin highly prized—“in the priest’s science of poetry watched over in the Blättern für die Kunst.” He may in fact have been alone in not recognizing the George of such poems in the volume appearing in the winter of 1914, Stern des Bundes.22 This is at least suggested by a particular objection Benjamin’s beloved Jula Cohn raised to one of his assertions: that the verses mouthed by such youths never came from the Stern des Bundes, and seldom from the Siebente Ring of 1907. For her part,

18 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe Vol III, ed. Christoph Gödde & Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt a.M. 1997), p. 251. 19 GS III, p. 399. 20 GS III, p. 240. 21 GS III, p. 399. The new books were, Willi Koch, Stefan George. Weltbild, Naturbild, Menschenbild (Halle/Saale 1933); and Eduard Lachmann, Die ersten Bücher Stefan Georges. Eine Annäherung an das Werk (Berlin 1933). 22 Cf. GS II.1, p. 623.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 133 Jula could recall an “unforgettable occasion” when Heinle, Benjamin’s young poet-friend, recited a poem from the Stern des Bundes before the student union.23 The difference between Jula Cohn’s memories and Benjamin’s is symptomatic for Benjamin’s position in relation to his generation: that of someone simultaneously tied to it in the deepest way and located on its periphery. From his “inside-outside” locus, Benjamin would attempt to decipher the historical experiences of his day. In this respect, his skeptical stance regarding George’s Lebensphilosophieinspired aesthetic religion, stimulated by an intimate knowledge of his poetry’s seductive power, is exemplary: essential to his stance is a refusal to denounce the longing for a better life that drew young people to George’s poems. Jula Cohn was actually herself still a devotee of George as late as 1933. In the time of the publication of the Stern des Bundes, such enthusiasm was deeply seated among the youthful circles with which Benjamin identifies himself, looking backward, in his reviews. One circle is here particularly salient: that around the educator and founder of the Wickersdorf Free School, Gustav Wyneken. In Freiburg, Vienna, and Berlin, around 3000 young people belonged to this circle. In contrast to the Wandervogel movement, they were not nationalistically oriented and did not seek salvation in nature. They referred to themselves programmatically as the “youth-culture movement” and were to a large extent of Jewish origin. In his reminiscences of this period, Martin Gumpert offers the following picture: Presumably, the figures in this circle represented the best and most upright people this generation could offer. Abandoned by our parents, whose inoffensiveness we knew would send us toward disaster, we tried to struggle against our fate, believing in a world ready to listen to the voice of youth. Leadership and followers here played an important role. We read Stefan George and the stern epochs of the Swiss writer Carl Spitteler. We strived for escape-routs, but took the wrong path.24

Beyond Wyneken’s programmatic intentions, the “youth-culture movement” offered an alternative to engagement in the ever-stronger Zionist youth movement for young people from liberal bourgeois

23 Unpublished letter from the estate of Jula Cohn in Theodor W. Adorno Archives Frankfurt. 24 Martin Gumpert, Hölle im Paradies. Selbstdarstellung eines Arztes (Stockholm 1939).

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families. They met in so-called “conversation rooms”—Sprechsälen25— and with a journal called Der Anfang had a forum entirely in their hands, no contributions from “grown ups” allowed. Benjamin published his first texts in Der Anfang, which was located in the vicinity of Franz Pfemferts Die Aktion—the journal most closely associated with the emergence of Expressionism as a literary movement. Contrary to what Adorno has asserted, Benjamin could thus indeed be found among the age’s “young literati”—though, to be sure (and here Adorno is right), without being one of them. Rather, he faced the literati in the reflective position of critic, tying an inner affinity to distance.

The Letters to Ludwig Strauß What is the basis for the critical vantage Benjamin maintained visà-vis contemporary acolytes of George? Five letters that he wrote during the fall and winter of 1912–1913 to his companion Ludwig Strauß—an enthusiastic follower of Buber—in order to offer an account of his Judaism, furnish the beginning of an answer. Such a process did not come freely, but, as Benjamin perceived it, was forced on him through his first encounter with Zionism, as well as through the Kunstwart debate sparked by Moritz Goldstein in the first half of 1912. This was the first time Benjamin found himself exposed to the violence inherent in all nationalisms. The choice being forced on him—between a German nationalism accompanied by an increasingly menacing anti-Semitism and a Jewish nationalism meant as a response to anti-Semitism—was itself violent. Instead of succumbing to violence, Benjamin arrived at a third position in his letters to Strauß. As an alternative to answering German nationalism with Jewish nationalism, it allowed him to subject the violence underlying both to a philosophical critique.26 As an alternative to complete cultural assimilation, he advocated a state of being “two-sided”—

25 Cf. Gershom, Walter Benjamin—Geschichte einer Freundschaft, p. 10. “Before I became personally acquainted with Benjamin, I saw him in the fall of 1913 in a room above the Café Tiergarten. . . . What, as far as I know, was studiously passed over in literature published later, was that such ‘conversation rooms’ were frequented mainly by Jews—to be sure the sort that made little or nothing of the fact.” 26 Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, pp. 282–341.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 135 i.e. German and Jewish and claimed to embody this duality himself. Benjamin’s call for a double perspective formed the basis of the philosophical position he linked to his concept of being Jewish. He saw the position as being both Jewish and universal, international and—precisely on that account—Jewish. “The moral,” he wrote to Strauß, “is always self-evident, says Vischer. I must say: the Jewish is self-evident.”27 He continues: “everything Jewish going beyond the self-evidently Jewish in me is dangerous to me.”28 For Benjamin as for Hermann Cohen, the Jewish is the “radically ethical.” Only “the Jewish” understood in this way is the self-evidently Jewish. Benjamin invokes the Cohenian form of neo-Kantianism at a central point in his fourth letter, dated 7 January 1913. “The spiritual” (Das Geistige), we read, “is a sphere of agreement; serious battle and absolute fidelity are only decided on in the political deed. Just as the logic of cognition knows no concept of struggle or of fidelity— just the logic of the will (i.e. ethics) knows no concept of agreement or of cognition.” Following this, he added a parenthetical remark: “(Please excuse this hopefully neo-Kantian formulation).”29 Even if Hermann Cohen would have had difficulty recognizing himself in the formulation, it nonetheless forms a prelude to Benjamin’s effort at inscribing himself in a Cohenian tradition linking philosophy, cognitive criticism, and Judaism. This did not only distinguish him from Gustav Wyneken’s followers, but also from his five-year younger friend, Gershom Scholem: the source of most of the testimony on Benjamin, Scholem’s vantage thus having a basic impact on Benjamin’s reception.

History as an Endlessly Incurred Task In the winter semester of 1912–13, Cohen had taken up the chair in philosophy of religion at the famous academy for Jewish scholarship, the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. He began his courses in January 1913, offering a lecture-course on the

27 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe. Vol. I ed. Christoph Gödde &. Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt a.M. 1995) p. 75. 28 On this concept, cf. Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Princeton, New Jersey 1992), p. 255. 29 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe I, p. 82.

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concept of religion and a seminar on Spinoza’s Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus. The courses were heavily discussed and very well attended.30 We do not know for sure whether Benjamin attended them, but we may assume that the above quoted formulation is connected with them. It is apparent that the strict discontinuity Benjamin asserts between the “logic of the cognition” and the “ethic of the will” (functioning for him as a “logic of the will”) does not do justice to the complex relation between the individual parts of Cohen’s system. Cohen himself describes the relation between the system’s parts as one of correlation. In a beautiful image, he delineates the task of philosophy as a “hovering over the abyss”31: the abyss that opens with a look at the necessary discontinuities between the parts. Cohen addresses the concrete implications of such a relation through an inquiry into the reality of morals within his Ethics, in connection with the relation between nature and history. In a prophetic mode, he announces the necessary simultaneity of continuity and discontinuity between the parts of the system, consequently between nature and history: In knowledge’s basic methodological thought, the basic law of truth requires agreement between both problems, but at the same time maintenance of the difference in the direction of this basic thought.32

The question of the relation between ethics and logic concerns a decisive point at which Cohen distances himself from Kants’ idealism. He does so in order to mark, along the ground of critical philosophy, the limits set upon the power of cognition by the fact of freedom. I wish to claim that Cohen’s response is a response to the challenge of modernity.33 At the same time, as Benjamin’s long-term engagement and increasing critique of Cohen’s standpoint shows, it is also a challenge to philosophy. In fact, Benjamin’s critique of Cohen remained in the same realm unfolded in his letter to Strauß

30 Cf. Hartwig Wiedebach, Einleitung, in Hermann Cohen, Kleinere Schriften V, Hildesheim (Zürich, New York 1999), p. XVII. 31 Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ethik (Berlin 1877), p. 34. On the metaphor’s significance, cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, “Sprachformen der Apokalypse bei Hermann Cohen.” 32 Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, Werke 7, Hildesheim (Zürich: New York 1981) p. 396. 33 Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, “Sprachformen der Apokalypse bei Hermann Cohen,” p. 23.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 137 until he formulated a solution in his great essay on Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”: the “non-existent question” as the philosophical problem’s ideal, in counter-position to Cohen’s own concept of the ideal.34 But let us first talk about the path that Cohen himself took: unlike Kant, Cohen does not distinguish will from desire according to the criterion of rationality, but in relation to the basic concept of time.35 Where for Kant the will that is rational is also good, Cohen firmly asserts that “the pure will is not pure cognition.”36 In this manner, Cohen’s concept of will is distinguished by an orientation toward the eternity of the future, where desire seeks fulfillment within time. Desire is aimed at the temporal; it lacks, in Cohen’s words, “the end-goal of eternity” (der Zielpunkt der Ewigkeit). By contrast, pure will withdraws from “the finitude of the temporal.”37 With this distinction, Cohen avoids tying will narrowly to reason, in the process limiting the risk of arbitrariness. He gains a concept of history fundamentally removed from that of nature, and, as a result, removed from cognitive categories at work in the natural sciences. In a gesture radical in its consequence, Cohen expounds on history as an infinite task and assigns this task to humanity. Analogously to the pure will, Cohen anchors history, and with it the idea of humanity, in the anticipated eternity of the future, which he interprets, in recourse to Kant, as the idea of eternal peace.38 The history of humanity is thus revealed as the future-oriented history of eternal progress. The concept of anticipation establishes the connection with the Logic of Pure Cognition, in which Cohen interprets the idea as hypothesis. As he explains it there, the idea is not a ground (Grund ) but a generative grounding, or laying of foundations (Grundlegung).39 In this way the claim is satisfied that the “basic law of truth” demands an “agreement between both problems” of knowledge. Cohen meets the simultaneous claim that a difference must necessarily be preserved between the problems by founding morals,

34

Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, pp. 251–282. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 398. 36 Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 396. 37 Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 412. 38 Cf. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 407f. 39 On the relation in Cohen between ethics and logic and the significance of the concept of anticipation, cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, p. 156f. 35

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hence also history, upon what he terms—in consciously paradoxical fashion—an “unground” (Ungrund ).40 The model for the conviction allowing Cohen to anchor the reality of morality—hence history— in the eternal future is the conviction of the prophets.41 Accordingly, in the Ethics of Pure Will he comments that “God demands morality; at the same time this means: he renders it manifest and answers for it.”42 As his “ungrounding” (Ungrundlegung) makes clear, Cohen’s proverbial optimism and conviction in an enduring future is grounded in a deep trust in religious tradition. As the son of a cantor, Cohen grew up with and within the Jewish religion. Tradition was a bridge helping him overcome the abyss of thinking. He was so sure of its enduring nature that in his orientation of history toward the future, he could in all equanimity surrender the past to the transitory. The extent of the difference between such a historical situation and that of Benjamin’s generation is made clear in his “Experience and Poverty.” In contrast to the older philosopher, tradition was only present for Benjamin—born in 1892 and stamped by the Great War—by way of its loss. To be sure, Benjamin was familiar neither with Jewish tradition nor its sources. As he indicated to Strauss in the fall of 1912, what he knew of Judaism was “really antisemitism and an indistinct piety.”43 The loss of tradition thus became a central motif through which Benjamin posed the question of the relation between modernity and the experience of transience. His own path did not lead, like Cohen’s, back to the sources—but rather ever-more deeply into the present. At the same time, the question of how a transient experience can be taken up by cognitive theory became increasingly central in his grappling with critical philosophy. Benjamin lacked the conviction and optimism carrying Cohen’s philosophy forward.44 He shared neither an orientation of will toward the eternity of the future nor an alignment of history with the idea of progress. 40 Cohen ironizes the wish for a concept of the absolute, “Unground” would be the ground independent of all laying of foundations. In order to make the paradox of this wish for the absolute palpable, he transfers the concept of foundationlaying into that of “non-foundation laying” or “ungrounding”—Ungrundlegung, Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 429. 41 Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 406. 42 Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 403. 43 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe I, p. 76. 44 Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, “Sprachformen der Apokalypse bei Hermann Cohen.”

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 139 If we consider the “small methodological proposal regarding the cultural-historical dialectic” that Benjamin noted in the “Passagenwerk,” he appears to take a precisely sideways position to that expressed in Cohen’s historical-philosophical reflections. Where Cohen sees history as fulfilling itself in the historical eternity of humanity’s mission of peace, Benjamin assigns the historian the infinite task of uniting scientific history with remembrance. To this end, the historian must undertake “divisions according to certain viewpoints,” “in infinitum” for “every epoch in its different ‘areas’”; and he is meant to do so “in such a way that the ‘fruitful,’ ‘future-laden,’ ‘living,’ ‘positive’ portion of this epoch lies on the one side, the fruitless, backward, defunct portion on the other.” This forms a basis for “newly applying a division” to each “tentatively defunct, negative portion” so that “with an adjustment of the perspective (not, however, of the measure!) both a positive element and another one newly emerge in it, as what has been previously designated. And so on in infinitum, until the entire past has been brought into the present in an historical Apokastasis.”45 Cohen’s concept of history is aligned with the future, Benjamin’s with the past. Cohen is concerned with an orientation around eternal values, Benjamin with a salvaging of what is transitory. What Cohen and Benjamin have in common is a grounding of history in an “unground,” and the locating of a basis for history in a cognitive-theoretical framework. Like Cohen, Benjamin upholds a difference between the problem of history and that of nature. He, as well, conceives of history as an infinitely incurred task—one upon which the idea of humanity needs to be constructed.

The Actuality of Benjamin’s Cohen-Reception By way of a conclusion, I would like to consider one question in particular: Granted an embedding of Benjamin’s early work in Cohen’s synthesis of critical philosophy and Judaism, what conclusions can we drawn regarding the relation between Judaism and modernism— or Judaism and secularization? Benjamin’s critique of modernism does not, in fact, fit tightly into the Marxist dialectical framework furnished by Adorno, Horkheiner, and the Institute for Social Research;

45

GS V.1. p. 573.

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nor into that of various efforts at Jewish renewal within the modern condition. The critique of Lebensphilosophie and aestheticism is by no means “self-evidently” Jewish. Benjamin’s “philosophy of Judaism” did not only involve an effort to gain distance from the vitalism of Christian authors, but also from a similar current within Judaism itself. Cohen’s writing—according to my argument—played an invaluable role in this process. But this role points to an inverse possibility: that Benjamin’s adaptation opens a new perspective on Cohen—one perhaps leading to a differentiation of the ties and tensions between Judaism and modernism. Exploring this possibility requires a small thematic detour, toward the friendship between Benjamin and Scholem. We are familiar with it above all from Scholem’s perspective, based on his book “Walter Benjamin: The History of a Friendship” and a number of essays touching on the significance of Judaism for Benjamin. The “History” is also the source of our information about Benjamin’s disappointment with Cohen’s “Kant’s Theory of Experience,” the book through which Cohen founded Marburg neo-Kantianism. The two friends read and discussed the third edition over many hours during a stay in Bern in the summer 1918.46 Scholem’s account contributed significantly (if not solely) to the traces leading from Cohen to Benjamin that remained unnoticed for a long time. Another factor was Cohen’s particular reception-history—up into the 1980s, its general nature was both meager and divided. It thus had to wait until March 2000 for Helmut Holzhey to confirm, following the 2nd international Cohen conference (itself devoted to Cohen’s Religion of Reason from the Sources of Judaism) that the walls between a “concern with a Kantian-academic and Jewishreligious Cohen had fallen.”47 Such walls mirror the philosophical situation of Germany’s postwar history: As Holzhey has indicated elsewhere,48 this situation was characterized by a virtually seamless recourse to philosophical positions of the 1920s, meaning above all Heidegger—and with Heidegger, a non-questioning acceptance of

46

Scholem, Walter Benjamin—Geschichte einer Freundschaft, p. 76. Helmut Holzhey, Vorwort. In, Idem, Gabriel Motzkin, Hartwig Wiedebach (eds.), “Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums”. Tradition und Ursprungsdenken in Hermann Cohens Spätwerk. Hildeheim, Zürich, New York, 2000, p. XI. 48 Helmut Holzhey, Einleitung, in Hermann Cohen. Auslegungen. Ed. Holzhey, 1994, p. 20. 47

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 141 that philosopher’s rejection of Marburg neo-Kantianism, especially Hermann Cohen and his book “Kant’s Theory of Experience.” The way to Benjamin’s reception of the great Jewish and German philosopher was thus first opened up by a new interest in Cohen in the 1980s, accompanying publication of the Werkausgabe. Consequently, the first close consideration of Benjamin’s ties to Marburg neoKantianism did not stem from the universe of Benjamin experts, but from the small community of Cohen specialists. In his essay “Unendliche Aufgabe und System der Wahrheit” (“infinite task and system of truth”) Pierfrancesco Fiorato interpreted Benjamin’s call for a recourse to Kant in the “Program for a Coming Philosophy” against the backdrop of a comparison with Cohen’s reading of Kant.49 Fiorato put forward the thesis that the appeal for a philosophy knowing an absolute experience does not signify a regression from Kant to a dogmatic metaphysics; but rather that Benjamin’s “recoinage of experience into metaphysics” led to a radicalization of the problem of chance.”50 Fiorato here advanced a movement away from interpreting Benjamin’s texts as the hermetic essays of a metaphysical enthusiast; instead, he recognized their serious philosophical—and above all their cognitive-theoretical—content, as well as Benjamin’s effort to advance thinking along the lines of the Kantian dialectic of cognition and experience. Now Benjamin was explicitly interested in this dialectic in relation to the question of a philosophy of Judaism. Precisely this linked him with Cohen and distinguished him from his contemporaries. With his “philosophy of Judaism,” Benjamin thus offers the idea of a philosophy whose validity is not limited to Judaism, and that does not result in a dissolution—or Aufhebung—of Jewish tradition into philosophical cognition. This philosophy stakes a claim to universal applicability without thereby abandoning the specific nature of the “Jewish.” It is a philosophy understanding itself as “critical”: the precise framework for maintaining what can be addressed as the “specifically Jewish” in Benjamin’s sense. The interventions directed at various literary and political concepts inspired by Lebensphilosophie are specifically Jewish: such interventions

49 Pierfrancesco Fiorato, “Unendliche Aufgabe und System der Warhheit. Die Auseinandersetzung des jungen Benjamin mit der Philosophie Hermann Cohens,” in Philosophisches Denken—Politisches Wirken. Hermann Cohen-Kolloqium 1992, ed. Reinhard Brandt and Franz Orlik. Hildesheim, Zürich, New York, pp. 163–78. 50 Fiorato, “Unendliche Aufgabe,” p. 170.

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resist the identification of life with representation. Life does not dissolve into its representation!—this is Benjamin’s translation of the Jewish ban on idolatry (the Second Commandment). It is the basis for the “small methodological proposal regarding the cultural-historical dialectic,” according to which the historian’s task is an infinite task. It is infinite because Benjamin’s historian is meant to bring the “entire past” into the present: lived life and the transience belonging to it, vanished hope and the experience of happiness. Now—and this is the decisive moment—such a task is not only infinite, but by the same token impossible. Life cannot be written down. In demonstrating the impossibility of this effort—writing down life—Benjamin defines, against Lebensphilosophie, the actual task of the philosophical critic. And the antithetical stance vis-à-vis Lebensphilosophie is grounded in just such recourse to the ban on images. We thus read in his habilitation: ‘Thou shall make no images’—this does not only cover a resistance to idolatry. With incomparable force, the ban on depictions of the body guards against the semblance that a sphere can be depicted in which the moral essence of human beings can be perceived.51

The citation makes clear against just what Benjamin’s critique of the aestheticization of life is directed: against a dissolution of the moral into the aesthetic. He derives the task of philosophical critique from this, in a shift of perspective: the task consists of demonstrating that every depiction of the moral essence of human beings—precisely their unique quality—necessarily fails. Benjamin offers his argument in order to construct a refuge for morality by way of following the law, in the sense of his understanding of the Jewish ban on images. We can now understand the emphasis with which Benjamin insists on the system’s discontinuous structure: such discontinuity grounds both the objection to Lebensphilosophie’s fusion of life and aesthetics and his reservations regarding the modern effort at immanent salvation through the sciences. And herein, precisely, lies the actuality of Benjamins’s continuation, indeed radicalization, of Cohen’s linkage of cognitive critique and Judaism. His stance was directed against both a sacralization of the sciences and the effort at a rehabilitation or invocation of mythic powers, whether for the sake of the life of art, of the German Volk—or indeed of the Jews. Just this cognitivetheoretical resistance to immanent and genuinely modern concepts 51

GS I.1, p. 284.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 143 of salvation, centered around art, or science, or nation, distinguished Benjamin from both mainstream Jewish and non-Jewish authors. His resistance rendered his thinking irreconcilable with that of the “Jewish Nietzscheans,” among whom numbered Micha Josef Berdyczevsky, Saul Tschernichovsky, and Martin Buber—the latter with his essay, published in 1900, “A Word over Nietzsche and LifeCentered Values.”52 Their call for a vitalist national myth of Judaism gained entry to Germany’s Zionist youth movement by way of Bubers’ “Three Talks on Judaism,” published in 1911.53 In his letters to Strauß written in the fall of 1912, Benjamin had already turned against a Zionism “with nationalism as the final value”54 as decisively as against a Buberian Jewish “experience” (Erlebnis).55 His highly critical view of Buber’s “mysticism” would continue to stamp his relation to Zionism. It would also encourage his later friend Scholem to distance himself from both Buber and the form of Zionism current in Prague. From the intensive conversations the two men had over Judaism and Jewish questions in the summer of 1916, Scholem noted Benjamin’s remark that Zionism had to be weaned from three things: “the agricultural propensity, the racial ideology, and the Buberian blood, and experience (Erlebnis) argumentation.”56

52

Cf. Daniel Krochmalnik, “Neue Tafeln. Nietzsche und die jüdische CounterHistorie,” in Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus, ed. Werner Stegmaier and Daniel Krochmalnik. Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung Vol. 36, Berlin, New York 1997, pp. 53–82. 53 Hanna Delf has pointed to the influence of Landauer’s understanding of Nietzsche on Buber’s “renewal of Judaism” and Buber’s Nietzschean cultural zionism on Landauer (Hanna Delf, “Nietzsche ist für uns Europäer. . . . Zu Gustav Landauers früher Nietzsche-Lektüre,” in Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus, ed. Werner Stegmaier and Daniel Krochmalnik, Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung vol. 36, Berlin, New York 1997, pp. 209–28, p. 227). Delf correctly stresses that Landauer’s internationalist focus represents a main difference with both the Volkish and Social Darwinist Nietzsche-reception. She thus proposes understanding the doctrine Landauer draws from Nietzsche not as Lebensphilosophie, but as “life praxis” (Lebenspraxis) (p. 226). In any event, the strong debt this “praxis” owes to Lebensphilosophie emerges in the following observation of Landauer regarding the international community of humanity, “where the human beings is most at home, his most inner and hidden quality, his inassailable possession, is the great community of the living in him, it is his bloodline and blood community. Blood is thicker than water; the community that the individual turns out to be is mightier and nobler and more primeval than the thin influences of state and society.” Gustav Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik. Versuche im Anschluß an Mauthners Sprachkritik. Berlin 1905, p. 37. 54 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe I, p. 82. 55 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe I, p. 75. 56 Scholem, Walter Benjamin—Geschichte einer Freundschaft, p. 41.

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In any case, one thing becomes clear from Scholem’s “Reflections on Wissenschaft des Judentums,” written in 1944: despite his critique of Buber, he never really broke with the idea of a “religion of myth from the sources of Judaism”57: an idea, hovering behind the counter-history of the Jewish Nietzscheans, that was overtly directed against the equation of Judaism with ethical monotheism. Scholem thus reproaches the Jewish Wissenschaft of the second half of the nineteenth century for having essayed a “removal of the irrational thorn and an expulsion of the demonic glow from Jewish history through exaggerated theologizing and spiritualizing.”58 Scholem did not tie the reactivization of demonic powers to a flight into myth. Rather, he derives from it a reflection on the “specially dialectic tension”59 inherent in Wissenschaft des Judentums. An activating of Judaism’s demonic energies thus corresponds to a revision of scholarly selfunderstanding. Emphatically, Scholem invokes a “science in all its severity and with no readiness for compromise”60—a science that, instead of constituting itself through a demarcation against myth, would take up the mythic powers and reinforce them.61 Scholem may well not have been aware how far this burdening of Wissenschaft des Judentums with vitalist powers emerging from Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie removed him from the thinking of his friend, Benjamin. More specifically: from a fidelity, grounded in cognitive

57 Krochmalnik describes the relation of the Jewish Nietzscheans—among whom he counts Scholem—to the representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums in pointed fashion, “The liberal program can be pithily summed up in the title of Cohen’s religious-philosophical magnum opus (Religion of Reason from the Sources of Judaism); by the same token, the antiliberal program of the generation of 1900—which, to be sure, not only consisted of Nietzscheans—can be expressed in the inverse formula (‘religion of myth from the sources of Judaism’)”. (Krochmalnik, “Neue Tafeln,” p. 71.) 58 Scholem, Überlegungen zur Wissenschaft des Judentums, in idem, Judaica 6. Die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Ed. Schäfer, Peter. Frankfurt a.M. 1997, pp. 7–53; p. 44. 59 Scholem, Überlegungen, p. 36. 60 Scholem, Überlegungen, p. 13. 61 The special appeal of Scholem’s work emerged from this linkage of revolutionary expectation and rational scholarship. In this regard, Funkenstein speaks of Scholem’s “scholarly charisma.” In an illuminating essay casting fresh light on the history of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Funkenstein has explored the question of the particular approach taken by Scholem “in founding a new discipline like no one else” (p. 15). (Funkenstein, Amos, “Gershom Scholem, Charisma, Kairos und messionaische Dialektik,” in Gershom Scholem. Zwischen den Diziplinen, ed. Peter Schäfer and Gary Smith, Frankfurt a.M. 1995, pp. 14–32.

the ties between walter benjamin and hermann cohen 145 criticism, to a Judaism he saw, with Hermann Cohen, as having ethical monotheism as its most inner essence. In this manner, what evaded the younger friend was precisely the conjunction through which Benjamin remained close to Cohen, despite all critique: a conjunction of law, the Jewish ban on images, monotheism, and cognitive criticism, together forming a “philosophy of Judaism” understanding itself as universal. A diametrically opposing reception of Max Horkheimer’s essay “The Jews and Europe,” written in 1940, is characteristic of the difference between Scholem and Benjamin. The essay’s problematic nature is encapsulated in its last three sentences: “The Jews were once proud of an abstract monotheism, the rejection of a belief in images, a refusal to make something finite into something infinite. Their plight points the way back to this for them. The lack of respect before an existent straddling itself out to God is the religion of those, within the Europe of the iron heel, who do not desist from turning their lives toward a preparation for something better.”62 For Scholem, the last of these sentences was simply (I quote) a “cheap closing phrase with a horrid allegorization of monotheism, with nothing to say to the non-allegorizable Jew and his standing in humanity, which in fact is obvious.”63 For Benjamin, who here reveals his intense concern with the concept of ethical monotheism, the sentence was the expression of a political analysis impressing him to a degree none other had for years.64

62

Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1939, p. 115 Scholem, Walter Benjamin—Geschichte einer Freundschaft, p. 278. 64 Benjamin, Briefe II, herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Gershom Scholem und Theodor Adorno, Frankfurt a.M. 1978, p. 840. 63

IN THE NAME OF A NARRATIVE EDUCATION: HERMANN COHEN AND HISTORICISM RECONSIDERED* Avi Bernstein-Nahar Hebrew College, Boston

Introduction A number of recent studies of American Jewry reveal striking divisions.1 According to a 2001 study, for instance, American Jews were split almost down the middle about whether they identified as secular or religious. This study also turned up multiple and, indeed, incompatible ways of belonging to the Jewish community, with respondents clearly divided across national, cultural, religious and ethnic conceptions of Jewish life. A 2000 study of New York Jews found seven different patterns of Jewish living, and observed widely differing perceptions of the importance of being Jewish. In the New York study, the degree of interest and level of participation in community institutions, cultural affairs, and religious life varied dramatically across a number of identifiable cohorts. As one of the lead researchers in the 2001 study concluded, ideological debates may no longer rage as furiously as they once did, but the American Jewish community we find today, nevertheless, clearly bears their mark. In America, membership in the community persists in a context of conflicting values and frameworks, making sociological description complex and initiation into the community confusing. Into which community should

* The author would like to thank the members of the Hebrew College Philosophers’ Project, Jacob Meskin, Michah Gottlieb, Alan Zaitchik, Harvey Shapiro, Natan Margalit, Barry Mesch, Chris Winship, and Bernard Steinberg, for their incisive comments and criticisms. 1 Egon Mayer, Barry Kosmin, and Ariela Keysar. American Jewish Identity Survey 2001. NY: Center for Cultural Judaism, 2003; Bethamie Horowtiz. Connections and Journeys: Assessing Critical Opportunities for Enhancing Jewish Identity and Renewal: A Report to the Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal UJA-Federation of New York. NY: UJAFederation of New York, 2003; Arnold Eisen, and Steven Cohen. The Jew Within. Bloomington: Indiana University, 2000.

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one initiate one’s self or one’s children? The options are plural, their rationales are difficult to compare, and none appears the clear victor. As one of the authors of the 2001 study concluded, in the context of such pluralism, “contemporary [American] Jewish identification [is itself ] . . . problematic.”2 Value-pluralism of this sort is a particularly difficult challenge for the much-celebrated contemporary Jewish renaissance, an object of considerable human interest, energy, and financial capital. The difficulty is due in part to the character of some of the key institutions driving this renaissance. They are, in a (hyphenated) word, trans-, or post-denominational. As Steven M. Cohen has recently remarked, these are some of the most vital and creative institutions in Jewish life today.3 But, given what they are dedicated to, they are also arguably among the most afflicted by the context this research points out. Renaissance promises growth, development; a flowering of a closed, even withered, flower. But, towards just what light should these institutions grow in the face of this prevailing confusion? The Steinhardt Foundation, which, incidentally, is an advocate of post-denominational Jewish renaissance, and publisher of Steven Cohen’s remarks, recently went so far as to offer up to ten thousand dollars to the writer who could point a way beyond this tohuv-vohu, and help return Jews to some common ground. As the Director of the Foundation, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, wrote in a letter disseminated internationally to scholars and Rabbis: “. . . [We] assert the vital importance of a common narrative—of ideas, values, and root metaphors—that can bridge and link together our various Judaisms . . . Without a relevant and compelling common narrative, we risk further the dissolution of Jewish unity, the mitigation of mutual responsibility and the loss of community.”4

2

Barry Kosmin. “Demography and Dimensions of Secularity Among American Jews.” In David Gordis, Zachary Heller, and Avi Bernstein-Nahar, Proceedings of the Posen Conference on Secular Jewishness 2005. Boston: Hebrew College, 10 (forthcoming). 3 Steven M. Cohen. “Non-Denominational and Post-Denominational: Two Tendencies in American Jewry.” Contact The Journal of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation 7.4 (2005–5765): 7–8. On Cohen’s list are educational institutions Pardes, Hartman Institute of Jerusalem, Hebrew College of Boston, and New York synagogues B"nai Jeshrun and Hadar. 4 Rabbi Irving Greenberg, President, Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation in the course of official correspondence to this author, May 16, 2005. tohu-v-vohu is a Hebrew expression for chaos.

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The lack of a common narrative is particularly acute for educators who embrace value-pluralism. They are saddled with a nearly impossible task: teaching texts and concepts with normative potential to students who have normative questions in an environment in which normative disputes are likely to seem irresolvable. Should Jews keep the Shabbat? Are Jews a nation, a people, an ethnos, or a faith group? How should they conceive of God (if, at all)? Whether the issue is behavior, belonging, or belief, the classroom norm, at least in classrooms where normative discussion is even admissible, is often disagreement or perplexity. This classroom scenario stands in the foreground of the following inquiry.5 In many classrooms in the academy, explicit normative discussion is not admissible, and this reality is very much in the foreground as well. It came into the public eye not long ago when Dr. TiroshSamuelson, a Professor of Jewish philosophy, made an impassioned plea to her colleagues in Jewish Studies to forego “the conceit of objectivity” and to charge forward in the “relentless pursuit of truth.” For Tirosh-Samuelson, who made her remarks before a packed house at the 1998 meeting of the Association of Jewish Studies, the issue was the vocation of the scholar as educator, particularly vis-à-vis the Jewish community. “We must make it very clear,” Tirosh-Samuelson insisted, “that the academic study of Judaism is not just about facts but also about values, it is not just about subjective opinions but about the pursuit of objective truth, and it is not just about abstract ideas but about a way of life one would lead after one leaves the university.” It should be no surprise that her remarks caused a great stir, with influential figures in Jewish Studies condemning her revisionism as “inappropriate . . . [for] the university classroom.”6

5 As part of my work, I direct an institute for adult learners, in which I also teach courses. For further information, see the Me’ah Graduate Institute, http:// www.hebrewcollege.edu/html/adult_learning/meah_graduates.htm. I am also active in the Me"ah Program, http://www.hebrewcollege.edu/html/adult_learning/meah. htm. Hebrew College’s flagship adult learning program. Teaching in these programs at Hebrew College involves a negotiation between educational values sometimes in tense relation: dedication to the welfare of the Jewish community, on the one hand, and fidelity to academic norms, on the other. 6 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson. “The Academic Study of Judaism.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 26, 1999; Scott Heller. “The New Jewish Studies: Defying Tradition and Easy Characterization.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 1999.

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At times, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), until 1912 Professor of Philosophy at the University of Marburg, and from that time until his death, a full time lecturer at the leading liberal Jewish seminary in Berlin, spoke in tones very similar to Tirosh-Samuelson. Writing in 1918, in support of the aspiration of his younger colleague, Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), Cohen exclaimed: “It is not enough to advance the Science of Judaism” by writing books, “it must be advanced in living people who are dedicated to this Wissenschaft, who apply this research to their life-task.”7 Rosenzweig, like TiroshSamuelson, had boldly called on the academic world to marshal its energies on behalf of a faltering Jewish public. An institute of Jewish Studies was to be founded for the express purpose of bringing the fruits of scholarship to the wider Jewish community. Rosenzweig’s proposal, like Tirosh-Samuelson’s, was also greeted with dismay, and his institute, though eventually founded as the Academy for Jewish Studies (1919–1934), never realized its communal purpose.8 What, if anything, links these waning moments of Cohen’s life to our contemporary cultural moment, e.g. the Association of Jewish Studies of 1999, and the challenges of Jewish education today? Recently, in a beautifully written, wide ranging and deeply learned book, historian David N. Myers has asserted historicism as the critical link, a connection that weaves the ambitions of people like TiroshSamuelson to Cohen’s, and to the ambitions of his successors (e.g. Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Isaac Breuer, according to Myers’ book). More precisely, for Myers, Cohen and his successors represent a tradition of Jewish anti-historicism, an opposition to the intellectual agenda and quality of mind of the modern historian. The (1) drive to isolate people, events, and ideas in discrete contexts, (2) to treat them as natural phenomena, subordinate to the causal laws of nature, and (3) the impulse to create a supposedly neutral discourse, rendering judgments of value out of bounds—these are the offending elements of the historicism they commonly opposed. Atomization,

7 Hermann Cohen. “Zur Begründung einer Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums.” In Jüdische Schriften. Volume II. Einleitung von Franz Rosenzweig. Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn. 1924. 212. Hereafter items from Jüdische Schriften, which appeared in 3 volumes, will be cited as JS with title, volume and page number. 8 See David N. Myers. “The Fall and Rise of Jewish Historicism: The Evolution of the Akademie Für Die Wissenschaft Des Judentums (1919–1934).” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1994): 107–44.

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naturalism, relativism—these, Myers tells us, became the prime targets of this fascinating group of German-Jewish intellectuals, dedicated to interpreting a living Judaism within a hostile academic milieu. Moreover, as Myers book, Resisting History, makes clear throughout, its author believes the debate between historicists and their detractors is as alive today in our present moment as they were in Europe before the Shoah. Myers’s grasp, both of Cohen’s project and our own educational situation, is incisive, in my view, and we will take up his argument in the final section of this paper. Two aspects will concern us in the final sections of this paper. First, I will be preoccupied with his efforts to contextualize Hermann Cohen, the leading light of Jewish antihistoricism on Myers’s account. Myers wants to explain Cohen’s career as a “spiritual journey toward a Protestant Judaism.” How much sense does this make? Second, I will take up the proposition of historicism itself. Myers, himself a leading historian at the University of California at Los Angeles, insists on its continuing merits. Does he make a compelling case, and is he correct? Myers does not take up the challenges of contemporary Jewish education at any length, though his concern with it crops up time and again throughout the book. This concern is inevitable, perhaps, as Resisting History represents not only the kind of diachronic-contextual thinking about Cohen typical of the historian, but synchronicaxiological thinking about the nature of culture, and the value in its study, as well. Educational issues figure in Resisting History in a more obvious way also, as its subjects (Cohen, Rosenzweig, Strauss, Breuer) are all in one way or another educators. Myers’s considered historicist take on the Marburg heritage, then, fits nicely within the educational discussion I am seeking to initiate in this paper. Contextualizing Cohen as well as seeking to vindicate historicism, Myers helps to stage a very worthy moment in our discussion: can philosophy come to the aid of Jewish education in the modern world? The answer is an emphatic yes in my view. Cohen’s corpus is valuable for Jewish education today because it points us to a living philosophical tradition that can emancipate us educators and students alike from historicism. This practical tradition, linking Cohen backwards to Plato, Aristotle, Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn and Kant, and forwards to a number of present day philosophers, has become all but invisible today. On the other hand, it may not be an exaggeration to say that in modern Jewish studies historicism

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has achieved something akin to the status of common sense. Mark Lila, in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, for example, puzzled over how any serious person today could read Rosenzweig with philosophical interest, since his philosophy is “dead.”9 Myers, in effect, struggles with the same question about Cohen, and reaches the very same conclusion. Cohen and Rosenzweig, I concede, are low hanging fruit, if your impulse is to consign philosophical reflection to the ashbin of history. As participants in a trans-historical conversation their moments have indeed passed. But the conversation is alive! And, it cannot be joined without reconstructing its past, a reconstruction that must be alive to the ratio that lives within it. This paper represents a first pass at such a purposive reconstruction of Cohen’s prescription for Jewish education. In the concluding section of this paper, I will develop a brief portrait of one of Cohen’s successors, Charles Taylor, a figure whose arguments are not so easily dismissed by historically-minded scholars. Over a long and distinguished career, Taylor has developed a historical-philosophical perspective on modern identity. While Taylor has hardly been alone in extending the lines of practical philosophy beyond the Marburg school, his example alone should be sufficient to demonstrate the advantages of foregrounding contemporary philosophy for understanding Cohen and ourselves. Given the complexity of my undertaking, I should acknowledge the burden I am placing on my readers. I ask you to follow me into the heart of Cohen’s analysis of practical reason, and to understand enough of its detail to see the lines of a genuine tradition, dynamic lines of continuity and discontinuity, conflict and conformity with predecessors and successors. This will require considerable patience, but the prize at our destination is also considerable. Jewish Studies has yet to find anything like a successor to Hermann Cohen. Without one (even to consider), we are left stammering in the face of a myriad of important challenges, including the pluralistic Jewish classroom, Tirosh-Samuelson’s dispute with her more “scientific” colleagues, and, indeed, as readers of Myers’ book. In order to be able to even imagine what a successor to Cohen might look like, we need to get a better grasp of the tradition of reasoning about values and the self that he once represented. 9 Mark Lilla. “A Battle for Religion (Franz Rosenzweig).” New York Review of Books 49.19 (2002): 60.

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Any effort to excite interest in Cohen today rightly faces an uphill climb. By far the majority of scholars trained in modern Jewish thought would agree that Cohen was preoccupied with “purely intellectual matters . . .”10 Reading Cohen, one can surely see how easily readers are propelled to this conclusion. My own disagreement, which will become evident below, is partial and qualified. I have no secret ambition to rehabilitate Marburg neo Kantianism. Cohen’s tradition as a whole, however, is urgently in need of rehabilitation. This tradition—call it practical reasoning about the self— is hardly an exclusively “intellectual matter.” Whether in Kant, or Cohen, or Taylor, it is an effort to find one’s bearings in an uncertain world. Cohen was no stranger to this condition; indeed, in the course of his long career as an “activist in German-Jewish defense work,” for German-Jewish symbiosis, and for liberal Judaism, he often put himself in the midst of cultural-political upheaval and in need of finding solid ground.11 At the age of sixteen, Cohen found himself at a nodal point in one of the most contentious circuits of intra-mural Jewish controversy, at the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau. Zecharias Frankel (1801–1875), founder of the positive historical school, later associated with the denominational movement, Conservative Judaism, led this Seminary from its inception, and his tenure was not unmarked by dispute. In 1861, not yet twenty years old, Cohen sought to intervene in an attack on Frankel by Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), an outspoken orthodox critic of the historical treatment of Judaism characteristic of Breslau scholars like Frankel and Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891). When in 1880 Graetz was attacked by the Prussian historian and nationalist, Heinrich Treitschke, amidst a rise in anti-Jewish agitation in Germany, Cohen once again entered the fray, this time possessed of considerably more status, as a self-described “representative of philosophy in a German university and a confessor of Israelite monotheism.”12 10

Eugene Borowitz. Choices in Modern Jewish Thought. NY: Behrman House, 1983. 39. Emil Fackenheim, “Hermann Cohen—After Fifty Years,” The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture. 12 (1969). 5. Cf. Martin Buber, “The Love of God and the Idea of Deity: On Hermann Cohen,” in ed. Will Herberg. The Writings of Martin Buber. NY: New American Library, 1974. 101. 11 David N. Myers, “Hermann Cohen and the Quest for Protestant Judaism.” Leo Baeck Institute XLVI (2001): 205. I am indebted to Myers for his rich description of these controversies. 12 Cohen, “Ein Bekenntniss in der Judenfrage”, in JS. II. 74, as quoted in David

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While against Hirsch Cohen had pressed the rights of enlightened historical inquiry into Judaism, against Treitschke Cohen insisted on the cultural contribution of Germany’s Jews, a population that the German nationalist had named “our misfortune.” To the dismay of some of his Jewish teachers and colleagues, he also conceded to Treitschke that an excess of “Palestinianism” had characterized Graetz’s popular Jewish books, apparently Cohen’s term of opprobrium for Jewish particularism and irreverence for the German Vaterland. Finally, toward the end of his life, in 1916, Cohen assumed the public stage once more, attacking a formidable younger figure, Martin Buber, a Zionist, in a fiery exchange about the legitimacy and promise of Zionism and the Jewish diaspora.13 These controversies point not only to Cohen’s inclination for public activism, but also to the profound cultural and political schisms at play in his world. In the Jewish community, Cohen was at loggerheads with Hirsch’s counter-enlightenment stance toward academic Jewish studies; and Cohen was at odds with the national feeling evident in Graetz’s History of the Jews, and with Buber’s brand of renaissance politics as well. In political terms, he was pitted against nationalists like Treitschke on his right and liberals like Enrst Troeltsch and Julius Wellhausen on his left. Protestant scholars, Troelsch and Wellhausen shared many common social values with Cohen, but remained stubbornly supercessionist where Judaism was concerned. Finally, the historical materialism of Marxist oriented socialists was anathema to Cohen, who specifically aimed to present an alternative socialism.14 In the face of this kulturkampf, I want to point to Cohen’s philosophy as practical in the ordinary meaning of the word, as a means of coping with—hopefully resolving—a deeply felt “predicament.”15

N. Myers, Resisting History Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought. Princeton: Princeton University, 2003. 52. 13 See Resisting History. 54–55. Cohen was also involved in a noteworthy defense of the Talmud’s disposition toward non-Jews involving two notorious figures: Otto Bückel, one-time librarian at the University of Marburg, and “the first openly antisemitic candidate elected to the Reichstag” in 1887, and Göttingen orientalist, Paul de Lagarde. See Myers. “Quest for Protestant Judaism.” 205–6. 14 Steven S. Schwarzschild. “The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen.” Hermann Cohen. ed. Helmut Holzhey. Frankfurt am Maine: Peter Lang, 1994. 204–27. 15 The term “predicament” belongs to Myers, “Quest for Protestant Judaism,” 214; Resisting History, 40.

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In the next section I will argue that Cohen’s Ethik (1904), without a doubt an “intellectual” undertaking of the highest order, was also a book intended to help lost souls, to provide a moral orientation for readers who, in Cohen’s view, had no earthly idea who they were.16

I Cohen’s Ethik sought to provide a new anchor for the values of his generation, and ultimately to “overturn” their reality, providing them with an utterly new sense of self. In the most general terms, Cohen sought to establish a clear picture of the virtues proper to the human being, and to describe an approach to education that could legitimately shape the individual in their image. The virtues were truthfulness, humility, courage, faith, and justice. In the rest of this section, I will describe his argumentative strategy toward this end in the terms he adopted in the Ethik itself. I will also describe the concrete steps he took to bring it to fruition. A Cohen began his Ethik by asking his readers from where they should take their moral bearings. His unequivocal answer was the law of the German state. In the first stage of his argument, he attempted to explain how to arrive at a picture of human virtue through an examination of the law, or what he called jurisprudential science (Rechtswissenschaft ). This was the “deductive” stage of Cohen’s thinking.17 16 Hermann Cohen. Ethik des Reinen Willens. Einleitung von Peter Schmid. 6 ed. Hildesheim, New York: Olms, 1981. Afterwards cited as ErW with page numbers. “das Mensch ist nicht das, was er in seinem sinnlichen Selbstgefüehle zu sein glaubt. ErW, 79. cf. “das physische Einzelwesen kein echtes Selbstbewusstsein besitzt . . .” ErW, 248. 17 The two seminal moments in Cohen’s argument are deductive and productive. See Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, translated by John Denton (Albany: SUNY, 1997), 94 –96. Cf. Geert Edel, “Kantianismus oder Platonismus,” il cannocchiale, n. 1/2 (gennaio-agosto 1991), 60–71. In Kantian terms, stage one is the theoretical element determining the nature of the self, and stage two is the practical element which instructs the reader in how to realize the self in the world. For purposes of simplicity, I will ignore this terminological distinction and characterize the argument as a whole as practical, but I will bring out the relevant contrast with more “practical” arguments in the final section of the paper.

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According to Cohen, jurisprudence (logically) presupposed an ideal self for the sake of its own validity, because—on Cohen’s reception of it in any case—this tradition aimed at the formation of a body politic. The law, then, with its concepts of corporate personality, of personal responsibility, and of the duty of sacrifice, was a repository of norms from which the philosopher could deduce values and ends for the individual. The law contained the paradigm of the I (das Ich), the person (dei Person), the human (der Mensch), Cohen insisted in thoroughly Platonic rhetoric.18 In the closing six chapters of both Ethik and Religion of Reason (1919), his posthumously published rejoinder to Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), Cohen detailed the results of this deduction. It was Cohen’s claim—and it was probably only slightly less implausible to most of his contemporaries than it is for us today—that the template for the ethical subject was the idealized Rechtsstaat, portrayed in both Ethik and Religion as the truthful, humble, courageous, faithful, and just servant of God.19 Why would Cohen have turned to the law to understand himself and his generation? Cohen developed his system of philosophy as a critique of the pioneering work of Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, and positioned his Ethik as an application of Kant’s transcendental method.20 Kant set out to put an end, once and for all,

18 “So lange er in einer Mehrheit schwebt, welche aus Einwirkungen auf ihn und Gegenwirkungen, die von der Mehrheit, die in ihm gelagert ist ausgehen, ist sein Selbst noch gar nicht vorhanden. Erst die Einheit [der Rechtsbegriffe] kann es ihm geben; kann ihn zum sittlichen Wesen machen.” ErW, p. 81. “. . . sie vielmehr . . . das Ich von der Einheit des Rechtssubjekts ableiten könnte.” “Diese rechtswissenschaftliche Darstellung und Begründung der idealen Person im Rechtssubjekte ist lehrreicher . . . etc.” ErW, p. 235. “Ist es etwa nicht der Mensch, der Begriff des Menschen, der über das ganze Gebiet [der Rechtswissenschaft] hin die durchgreifende Voraussetzung bildet?” ErW, p. 71. (my italics above) 19 Cohen’s version of the thesis that the state is the self is extreme, to be sure, but one hears a distant echo of the social contract theory of Moses Mendelssohn, who wrote “The state, or whoever represents the state, is viewed as a moral person [eine moralische Person] who has the power to dispose of [alienable] rights.” Mendelssohn, Moses. Jerusalem or On Religious Power and Judaism. 1783. trans. Allan Arkush. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983. 57. Hartwig Wiedebach has suggested that “Man kann die nationale Selbstinterpretation Cohens als einen kritischen Kommentar zu Mendelssohn lesen.” See Die Bedeuntung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen. Hildesheim: Olms, 1997. 51, note 108. 20 Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s, 1965, especially A 96–B187. In explicating Cohen’s method I have especially relied on Edel, 60–70; Edel, Geert. “Cohen und die Analytische Philosophie der Gegenwart.” Philosophisches Denken—Politisches Wirken Hermann—Cohen-

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to what he saw as interminable disputes about the nature of reality— “all hitherto metaphysics.” Famously, he proposed to do so by means of a kind of reasoning that would arrive at the inescapable features of the knowing subject. Cohen’s deduction of discrete virtues from the law clearly stands in the transcendental tradition, but it is important to recognize its departures from Kant’s philosophy itself. In point of fact, Cohen’s chief concern in the Ethik was not the knowing subject at all, but the acting one, the subject pursuing ethical tasks in the world. Moreover, Cohen built his position upon the foundation of his Logik der reinen Erkentniss, an earlier work in which he had taken up and revised Kant’s approach to the knowing subject directly. Cohen’s fundamental break with Kant and the epistemological subject concerns the “theorem of the dual lineage,” found in the First Critique. According to this theorem, our knowledge is dependent on both sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) and understanding (Verstand ), or, in other words, on both sense data given in experience, and concepts supplied for experience by human understanding.21 The understanding supplies the knowing subject with the concepts of substance, quantity, and cause, for instance. With the aid of these concepts, the understanding confers coherence on the discrete and fleeting data of sense, a weave that presents itself to the human being as consciousness. Without concepts like substance, quantity and cause, our experience would be a blooming, buzzing confusion, Kant insisted. Objects would not persist for us (lacking substance), and we would be able neither to count them (absent quantity), nor to perceive their effects (lacking cause). In an effort to account for the character of our actual experience, experience that does in fact include objects with discernable effects that we can count and so on, Kant developed his theorem. Kant’s “theorem of the dual lineage” was a product of transcendental argumentation found in his Critique of Pure Reason. In Kant’s view, all normally functioning human beings could arrive at the abstract notion of an object, or in Kant’s language, an “object-ingeneral,” after reflection upon their experience of the concrete world.22

Kolloquium Marburg 1992. ed. Reinhard Brandt and Franz Orlik. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1992. 179–203. 21 Edel, “Kantianismus oder Platonismus.” 60. 22 Edel, “Kantianismus oder Platonismus.” 63 and note 5. The “experience” upon which this notion is based is “vorwissenschaftliche,” according to Edel.

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Kant’s argument was, famously, an effort to identify “conditions for the possibility” of the very idea of an “object”. This argument, with its reliance on a claim about “conditions for the possibility” of an X, has become the hallmark of transcendental argument in all subsequent philosophical tradition. In Kant’s own particular version, the faculties of sensibility and understanding along with the concepts, including substance, quantity, and cause, are identified as “transcendental conditions,” conditions for the very possibility of an object in consciousness. This kind of argument structures Cohen’s Ethik, to be sure. Nevertheless, in accord with his own earlier work on the First Critique, Cohen took exception to Kant’s version, the notion that sense data could be “given” in experience at all. To be specific, Cohen found the very notion of a “given” illusory. As Geert Edel has pointed out, Cohen’s objection should be familiar to the contemporary philosophical reader, since a version of it is now a commonplace today. Like 20th century American philosophers, Wilfred Sellars and Richard Rorty and a host of others, Cohen insisted that our perception of data, ostensibly given in our experience, is never in fact determined by the data itself in any meaningful way.23 On the contrary, if we would just examine the descriptions that we normally offer of our experience, urged Cohen, what appears to Kant to have been “given” to experience, from the world itself, would in fact be revealed as our own construction, a determination of thought by the knowing subject.24 Cohen’s critique of Kant amounted to a rejection of what has become known in this philosophical tradition as “the thing-itself ” (Ding-an-sich), Kant’s picture of the world as an ingredient of human experience.25 As a result, Cohen reached a very different conclusion from Kant based on his scrutiny of human cognition: inescapable 23 See Wilfred Sellers. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. ed. Robert Brandom. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1997; Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University, 1979. 24 Or as Paul Natorp, Cohen’s colleague at Marburg, once summed up Cohen’s approach: “what we would express always as perception of something given is, as an affirmative content, necessarily [for Cohen] a determination of thinking.” Quoted in Edel, “Cohen und die analytische Philosophie.” 201. Quoted in Edel, “Cohen und die analytische Philosophie.” 201. For an influential version of this direction, see Charles Taylor. “Overcoming Epistemology.” Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1995. 1–19. 25 Edel, “Kantianismus oder Platonismus.” 64–65.

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features of human knowing were beyond the determination of any transcendental method. We simply do not have access to the givens of experience, Cohen argued, so an argument like Kant’s could never really get off the ground. In Cohen’s view, however, Kant’s failure to ground an epistemological subject did not exhaust the possibilities in transcendental method. A philosopher could proceed transcendentally without recourse to experience, and that is precisely what Cohen set out to do in his Ethik. Where Kant anchored his deduction in the given objects of experience, Cohen began his deduction in a point of law, the legal definition of a person. In beginning with a point of actual law, Cohen hoped to capture the attention of a readership utterly divided on cultural, moral and political grounds. In a peculiar sense, Cohen sought to base himself in an example where self-knowledge was actual; an instance in which the state, through its jurisprudential tradition, had laid out in rigorous—Cohen would say—scientific terms, the criteria for autonomous personality.26 More details about how Cohen’s deduction “worked” are not important for our purposes and, in any case, are not easily discerned amidst the “unsystematic” presentation of this part of the argument.27 My aim here and below is only to convey enough of the Kantian form of Cohen’s undertaking for us to begin to see it as part of an on-going tradition; and, to describe enough of its contents for us to see that Cohen aimed to be practical, to show a way through a confusion of values and culture of conflict. These ill-fated efforts were

26 Edel. “Cohen und die analytische Philosophie.” 194–5. In this respect Cohen’s project in Ethik and in his Logik are analagous, one seeking a valid conception of the self, the other of nature.. “Dagegen soll uns der Staat, als die Aufgabe des Selbstbewusstseins . . . die Verfassung der sittlichen Subjekte darstellen. Und diese Verfassung des Selbstbewusstseins des Staates ist das Analagon zur Einheit der Natur . . .” ErW, 245–6. It is misleading to see Cohen’s project as more preoccupied with “epistemology” than “ontology,” since his transcendental argument in Ethik aims at ontological transformation. Cf. Myers, “Quest for Protestant Judaism.” 195. 27 Poma, 119, explains that Ethik is even more difficult to read than Cohen’s normally difficult writing: unfamiliar terminology, complex style, unsystematic discourse development, repeated infiltration of psychological themes; and contingent political, religious, juridical, and social controversies . . . [and an] additional, more radical difficulty, consisting in the simultaneous presence of . . . [a threefold meaning of the relationship between being and what ought to be, whose branches] . . . though being distinct, are interwoven in a complex network that is not always well amalgamated and harmonious.

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especially evident in the second stage of his argument, its “productive” phase, where he tried to imagine how the world around him could be “overturned” in the image of the ideal self. 28 Cohen’s efforts to overturn Jewish reality in the period between the publication of his Ethik and his death were legion, and came almost completely to naught. If we want to understand what Cohen stood for as an educator, his efforts to “apply” the transcendental deduction and “overturn” the meaning of ordinary experience are without a doubt the place to begin. B Cohen’s attempts to develop hermeneutical practices for reading Jewish sources is perhaps the most well known of his educational activities; his Religion of Reason clearly exemplified his commitment to Jewish sources read through the lens of Ethik. It did other work dear to Cohen as well. As a rejoinder to Kant, Cohen’s Religion was a no-holds-barred attack on Christian supercessionism in general, and Kant’s invidious distinction between Judaic legalism and Protestant morality in particular. Cohen’s Ethik had staged this point brilliantly, and his Religion brought it home, aiming at the heart of Lutheran anti-Judaism. Law is not the opposite of morality, but its transcendental condition, Cohen had argued in his Ethik. In his Religion, Cohen brought this rejoinder to Kant to full boil. The human self, he maintained, is constituted by the Law’s most important rite, Yom Kippur, in accordance with the commandments of Tefillah-Prayer and Tschuvah-Repentence, established by the rabbinic sages of the Talmud. Thus, Cohen wrote, “The entire idea of monotheism is contained in this watchword of [Rabbi] Akiba’s . . . Oh Israel . . . before whom do you purify yourselves . . . It is your father in heaven (Yoma 85b);” and, Cohen continued, It is the most unfounded reproach . . . that Jewish piety is self-righteous or that the meticulous observance of the law promotes self-righteousness. For the most meticulous observance of the law, every hour of the day, can never render repentance superfluous. Rather the whole purport of all particular laws and the entire concern for legality is nothing but guidance to repentance, to the turning into the correlation with God.

28

ErW, 391.

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What the Rechtsstaat was in the Ethik, Israel becomes in the Religion, a moral exemplar constituted by adherence to the Law (as Cohen interprets it).29 Already in his Ethik, Cohen went to work to develop strategies for reading religious sources in the name of narrative education, or what he called “historical consciousness” (die Bildung des geschichtlichen Bewusstseins). The human qualities religious sources hold up for admiration should be “learned, studied, tested and, therefore, indeed here and there internalized.”30 But he was tentative and suspicious about this enterprise as well, since religious texts were often used to erode human self-responsibility. “This is the meaning of God—he appears, he is revealed [in texts]. The compulsion of heteronomy does not yet lie in this fact itself . . . It has become more and more evident that heteronomy’s spear head is not directed toward the idea of God . . . fundamentalism [not the idea of God itself ] is the old irreconcilable enemy of religious rationalism.31 God should count as “author of morality” only from within the framework of his philosophical ethics and its distinctive methods.32 The issue for Cohen was preeminently hermeneutical: taking the extant religious culture as a given—an empirical given in Kantian terms—how should the meanings of its literary documents, and the purposes of its customary practices, be determined? Who will be their authorized interpreters and what interests will govern their activity of interpretation? Cohen’s affirmation of monotheistic religious traditions per se was resounding in the Ethik; but his repudiation of their authorized interpretive practices was equally clear. Religion, as an all-embracing structure and as a community, can never entirely replace the nation state in which the health and truthfulness of religion’s ethical practices must be tested. Piety brings exuberance into the character and excitability into the individual. It can take on the altogether too dangerous appearance of the true self in complete contradiction to the principle of autonomy—we should legislate for ourselves.33 29

Religion of Reason, 224; cf. 234; See Schmid. ErW, 14ff. ErW, 337–38. 31 ErW, 333 & 336. I have wedded two texts dealing with the same theme [not the idea of God itself ]. 32 ErW, 335. 33 ErW, 338. The text reads: Die Religion, als Gesamtheit und als Gemeinde, kann niemals gänzlich des Staates entraten, in dem doch nun einmal die Probe auf die Gesundheit und Wahrhaftigkeit der religiösen Sittlichkeit gemacht werden muss. Der Pietismus 30

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Why did the state garner more confidence from Cohen than religious authorities? Cohen pointed to the state’s capacity to deliver education. To Cohen’s detriment, however, his argument that it would do so properly turns out to presuppose what it sets out to prove, namely, that the state apparatus can somehow transform its citizens, delivering effectively what Cohen, throughout the period in question, called “theoretical education.” Cohen’s hermeneutics were circular, because he presupposed a reader who had already been constituted—or educated—according to the norms of the Ethik. The Marburg school called this Erzeugungslogik des Begriffs des Menschen, translated (something like) the creation-logic of the human-concept. More commonplace, and by no means misleading, language for this term of art would be education, formation (Bildung) or what, with explicit reference to its religious overtones, Cohen sometimes calls raising (Erziehung), as in “raising” a child.34 Since the lion’s share of Cohen’s Erzeugungslogik was contained in the second half of his Ethik (i.e. Chapters Eight through Sixteen), it is no surprise to find him introducing the second half of Ethik with a comment on the religion of reason, what would become his educational project par excellence. The purpose of Ethik, he wrote, was to reconcile pure ethics with a “deeper religious sensibility” (eine tiefere religiosität) and to deliver the individual into its grasp. In order to reach this historical plateau, Cohen avered, “theoretical education” must be extended to every person without exception. No “moral life” was possible without a theoretical education.35 In fact, Cohen’s contemporaries did not have to await his posthumously published Religion of Reason to encounter his efforts to implement this educational plan. Indeed Cohen began to agitate for it in the Jewish community the very same year that its governing logic

. . . bringt . . . einen Überschwang in das Gemüt und eine Überspanntheit in das Individuum, welche nur den allzu gefährlichen Schein des Selbst annimmt; welche jedoch der Selbstgesetzgebung durchaus widerpricht. On Cohen’s opposition to authorized interpretive practices in Jewish tradition, see his strong statement in “Die Errichtung von Lehrstühlen für Ethik und Religionsphilosophie an den jüdisch-theologischen Lehranstalten,” JS II, 122. I have explained this statement in my essay, “Hermann Cohen’s Teaching Concerning Modern Jewish Identity (1904–1918). Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1998: 26–32. 34 ErW, 388. 35 ErW, 387. The text reads: “Die Selbsterhaltung bedeutet . . . die Erstreckung der theoretischen Bildung ausnahmslos auf alle Menschen . . . Keine Sittlichkeit im Sinne der Kultur . . . ohne . . . Anteilnahme an der theoretischen Kultur.”

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appeared. As I have suggested in some detail elsewhere, Cohen’s 1904 essay on the future of institutes of Jewish Studies, published in the inaugural volume of The Society for Jewish Studies’ premier scholarly journal, was all that one would expect on the basis of our analysis thus far. A call for the establishment of chairs in Jewish philosophy at the major institutions of higher Jewish learning, this essay was also a companion piece to the Ethik, a call to fellow academics to help deliver the deracinated German Jew into the grip of a deep religious sensibility, “reconciled” with pure ethics. It contained a shockingly self-referential proposal on behalf of ethical monotheism. Concluding the essay, Cohen writes, “. . . the independent, professional advocacy of ethics and philosophy of religion must form the focus of our teaching system . . .”36 From context, it is clear that he intends here to underline the Jewish significance of not only philosophy in general, but his very own system of philosophy. At stake, Cohen tells us, is “a new renaissance of religious thinking and life in Judaism.”37 What did this form of Jewish education offer? Cohen promises an enormous amount in his Monatsschrift essay, which reads like a manifesto for a new era: Jewish study and the performance of commandments would be reinvigorated. The German state and its culture would become the moral beneficiary of a people professing ethical idealism; and the emancipation project—the integration of Jews into European civic life—would be advanced with the acknowledgement of “the Jewish teaching with respect to belief.” German culture and Jewish culture alike would be infused with a “theoretical” spirit. Cohen envisioned the Jewish community as a catalyzing force for a wave of German state sponsored activity reflecting state responsibility, as he says in the Ethik, for the sake of “the health and truth of religious morality.”38 As he said in a public lecture, he gave at least twice in his final years,

36 “Errichtung,” JS II. 125. The text reads: “die selbständige, fachmännische Vertretung der Ethik und Religionsphilosophie muss den Mittelpunkt allen unseren Lehrwesens bilden.” 37 “Errichtung,” 124. 38 “Errichtung,” 123–25. The text includes the tropes like “die theoretischen Kultur”, and “eine Vergeistigung, eine Verinnerlichung” as well “die Gesundheit und Wahrhaftigkeit der religiösen Sittlichkeit”. These tropes are ubiquitous in Cohen’s Ethik as well as in his Jüdische Schriften.

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avi bernstein-nahar School and state should both demand as part of a social doctrine that instruction in Wissenschaft be made accessible to the entire people. The objective—but not less so also the pedagogical—foundation of all higher instruction claiming to be scientific in character was, is and always will be philosophy—the philosophy which in joining logic and ethics alone grounds idealism.39

Cohen was at his most explicit here, calling on the state to teach his philosophy to its citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. C The circularity of Cohen’s transcendental argument has been the subject of discussion from the time of its publication. In perhaps the most conspicuous moment of this discussion, in 1924, Rosenzweig conjectured that in Cohen’s late work, he had broken out of the “magic circle” of his idealism, and had found a way to write about the concrete life of the faithful individual in the existing community of Israel.40 But what could this have meant, given that Cohen’s ambitions to address the Jewish community were well-known, even before he published Religion? The “magic circle” that Rosenzweig alluded to, was, in fact, the shape of his transcendental method, with its prescription for movement back and forth between the ideal and the real, the deductive and productive moments in Ethik.41 The circularity of Cohen’s argument, as well as the pride of place he reserved for theoretical education, are simply the corollaries of the position he took about Kant’s knowing subject. For Cohen believed, as we have seen, that nothing is given in experience. Human

39 “Das soziale Ideal in Platon und den Propheten.” JS I. 330, given January 7, 1918, the last lecture which Cohen presented before his death. The text reads: Es muss zur einheitlichen Forderung der Soziallehre fuer die Schule und für den Staat errungen werden, dass der wissenschaftliche Unterricht dem gesamten Volke erschlossen wird. Das sachliche, wie nicht minder aber auch pädagogische Fundament alles höheren wissenschaftlichen Unterrichts war, ist und wird sein die Philosophie, die in der Verbindung von Logik und Ethik allein den Idealismus begründet. 40 Rosenzweig. Einleitung, JS. XLIX. See also Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen. translated by John Denton Albany: SUNY, 1997, 114–19. 41 Rosenzweig, XLVIII. Compare Alexander Altmann thoroughly argued opposing view in Alexander Altmann, “Hermann Cohens Begriff der Korrelation,” in In Zwei Welten—Bishnay Olamot: On S. Moser’s 75th Birthday. Tel-Aviv: Bitaon Verlag, 1962. 377–99.

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experience, then, had to be constructed, or, as Cohen preferred, theorized, before it could be instructive. The meaning of human experience, like the meaning of Jewish texts, was not open for interpretation in the course of ordinary life. On the contrary, Cohen implied that the contents of experience were determinable only on the basis of the right education. We can see the circularity of Cohen’s approach more clearly, if we try to imagine how Cohen might have taught his perspective as a Jewish educator in a classroom, and put him at the podium, as it were. How would Cohen have tried to persuade his students to take up the ethical monotheism he propounded? Would he have appealed to students’ experience of a local churchman’s anti-Semitism, or a Wilhelmine official’s inequity, in order to evoke the call of justice? Would he have appealed to their experience of a Gymnasium instructor’s presumptuous dismissal of Jewish texts, in order to evoke the call of humility? Strictly speaking, he could not have, for the very ground of Ethik is the turning away from personal experience. If Cohen had taught Isaiah 58:7 in the classroom, for instance, he would have aimed to fix the verses’ meaning in accord with the interpretive demands of Ethik. “Is this not rather the fast that I have chosen? . . . When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thy own flesh [mibsarcha] . . .”42 For Cohen, this last verse had a clear and unambiguous meaning, despite the ambiguity of the metaphoric speech (e.g. thy own flesh). Its meaning was correlated with the prescription that society is an ethical body politic, a living political entity whose micro-networks of families and communities must be continually shaped by law and education according to the state’s ideal. If an authoritative rabbinic commentator understood this verse as “do not hide thyself from thy own kinsman [mikrovecha]”, this was entirely beside the point for Cohen, except as the negative example. Indeed, the meaning that Rashi, the author of this comment, found in this verse, stands as a perfect example of what Cohen’s classroom would have excluded. Networks of kin oriented primarily to one another undermine the ethical republic as Cohen envisioned it. His teaching would have aimed to overturn (Umwendung) the experience of living in kinship networks in so far as they engendered Rashi’s sensibility. Cohen

42

Isaiah 58:6–8, translated in Torah Neviim Ketuvim. Jerusalem: Koren, 1963.

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would have read Isaiah 58:7, and any text for that matter, as an instrument toward that end. In teaching Isaiah 58:7 with this end in mind, Cohen’s only real recourse was to move students by appeal to something beyond their experience of the text or its rabbinic commentaries. At his disposal was an interlocking circle of concepts, ethically and theologically charged, developed in Ethik. We are ill served if we imagine this as an arid or “academic” process. Cohen would have sought to draw his students into his own sort of logical mania, to bring them into the “kingdom,” to move them toward “undivided surrender” to God. The closest analogue for coming under the influence of his philosophy, Cohen hinted in more than one place, was prophecy.43 It is critical to note that Cohen would not have seen this kind of circularity as a failing; indeed, his position in the tradition of practical reasoning running from Plato to McDowell is distinguished by just this kind of circularity. Historians of philosophy have acknowledged this curious quality of Cohen’s system in referring to it as panlogicism, an interlocking network of concepts with no seeming input from the world. In this context, Cohen’s system has also been referred to as an “idealism without a subject,” to indicate that the network of concepts in Cohen’s system does not appear to assume a spatial-temporal location in any human being.44 Far from being a liability, for Cohen, this kind of circularity, or network of co-related concepts, was in fact a solution to problems that had been the undoing of great philosophers like Aristotle and Kant. Long passages in his Ethik marked his distance from Aristotle, for instance, against whose concept of phronesis he spared no vitriol. Cohen’s circular argumentation should also remind us of the lengths to which he went to reject the “myth” of the given in Kant. Finally,

43

I have dealt with this topic at length in my 1998 dissertation, “Accounting for Modern Jewish Identity: Hermann Cohen and the Ethics of Self-Responsibility.” Stanford, 1998. Chapter Four. See also Eliezer Schweid. “The Philosophical Prophecy of Hermann Cohen (Hebrew).” Daat 35 (1995): 67–85. “We do not exaggerate,” writes Schweid (75), “if we claim that Ezekiel Hermann Cohen’s book [Religion of Reason] was created in order to raise prophecy itself to the philosophical level of his time. The book itself is in the grip of prophecy, a prophecy which is spoken amidst the religious philosopher’s consciousness of himself as a bearer of a prophetic vocation.” Schweid, however, understates just the link between Cohen’s transcendental method and his pedagogy that I assert here. 44 Nicolai Hartmann. Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965. 160–3, quoted in Poma, 62.

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this circle of concepts, hovering as they do above experience, should suggest Cohen’s affinity with his archrival, Spinoza. Like Spinoza, Cohen identified the end of the self with an extraordinary scientific world-view at a great remove from ordinary life, and achievable by virtually no one. This elitism should put us in mind of Maimonides as well, who may have imagined that he alone could reach the “inner chamber” in the human quest to find God, as he hints in his parable of the palace.45 Cohen sought to portray himself as Maimonides successor, as a guide, like Maimonides, for the perplexed of his day. Rhetorically, however, Cohen was a spiritual democrat, in marked contrast to his medieval predecessor. ‘Would that all the people were prophets’, he indicated in his late lectures on the prophets and the Platonic tradition. But in his actual pedagogy, he was in fact quite divided, shaped as much by his Spinozist commitments as by Maimonidean ones. For Cohen saw individuals, not yet formed by his curriculum, as caught in the matrix of nature, a matrix of cause and effect from which they could not extricate themselves by ordinary means. It is Cohen’s place in this tradition that makes his extra-ordinary approach to education intelligible.46 What did Cohen have to offer his students, “natural” individuals all? As we have already seen, his most obvious recourse would have been to philosophical persuasion. But, this was a means that the larger Jewish community and the rising generation of Jewish intellectuals at the turn-of-the-century, by and large, rejected out of hand. He could have pursued a second option as well, as the thought experiment with the Isaiah text suggested. The second option would be subterfuge, the teaching of cultural sources according to the (unexplicated) methods of his critical philosophy. In his effort to craft an image of himself as a potent successor to Maimonides, he did, in fact, just that.47

45

See Moses Maimonides. The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963. 46 For Cohen’s use of this language, see, for example, his ErW, 246, 256, 390, 518. 47 The key source for Cohen’s Maimonides interpretation is “Charakteristik der Ethik Maimuni, JS III, 221–89. Another notorious example of this kind of subterfuge is Cohen’s commentary on Germany’s role in World War One. See “Deutschtum und Judentum.” JS II. 237ff. I have also dealt with this topic in “Accounting,” Chapter Four.

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Cohen’s Maimonides commentary was what he called a memorialin-thought (Denkmal ) for an epoch making figure. Memorials-in-thought were ubiquitous in Ethik itself. Ranging widely over the history of philosophy, eulogizing some figures, such as Nicholas of Cusa and condemning others, such as Spinoza, Cohen linked their value in the history of thought to the way in which they did or did not anticipate his own system of philosophy.48 On the basis of Ethik, we should expect Cohen’s testimonies to epoch-making figures in the history of philosophy to include both stages of transcendental method, deduction and production and their corollaries in Cohen’s hermeneutics, recognition of a moral ideal and exegesis of a cultural text. When Cohen was driven in his many popular discourses to insist on the primacy of his method, he was simply paying homage to the indispensability of both stages of thinking. Indeed, the ability to distinguish a particular datum or text from a concept or hermeneutical interest, and the inclination to allow the second pair to control the first, seem to cover a great deal of what Cohen meant by “participation in theoretical culture.” In point of fact, Cohen was much craftier in the course of his major statement on Maimonides. Cohen painted the portrait of a Maimonides very much like himself, a philosopher and jurist entirely committed to explaining Judaism as a kind Platonic-Prophetic social practice, and conceiving Israel as an ethical-political republic and an exemplar of the perfected state. To substantiate such a reading, he had to ignore the substantial weight the Guide’s author gave to intellectual virtues and the powerful ideal of solitary contemplation to which they pointed. While presenting himself as an ordinary exegete throughout most of the essay, Cohen was in fact prepared—intentionally—to obscure antithetical texts in the Maimonidean corpus.49

48 Cohen lists memorial-making, as well as institutional building and the development of a philosophical hermeneutics as his key religious duties and “historical” tasks. “Was als Pietaet der geschichtlichen Kultur zu denken und zu pflegen ist, das bezieht sich vornehmlich auf die Hütung und Deutung der religioesen Quellen, Denkmaeler und Institute.” Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie. Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1915. 112. Cf. Edel’s “Kantianismus.” 60, where he calls these “memorials” “Vorarbeiten or Vorstufen.” 49 “. . . alle Quellen der Kultur . . . enthalten fremde Aufnahmen. Diese sind jedoch von ihrer einzigartigen Ursprünglichkeit bewältigt und aufgesogen.” “Soziale Ideal.” JS I. 306.

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Only the echo of a hint remained in Cohen’s Maimonides interpretation to point toward the ocean from which his tributary actually flowed.50 In a single paragraph, Cohen conceded that his Maimonides appeared to stretch the limits of historical objectivity. Take comfort, as I do, he wrote, that the entire history of philosophy is saddled with this danger. The historian’s independent interests (selbständiges Interesse der Spekulation) have always threatened to overpower and distort history and its texts. Trust that I intend to rely on the fundamental methods of my philosophical system in order to cope with this danger. There is only one means to combat the distortion that texts can suffer at the hands of their philosophical interpreters: the thorough investigation of the literary sources and the exacting distinction of the “hypotheses and the facts” (die Hypothese und die Tatsache). Not surprisingly, Cohen’s terms, hypotheses and the facts, refer us back to Ethik; and, we should acknowledge that the reader who knew Cohen’s System well would have understood that this Maimonides was a rational reconstruction on extra-historical and extra-philological grounds—grounds that were articulated in Ethik. But, having alerted the exceptional reader to his approach, Cohen’s exegetical arguments were otherwise unencumbered by his critical philosophy. It is easy to see why, by the essay’s close, some of Cohen’s most sophisticated readers would have had no idea what kind of game he was really playing.51 His “hypothetical Maimonides” becomes in the midst of this tour de force “the genuine Maimonides” (der echte Maimuni ), a memorial-in-thought masquerading as a historical portrait. It is possible to argue that Cohen operated legitimately, if atypically, within the parameters of Ethik in presenting this Maimonides to his readers, even without his offering a more explicit explanation of his method. In the backward sweep of transcendental reflection, students were inducted into a hermeneutical circle operating in its productive phase. On this model, and on this model alone, Cohen supposed, empirical reality could be instructive, if introduced by a teacher in touch with the full power of transcendental reflection, even in the

JS, 256. Cohen’s prose here is in the first person. Cf. Ethics of Maimonides. Trans. Almut Sh. Bruckstein. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2004. 101. 51 E.g. Alfred Ivry. “Hermann Cohen’s Neo-Maimonideanism,” a paper presented at the 1999 Meeting of the Association of Jewish Studies, Chicago. 50

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face of students who were not. At the end of the day, it seems, the sage from Marburg was willing to “trick” the philosophically naïve into adopting true belief, though not justified true belief, about historical tradition.52 This strange mix of analytic and synthetic discourse was soundly rejected by most of Cohen’s immediate successors, including (in the Jewish world) Martin Buber, Alexander Altmann, and (in the larger world) Martin Heidegger and his many students. We should reject it as well. When we try to specify Cohen’s deduction analytically, we fail to follow it, since we identify with elements in our own experience. The attributes of Cohen’s transcendental subject can have no traction for us, unless we have already taken some sort of (groundless) leap of identification in the first place. When Cohen’s argument is presented synthetically, as a (predetermined) aspect of our Jewish experience, it seems no more persuasive. But Cohen’s failure is not the failure of his tradition. It is not the failure of practical reasoning itself.53

II Charles Taylor (1931–), former Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University and one of the world’s most influential living philosophers, has a share in practical philosophy as well, and, indeed, an affinity with some of the leading features of Marburg Neo Kantianism. But he also departs in ways that will make his version of this tradition far more compelling today, and a more worthy exponent of anti-historicism than the discredited Cohen. The affinities are manifold. Taylor is deeply indebted to the

52 I owe the “tricky” formulation to Leora Batnitzky. On the esotericism in this method, see Steven Schwarzchild. “‘Germanism and Judaism’—Herman Cohen’s Normative Paradigm of the German-Jewish Symbiosis” in Jews and Germans From 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis ed. David Bronsen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1979. 156. Spinoza also allows true belief as a species of knowledge, even when it does not rise to the level of justified true belief. See Spinoza Ethics. Ed/trans. G. H. R. Parkinson. Oxford: Oxford University, 2000. 32–33. 53 This tradition is out of fashion not only among historians, but in the halls of contemporary Jewish philosophy itself. See, e.g., Eugene Borowitz. Choices in Modern Jewish Thought. NY: Behrman House, 1983; Nancy Levene’s introduction in Nancy Levene and Peter Ochs. Textual Reasonings. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002; and Arnold Eisen, Taking Hold of Torah. Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1997, 29.

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philosophical tradition of Kant and Hegel. He is a theist. He is politically engaged, with a long history of involvement in socialist and left-liberal causes and a record of activity in the debate over the place of Quebec in the Canadian Federation. He is an advocate for a synoptic conception of the human sciences, a vitriolic critic of naturalism, the view of the human being as an organism controlled primarily by external causes and internal drives. And, he is an important critic of historicism, with the transcendental tradition as his levy, built up against what seems to him a rising tide. While there are many instructive differences between Cohen and Taylor as well, it would not be an exaggeration to say that each represents a moment in a shared philosophical tradition. The seminal commonality is this: for both Cohen and Taylor philosophy is an activity of reason accounting for itself, and ethics the branch of philosophy where we offer a rational account of ourselves. This PlatonicAristotelian conception of philosophy has been hard pressed by naturalism since the time of Descartes and Spinoza. In the anthropology of naturalism, there is no mechanism for what the ancients understood as rational-accounting-for-self. By the end of the 18th century, anyone seeking to defend this conception of philosophy was on the defensive. The transcendental arguments I am discussing here, whether Cohen’s or Taylor’s, are moments in a late modern defense of an embattled tradition.54 As Cohen scholarship has boomed of late, so scholarship on Taylor has experienced a dramatic surge in recent years as well; though the indefatigable Taylor continues his writing unabated.55 Taylor’s transcendental method, like Cohen’s before it, is complex and ramified, and a detailed examination need not delay us here. Our aim, for which a summary and illustration of Taylor’s perspective must suffice, is to show enough of the native human interest and intellectual merit of Taylor’s line of thinking to discourage a triumphant historicism, a far more tempting attitude for the historian when only Marburg is in his line of vision. 54 See, e.g. Taylor, Charles Taylor. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard, 1989. section 6.2. esp. 121 on the central place of Plato’s logon didonai. On the notion of self-responsible reason, see the early essay, “Responsibility for Self,” in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson. Oxford: Oxford University, 1982. 55 See especially the lucid scholarship of Nicholas H. Smith in Charles Taylor Meaning Morals and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 2002; and his “Charles Taylor.” ed. Ruth Abbey. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2004. 29–51.

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Before launching into this exposition, however, a further note of contrast with Cohen is important. Taylor is poised to leap over the obstacle that stymied Cohen in the eyes of his readers, and, famously, of the Weimar generation. Taylor’s reflection begins with experience. Indeed, it would not be an overstatement to say that his philosophical anthropology is a technology for the exploration and clarification of personal experience. On this point, Taylor could not be more different from the Marburg school, and gets his bearings instead from the existential revolution inspired by Martin Heidegger. Other differences, which largely flow from this decisive one, will become apparent. Crucial differences aside, Taylor’s arguments are structurally similar to the two stages that we identified in Cohen’s Ethik. In stage one, Taylor reasons deductively, in search of a chain of logical entailments that will illuminate the nature of the self. Whereas Cohen deduced virtue-concepts from the idea of the Rechtsstaat, Taylor deduces his value-categories from personal experience. Cohen had insisted that someone who (properly) identified with the Rechtsstaat would see that they must (logically) become the truthful, humble, courageous, faithful, and just servant of God. Taylor argues that someone who carefully attends to his experience will see that she must (logically) value some things strongly, and that her strong values are themselves embedded in narrative frameworks and moral concepts to which she is also (logically) committed. Stage two is Taylor’s Erzeugungslogik.56 Whereas Cohen was decisively committed to reading the ideal of the suffering servant out of Jewish texts, Taylor is committed to facilitating a kind of reasoning about values designed to deepen each individual’s sense of self. He observes this kind of reasoning, which he calls practical, in both the everyday interactions of people and the conventional practices of historians and social scientists. This claim, to discover a form of reason, operative in the everyday world of household and academy, and connecting us to the “feelings and opinions that are” our very own, is Taylor’s decisive difference with Cohen, his Aristotelian rejoinder to Cohen’s Platonism.57 56 The term is Cohen’s, meaning logic of (self )-creation. See Section II-B, above. Contra Smith, I am suggesting that narrative frameworks are a prima facie plausible element in a Taylor-made transcendental argument. See Meaning Morals and Modernity 88, 97–102, 134; Charles Taylor 44–45. 57 “Slavery in Freedom,” in Asher Ginzberg. Selected Essays by Ahad Ha"Am. trans. Leon Simon. Philadelphia: JPS, 1936. The Guide for the Perplexed. III 54, 635.

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A Taylor begins with what he takes to be an inescapable feature of human experience: people have reactions to the world thick with convictions about value, feelings like admiration and contempt, honor and shame, courage and remorse. Moreover, these are not mere preferences about what we desire now. They reflect on our vision of how we want to be in the future. As such, my admiration of a person who “is able to stand his ground” includes a judgment about what is higher and lower; it contains standards by which I will want to assess my preferences as I go forward. Do I prefer to avoid confrontation, even when important issues are at stake? All things being equal, I ought not. This sort of deductive reasoning, as prosaic as it seems, embodies Taylor’s method of transcendental regression to values from the facts of personal experience. In the course of his argument, the axiological categories he articulates become more rich (and less prosaic). Proceeding in this manner, Taylor tries to show that at work inside us are not only standards of self-assessment, but also moral sources, final ends, and narrative configurations. Moral sources are springs of energy and vision, signposts pointing toward what is good and gasoline to get us there. These are, Taylor cautions, embedded in our cultures and civilizations, and, therefore, they will be different for different people. He focuses on three sources: nature, God, and reason, as elaborated in cultural debates since the seventeenth century. Moral sources, in Taylor’s sense, are closely related to final ends, i.e. purposes that nature, God, or reason have in store for us. Sources are also embedded in history, in what Taylor calls narrative frameworks. Taylor identifies three narrative frameworks, corresponding to these sources: Romanticism, the Protestant Reformation, and the European Enlightenment. Taylor believes that if we dig for our moral sources, our final ends and the narratives in which they are embedded will become apparent as well. But, we cannot get very far in understanding this view, it seems to me, without a more concrete illustration. Let us try a second thought experiment, in the spirit of the one we have already completed. Bracketing disbelief, imagine Charles Taylor as a Jewish educator, facing a diverse classroom of adult students. Furthermore, let us suppose that these students are willing to travel the distance that stage one of Taylor’s transcendental argument requires.

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Allow that they see themselves as thick with convictions about value, and duty bound to struggle with conflicts and tensions. What would be the next move in this Jewish education, Taylor-made? The classroom is composed of students with a range of sensibilities, holding strikingly different values and roles in the Jewish community. For the sake of this illustration, let us boil the differences down to three. What would Taylor do, if thrown together with members of a modern orthodox congregation, Zionists (not yet) living in Israel, and a handful of middle class urban Jews, unchurched and unapologetic, but with a hankering for Jewish study, nevertheless? What would he want to do with them as an educator? Taylor would in fact turn to history and cultural texts as the medium for an Erzeugungslogik, and as the material for practical reasoning. His objective would be to weave a discourse that was both faithful to historical context and exemplary of purposes that Jews have pursued under modern conditions. I propose an example of this discourse below, though I want to stress that I have concocted it myself to illustrate Taylor’s version of practical philosophy. I call this the discourse of faith keepers, renaissance seekers, and ethical returnees. I add Enlightenment and Romantic Departures as well, for reasons that will become apparent. While these brief examples are no substitute for richer historical descriptions and much more elaboration on the purposes suggested in them, they should provide a sense of what is implied in Taylor’s notion of narrative frameworks. Faith Keepers carry on as Jews in the modern period in the synagogue, as faithful members of a covenantal community and loyal servants of God. In a liberal version of this story, the medieval kehillah, a kind of Jewish polity, was destroyed during the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the rise of powerful states. On the heels of this development, the social and political basis for rabbinic Jewish life disappeared. Over time, Jews joined civil society, the political and associational life of the new states, on an equal basis with other individuals. In due course, Judaism was transformed from a juridical association, a total and segregated way of life, into a religion, principally a faith in the one God, guarantor of individual happiness and collective flourishing. This story was first parleyed by Saul Ascher in his Leviathan (1792) and plays a central role in the controversial letter by David Friendländer to Wilhelm Teller (1799). The Pittsburg Platform of 1885, a public declaration of the Reform

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movement in America, is an icon of this approach as well. A more conservative version of this orientation was expressed by Samson Raphael Hirsch, father to a modern orthodox stance to Jewish religion in the Diaspora. Hirsch offered a version of this modernization tale that included a commanding God and collective norms. Ethical Returnees are Jews who have been sold on the Enlightenment project, the effort to construct a moral-political world of far reaching human solidarity and universal human rights; for them, Judaism is a complement to the Enlightenment project, or in the most radical version of this narrative, Judaism is this project’s corrective. In either version, Jewish practice becomes a vital element in this larger—and quintessentially modern—undertaking. The narrative of ethical returnees accentuates the power of Jewish practice and texts to motivate human solidarity, and the horrific history of the modern West in the absence of these bonds. Elements of this story are reminiscent of the work of 19th century writers like Moritz Lazarus and Hermann Cohen, but without the pathos engendered by the tragedies of the 20th century. After the Shoah, Joseph Soloveitchik’s The Lonely Man of Faith reflected this story in the mood of religious orthodoxy. More recently, this sensibility found a place in the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, and his student, French critic, Alain Finkielkraut. Renaissance Seekers are critics of the Diaspora as fertile ground for a healthy Jewish existence. Various regimes of thought and practice, including the massive expansion of the logic of capitalism into every corner of existence, and the rising prestige of the natural sciences, have dissuaded many Jews from carrying on as participants in Jewish life. Vicious racial anti-Semitism threatened Jewish safety and fermented Jewish self-hatred. Beginning in the 1880s with the emergence of Zionism and cultural nationalism, Jews began to seize control of their political destiny, defend their dignity, and protect and renew Jewish life. The emergence of this particular story is integrally related to the pogroms of 1881–1919 and has been enshrined in Jewish memory in the writings of Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber, Abraham Isaac Kook, and David Hartman, among others. Enlightenment and Romantic Departures exemplify paths taken out of the Jewish community. The epoch making events alluded to

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in the previous paragraphs encouraged some Jews to leave Jewish affiliation and identification, and often their reasons were bound up with these events. The Enlightenment-based individualism of Benedict Spinoza and Solomon Maimon, and the expressive individualism of salonières like Rahel Varnhagen and Henriette Herz, help to mark a boundary between inside and outside Jewish self-hood, and indicate configurations of meaning that led, and can still lead, beyond Jewish history altogether. Exposing his students to historical configurations like these, Taylor would aim to evoke a considered view from them. Do any of these narratives resonate? Do they represent a gain in self-understanding? To the extent that one of these narratives is attractive, have its poets, belletristic writers and philosophers managed to articulate moral sources and worthy ends that resonate as well? In the examples mentioned, these sources and ends could be as different as Torah and inwardness (Faithkeepers), Tschuvah/repentence and social justice (Ethical Returnees), the People Israel and settlement of the land (Renaissance Seekers) and scientific reason and an illusion-free grasp of the world (Enlightenment Departures). A Taylor-made approach to narration, then, is inductive and hermeneutical, not deductive and ideological; it narrates modern Jewish history from multiple and incompatible perspectives; as such, it is an interpretation of ways of understanding the Jewish world and living in it (or beyond it). In contrast, Cohen’s Erzeugungslogik, to its considerable detriment, was a set of logical entailments, relentlessly applied by the willing, to whatever cultural text arose. In this sense, we could say that Cohen’s pedagogy was indeed ideological, with the temptations to duplicity we have already recorded. By contrast, the parallel moment in Taylor’s pedagogy is open, interpretive, groping, and provisional. Steven K. White has conjectured that Taylor’s brand of inescapability is meant to press up against the limits of our ability to imagine alternatives to our way of being at any given moment in time.58 Cohen’s approach, by contrast, was disturbingly mono-logical. He was as little interested in alternatives in Jewish life as he was in the 58 Stephen K. White. Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University, 2000. 42–74. See also Taylor, “Comparison, History, Truth.” Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1995, and, more recently, his “Gadamer on the Human Sciences,” The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed. Robert J. Dostal. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002. 126–42.

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experience of those who lived them. Cohen’s law of consciousness drove the particular and the plural—Jews, their texts, their practices, and their culture, in the relevant case—always relentlessly toward a singular and decidedly universal signification. In his ethical universe, only one Jewish narrative remained standing at the end of the lesson, the narrative of Israel as suffering servant of God.59 Despite throwing off the mono-logical impulse, however, Taylor’s version remains critical philosophy. In this respect, it is crucial to see that Taylor’s pedagogy is not only a quest for eventual self-affirmation, but also, and preeminently, an ambitious effort at self-interrogation. The actual practices that Taylor sometimes commends to his readers—theistic religion and a brand of politics he calls civic republicanism—can only be viewed, in the context of his commitment to the individual’s responsibility for him/her self, as examples—reasoned conclusions, to be sure, but conclusions linked to a form of accounting for self that is ultimately his alone.60 As a critical philosopher, Taylor’s most cherished target is complacency, and the overly confining bounds of common sense. He takes aim at a false sense of necessity, the conviction that history and biography are always running their course, as they should, or, what amounts to the same thing, as they must. This naiveté, or perhaps despair, Taylor tells us time and time again, always involves a kind of “forgetting.” Taylor’s narrative approach to philosophy, then, is an effort to reinstate in academic tradition and the broader culture, a cast of mind at risk, the ancient tradition of practical reason, or, as we have referred to it above, rational accounting for the self.61 59 What the state is in Ethik, the People Israel is in Religion. On the State as suffering servant in the Ethik, see Introduction-C above. This christological innovation comes by the pen of the acknowledged master of rabbinic exegesis, not by Hermann Cohen. “by polemicizing against Christian theology . . . Rashi absorbed one of its cardinal tenets—namely the dogma of vicarious suffering as a means of salvation; Israel takes here the role of Christ. Who could say whether Rashi’s view is more Jewish or more Christian . . .” Funkenstein, Amos. “The Dialectics of Assimilation.” Jewish Social Studies 1.2 (1995): 9. 60 For Taylor there is something true about the moral relativism that is widespread in modern culture and the contemporary human sciences, though it often is a degenerate simulacrum of the relativism he would advocate. For an insightful discussion of this issue, see Stephen Mulhall. Sources of the Self’s Senses of Itself: A Theistic Reading of Modernity. In Can Religion be Explained Away. Ed. D. Z. Phillips. NY: St. Martin’s Press. 1996. 131–60. 61 See especially “Overcoming Epistemology” in Philosophical Arguments. 14–15, and “Philosophy and Its History.” Philosophy in History eds. Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984. 17–30, esp. 24.

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What kind of reasoning is this in Taylor’s iteration? What would there be for Taylor to do in a classroom? From the point of view of Taylor’s Erzeugungslogik, historical narration is essential. For Cohen reason operated only in the sciences; as a result, as we have seen, his ethics curriculum relied on schooling in jurisprudence, understood as a science. The accounting Cohen gave of the self is in terms of jurisprudence. For Taylor, despite his affinities with Cohen, sciences embody practical reason but are not its exclusive reserve. Taylor is prepared to say that reason operates in history, and that history itself must form part of the ethics curriculum. A Taylor-made curriculum is designed to encourage students to develop an account of themselves that is historically textured, emotionally resonant, and that can be identified with a set of cultural texts and their on-going discussion. It is our cultural texts, if not only they, that can evoke selfrecognition and self-critique. B For Taylor, history and the other human sciences are elaborately developed instances of the practical reasoning that we do everyday, though we often neglect their ethical potential.62 The salient features of any practical reasoning, human sciences included, are two fold for Taylor: 1. An ad hominem argument is made. On this level, we map out our alternative as a more worthy competitor to an ostensibly inferior interpretation or realization of a common object (e.g. the purposes of Jewish life under certain conditions). Practical reasoning for Taylor is always comparative and dialogical in form. 2. A claim of asymmetrical relations is developed regarding two competitors. On this level, we try to vindicate our claims by pointing to the fact that our view integrates the assets of some competitive alternative, while side-stepping its liabilities.

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The key source for this view is “Explanation and Practical Reason” in Philosophical Arguments. 34–60. The link between practical reason and the human sciences in Taylor’s philosophy is insightfully discussed in Smith. Charles Taylor Meaning Morals and Modernity. 120–38.

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From our point of view, so we argue, the other guy is driven by his own commitments to come over to our way of seeing a contested proposition q. But in order to make this transition perspicuously, he will also have to give up other elements of his position. The ad hominem argument seeks to reveal that our version of q is a necessary condition of commitments that our adversary holds at T1. If we can bring him to see this at T2, then he will be driven toward our view, or at the very least, a revision of his own, that puts his view in better order at T3. Now, this description, as I said, purports to be a lucid account of the way people actually reason with each other in ordinary domains, and especially characteristic of the human sciences. Students enrolled in a Taylor-made curriculum would be encouraged to emulate this mode in relation to the narrative frameworks outlined above. If one most resonates with the position of faith keeper, for instance, then the task of practical reasoning is to try to imagine possible transitions to renaissance seeker, ethical returnee, and/or Enlightenment and Romantic Departures. Put differently, when students entertain one of the narrative frames they do not identify with, and try to imagine themselves driven to it by their very own lights, they are reasoning practically for Taylor. In this educational situation, then, the dialogue between positions is not between two parties. In Taylormade Jewish education, the dialogic form takes place in the inner life of the students themselves. C But, is this in fact the way we reason in the human sciences, and the way we ought to? We have a particularly rich and suggestive opportunity to test this out, given the concerns of my inquiry. In recent years, as I noted at the outset, David N. Myers has proffered an interpretation of Hermann Cohen at odds with the one advanced here. Moreover, he has done so under the banner of historicism. I should repeat that Myers’s book is a remarkable piece of scholarship, generous with historical subjects and contemporary authors alike. Myers eschews polemic, even when entering into the most contested terrain. Remarkably, he holds the line on this commitment, even in the course of his extended argument that Cohen is, somehow, a “Protestant Jew.” He distances himself from those who see Cohen as traitorous, for instance, and prods and cajoles his readers

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to see Cohen’s philosophy empathetically, as a “unique blend of Kantian and Jewish ideals . . . assiduously cultivated.”63 What is Myers’s purpose, then, in tarring Cohen with the feathers of the West’s great antinomian movement, and with recourse to a term (“Protestant Jew”) that, despite Myers’s protestations, does in fact sound like self-mutilation, if not treachery? What is at stake, I want to suggest, is a remarkable effort to occupy new ground as a historicist concerned with culture, not influence. Renouncing a version of historicism obsessed with influence, Myers pioneers an approach he calls the “cultural history of ideas,” whose aspiration is to “move beyond winners and losers in. . . [a] game of historical influence . . .” [and] “to see history as a series of lateral, and not merely vertical, movements.” Regarding the historical relations between Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity, for instance, Myers admires metaphors that trade in interactive systems: the familial metaphor of competitive siblings, rather than overbearing parent and rebellious child, and the biological metaphor of a “‘single circulatory system within which discursive elements could move’” back and forth between Christians and Jews. As he says emphatically, he is looking to mark out a historical space for inquiry “beyond influence.”64 It is in this context that Myers wants to make “Protestant Jew” conspicuous in naming his narrative about Cohen. For Myers, Cohen’s activity marks out a thin membrane between German and Jewish history, precisely the space “beyond influence” that Myers wants to explore. Myers explains Cohen’s putative Protestant attribute in at least three ways. Quite naturally, he makes the least out of the first, an etiological explanation that highlights influence. Cohen’s upbringing in Coswig, Anahalt-Bernburg, his schooling in Dessau, and his career in Marburg, had put him in proximity to a powerful Protestant milieu. His father, a traditional melamed, had collegial relations with Protestant teachers and amicable ones with Protestant neighbors in the town. The Herzogliches Gymnasium in Dessau was a thoroughly Protestant environment; and the University of Marburg, where he arrived as a Privatdozent in 1873 and remained until 1912, was a Protestant university and home to some of the most celebrated Protestant 63

Myers, “Quest,” 197; Resisting, 161. Myers, Resisting, 167. In the case of Cohen, he is interested in the way Cohen’s jüdischer Kultureprotestantismus signaled “discrete boundaries around . . . Jewish group allegiance.” “Quest,” 198. 64

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theologians and historians in all of Germany, many of whom Cohen counted as friends. Second, Myers sees an affinity between Cohen and a group of liberal Protestants who organized themselves more or less contemporaneously with him. This movement, which others have termed Kulturprotestantismus, emphasized, like Cohen, the preeminence of the ethical in the religious life; the compatibility of modernity with ethical religion; and the vocation of the German state as a Rechtstaat, whose purpose was to unify nation-states into a confederation, and (ultimately) bring world-history toward messianic fulfillment in a state of justice and peace. Neither the influence described nor the affinity observed here are controversial; but neither do they begin to explain why Myers would call Cohen a goy.65 The picture becomes clearer, however, with the third set of reasons. Myers holds that Cohen gave ethical values in Judaism priority over the law, and neglected rabbinic sources in favor of the Bible, especially the Prophets. When Cohen did consult sources beyond the biblical text, they “tended not to be rabbis but philosophers, not all of whom were Jewish.”66 Now, there is something right about this last characterization, as our own analysis of Cohen’s “memorial” to Maimonides has shown. Cohen did have a marked preference for prophets and philosophers, and he did offer tendentious readings of both. Moreover, it is true beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cohen was anti-clerical, denied rabbinic authority, accorded inwardness high value and framed Judaism in ethical terms. However, Myers goes too far. To suggest that Cohen inclined toward a Protestant ideal of sola scriptura and neglected rabbinic sources is a gross distortion; to leave the impression that Cohen’s philosophy was antinomian (in the Protestant style) is simply wrong.67 This is not the place to explore the depths of Cohen’s engagement with rabbinic sources. But, I have already presented enough

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Goy is a pejorative Jewish term for Christian. Myers, “Quest,” 209. Myers also argues on the basis of things Cohen said about the identity or affinity of Judaism and Protestantism in the midst of polemic or controversy. He also reaches for psychological explanations when Cohen idealizes German culture. “Quest,” 211. Given the programmatic subterfuge of Cohen’s Erzeugungslogik, this is perilous historical reasoning. See Section II-D and note 51 above. 67 Myers, “Quest,” 206, 208–9. Resisting, 47, 48, 59. 66

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of the damning evidence from Ethik and Religion of Reason to make clear how little Myers’ more extreme characterizations should apply. At the heart of Cohen’s project was the impulse to respond to the charge that the centrality of law in Judaism was in any way at odds with the admirable Enlightenment project. His response was in point of fact to assert the opposite. Adherence to law was the very heart of the moral enterprise. In Ethik, Cohen’s rejoinder shows up in the transcendental logic, where the subject is constituted by law. In Religion, it shows up, in parallel fashion, as the fulcrum of the entire book, in the rite of Yom Kippur. Despite his thoughtful critique of his colleagues’ obsessions with influence, Myers confesses that his treatment of Cohen is written from “an unmistakably historicist perspective.” This is a fair concession, since the book is, in fact, written from start to finish, as if historicism were true. But what does this imply, especially after Myers’ repudiation of a portion of the historicist legacy focused on influence. What Myers remains committed to, surprisingly enough, is nihilism, or what amounts to the same thing, the total impotence of practical reason. Historicism, Myers implies in his parting words, is a nihilistic doctrine. Despite what we might yearn for, no “experience or belief system defies historical gravity.” Having contextualized Cohen and three of his successors, Myers comes full circle to the theme with which he began the book, the fin de siècle experience of crisis. We cannot shield our faith in Judaism any more than 19th century Christians could shield theirs from threatening inquiries into the historicity of Jesus. Moreover, the only palliative for what ails us is study of the crisis itself. In this, Myers seems to say, we at least become a community of struggle and noble defeat. “. . . we have not been alone in our despair.”68 Now, this is a very cryptic coda to a modern historical book, but it is by no means the most interesting voice in the closing chapter. Another voice not only refuses despair, but moves boldly into the future with conviction. To uncover the deeper ground under Myers’ missteps, this is the voice we must bring out.

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History, 172.

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D By his own estimation Myers’s interpretation of Cohen aims to make sense of Cohen’s predicament as a Jew “for whom assimilation was deemed a noble path.”69 And, the explanation comes as a beautifully written, chronologically sensitive, rich description of Cohen in interaction with Jews, and Christians, especially academic colleagues. But, what is the importance of Cohen’s “predicament” for us? What does Myers think the study of it might offer his readers? And what makes rich description of the contexts in which Cohen lived, or what Myers’’s calls the cultural history of ideas, well-suited to this task? Myers, it seems to me, has written a book with a “second language.”70 In his native tongue, he is resigned to narrate the constant passing away of all values and commitments. In his second (in which he is considerably less articulate), he urges his readers to consider that assimilation, pursued with integrity, can be a blessing for the Jews. Cultural spaces, so the argument goes, do open up in the modern Diaspora, just as they have in the past. A counter-trend in 20th century historiography, first pursued by Simon Rawidowicz (1896– 1957), Gerson Cohen (1924–1991), and Amos Funkenstein (1937–1995), demonstrates as much. In our generation, Daniel Boyarin and Peter Schäfer have portrayed the relations between Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity in this fashion, but the greater controversy surrounds the history of Jews in the modern period. Here Myers rightly takes aim at Zionist historians, and their well-known predilection to negate the creativity of the Diaspora. Myers offers his treatment of Cohen as a modest reply to this Zionist analysis. What he gives us, paradoxically, is a snapshot of cultural creativity that resists history, if history means historical negation, or, what amounts to the same, reduction of the exilic past to an epiphenomenon of gentile history.

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Resisting History, 40. The strategy I adopt here, to identify a “second language” at war with Myers’ native tongue, is also part of the tradition of practical reasoning to which Cohen and Taylor belong. See, for example, Robert Bellah. Habits of the Heart. Berkeley: University of California, 1985. Jeffrey Stout. Ethics After Babel The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents. Boston: Beacon, 1988. But cf. Eisen and Cohen, The Jew Within. 7–8, and the insightful review by Michael Meyer. “Will the Center Hold Conservative Judaism Re-Examined.” Conservative Judaism 54.1 (2001): 5–16. The stark contrast that both Eisen/Cohen and Meyer draw between “personalism” and a Judaism of obligation is drawn into question by Taylor’s view, a view of the human person that includes practical reasoning as well as the drive toward self-fullfillment. 70

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But trying to speak two languages at once proves confusing for Myers, and cuts as much against his principle stance as his neglect of the finer points of Cohen’s philosophy. The very act of naming Cohen’s cultural space Protestant testifies to the confusion here. Myer’s innuendo that Cohen had, somehow, overstepped a boundary, usually honored by self-affirming Jews, is bolstered by Myer’s first language, the stuff of German Jewish history, but upset, and fatally so, by his entanglement in the second, a normative language rooted in the tradition of practical reasoning. Myers cannot have it both ways, making axiological arguments when it suits him, declaring anti-historicism dead when it does not. When anti-historicism is dead, historians are free to name the past without regard for history as a moral science. Cohen can be named Protestant, innocently, because of his milieu. But Myers and other historians should know that anti-historicism is not an exclusively Neo Kantian affair. As a challenge to historicism, it is as powerful an alternative as the tradition of practical philosophy can provide at any given moment. At the present time, there are in fact a number of well-articulated positions, including Charles Laramore, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Brandom, Alasdair MacIntyre, John McDowell, and, of course, Charles Taylor’s. Naming Cohen is hardly an innocent affair. In the narrative framework I developed, Cohen appears as an ethical returnee. This comports not only with his biography, having become more involved in Jewish affairs from 1904, but also, more profoundly, with a teleology he articulated, one that shines through much of what he wrote in his later work. Judaism, in Cohen’s framing, is a corrective and a complement to the Enlightenment Project of Immanuel Kant. My intention, it should be clear, is not to vindicate the framework of ethical return. Whatever the Hegelian background of this position, Taylor’s dialectical reasoning explicitly rejects a search for an absolute standpoint. The narrative frame that shows up in Cohen’s life will have to continue to compete with others, named (e.g. Faith Keeper, Renaissance Seeker) and yet unnamed. But to call Cohen Protestant is to prejudice the educational enterprise before it has hardly begun. Myers wisely does not totally seek to repress his commitment to the value of Jewish cultural spaces outside of the land of Israel, but he would do well to articulate and defend it, or, if this cuts too strongly against the grain of training and temperament, to support other colleagues in the human sciences who are inclined and equipped to do so.

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Historicists and anti-historicists have indeed been involved in a tug-o-war in the last 150 years. Although one would never know it from reading Resisting History, this struggle has not always seemed to its participants a game of winner-take-all. Under the influence of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770–1831), scholars like Cohen sometimes believed that history, philosophy, and the social sciences could co-relate in the enterprise of explaining the human condition. There are champions of this view today as well, though they are certainly overpowered by the fragmentation of the disciplines. The brief example I have given of Jewish education, Taylor-made, takes up once again the Marburg position on the unity of the human sciences. Historical thinking, now of a kind more akin to Myers, combines with practical reasoning, ad hominem style, in an effort to help students locate themselves historically in a (nevertheless) trans-historical conversation about the Jewish narrative going forward. Historians need not take up the mantle of practical reasoning. But, they also should not needlessly conspire in eradicating it from the classroom. To continue this part of the legacy of historicism is indeed cause for despair, and, as Tirosh-Samuelson has implied, to abandon one’s post as educator.

HERMANN COHEN AND LEO STRAUSS Leora Batnitzky Princeton University

Introduction Leo Strauss concluded both his first and last major works with reference to Hermann Cohen.1 The arguments of Strauss’s first published book—Spinoza’s Critique of Religion—are rooted in Strauss’s initial work on Cohen’s interpretation of Spinoza. Strauss’s second book— Philosophy and Law—begins and ends by declaring that Cohen is right that the philosophy of Maimonides represents “true rationalism” and more particularly that Maimonides is better understood as a Platonist than as an Aristotelian. Strauss’s last published work, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, published posthumously, ends with an essay on Cohen, which was also the introduction to the English translation of Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. Interestingly, though this essay on Cohen is the final essay in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, it doesn’t have much to say about Plato. Although Strauss claims in this essay not have read Religion of Reason for forty years, those familiar with Strauss’s project will recognize that it is from an engagement with Cohen that Strauss forms his basic reading of Maimonides and then Plato. These readings changed in emphasis throughout Strauss’s career but they nevertheless remained fundamental to his philosophical program. In this essay, I explore Strauss’s philosophical relation to Cohen. It is not an overstatement to suggest that Cohen is responsible for Leo Strauss’s turn to medieval Jewish philosophy. The focus of this essay, however, is not primarily on the details of Cohen and Strauss’s

Presented at “Hermann Cohen’s Ethics,” the University of Toronto, August 2001. The essay is part of a larger work, Leo Strauss and Emannuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation, Cambridge University Press, 2006. 1 See Alan Udoff ’s introductory essay on Strauss’s relation to Cohen in Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, edited by Alan Udoff (Boulder, Colo.: L. Rienner Publishers, 1991).

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respective readings of Maimonides.2 Instead, I would like to explore the broader hermeneutical questions involved in Strauss’s reading of Cohen. I will suggest that Cohen’s readings of Maimonides and Spinoza before him shape the hermeneutical issues that are at the very heart of Strauss’s own hermeneutical approach both in their content and in their methodological presuppositions. In a theme that connects Strauss’s concerns about Plato, Maimonides, and “contemporary” politics and ethics with Cohen’s concerns about these same issues, Strauss argues that Cohen’s thought provides profound insight into a number of fundamental issues. Yet Strauss argues that Cohen is right for the wrong reasons and in fact almost despite himself. I will suggest that Strauss performs his own prescription for how to read classical Jewish texts to Cohen and in so doing reverses the parameters of Cohen’s philosophical program. In this connection, the argument of this essay is two fold. First, Leo Strauss couldn’t have been Leo Strauss without Hermann Cohen. And second, in becoming Leo Strauss, Strauss has reshaped, if not possibly destroyed, the possibility of Hermann Cohen’s very project, thus bearing witness to Strauss’s claim, which he quotes from and then turns against Cohen, that “it is a question of whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation.”3 The relationship between Cohen and Strauss is important not only for appreciating Cohen’s enduring legacy, but also for contemplating Cohen’s central question, which subsequently became Strauss’s central question, a question that concerns the fundamental relationship between history and truth.

Part One: The Crisis of Historicism For Strauss, as for Cohen, the fundamental hermeneutical issue is the relation between historical interpretation and philosophy. Although they diverge significantly on the definition of “philosophy,” Strauss shares with Cohen the task of preserving an autonomous realm for

2 For a fascinating discussion of Cohen’s essay see Almuth Bruckstein’s Ethics of Maimonides (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). 3 I discuss the significance of this quotation in section four.

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philosophy which means primarily a realm that is beyond and not constructed by history. In Natural Right and History Strauss defines “historicism” as the notion that “all human thoughts or beliefs are historical.”4 Strauss famously argues there that historicism is incoherent on its own terms, for it brings with it its own demise. Strauss agrees with Cohen that the view that truth is constituted by history destroys not only the possibility of philosophy, or reason, but also of religion, or revelation. Where Strauss and Cohen disagree perhaps most fundamentally is on the relation between philosophy and religion (or reason and revelation). Strauss of course maintains that philosophy and revelation exist in a complementary but necessary and irresolvable tension. Cohen of course maintains that there is no such tension, once we understand philosophy and revelation properly. Cohen is also a greater fan of historical progress than Strauss is. As David Myers has noted recently, Cohen was ambivalent with regard to history.5 Drawing on the distinction between empirical (historisch) and apriori ( geschichtlich) notions of history, Cohen maintained, in Steven Schwarszchild’s words, that “only those facts deserve the dignity of that name [geschichtlich] which are consciously ordered with an eye toward the rational, i.e. ideal, end.”6 Strauss recognizes no such rational end to history. My suggestion in this essay is that these very fundamental differences between Strauss and Cohen on the relation between philosophy and religion as well as historical progress are connected to, if not rooted in, their respective hermeneutical approaches to what each regards as the problem of historicism. As Cohen expressed it perhaps most succinctly in his introduction to his Religion of Reason, a methodological approach for him is always and of necessity connected to its philosophical theme. Cohen argues that we cannot distinguish between philosophical methodology and philosophical content. Strauss very

4 Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1950), p. 25. 5 David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents on German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 6 Steven S. Schwarzschild, “Two Modern Jewish Philosophies of History: Nachman Krochmal and Hermann Cohen,” D. H. L. dissertation, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, 1955, pp. 96–97.

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much agrees with Cohen on this point and is a pupil of Cohen’s in this regard. Where Strauss disagrees with Cohen is on the very methodological approach for accomplishing the goal he shares with Cohen: again, the preservation of an autonomous realm for philosophy that is beyond historical construction. Strauss insists that historicism can be averted only by working through the historicist position, and not, as Strauss claims Cohen does, by simply ignoring this position. The challenge that Strauss then poses to Cohen is not one of mere methodology. Rather, very much in Cohen’s spirit, Strauss’s challenge to Cohen’s methodology goes to the core of Cohen’s particular brand of neo-Kantianism as well as to Cohen’s arguments about the relation between philosophy and Judaism. Strauss’s criticism of Cohen concerns the heart of Kantianism and neo-Kantianism: the relation between synthetic and a priori knowledge. To appreciate Strauss’s criticism of Cohen, we must begin by examining the language that Strauss uses to describe Cohen’s methodology.

Part Two: Internalization, Inner and Outer Form In his introduction to Philosophy and Law, Strauss describes Cohen’s philosophical method with regard to Judaism as “internalization” (Verinnerlichung). Strauss writes that the later [post-Enlightenment] thinkers re-established the foundation of the tradition . . . in a modified, ‘internalized’ form. But it is not at all difficult to see that the ‘internalizing’ of concepts like creation, miracles, and revelation robs these concepts of their meaning . . . Did not the movement whose exemplary and unforgotten expression was the development, if not the teaching, of Hermann Cohen—did not that movement have as its actual, though often hidden, impulse precisely the insight into the questionableness of the ‘internalizations’ with which the nineteenth century generally contented itself ?7

This quotation summarizes Strauss’s two-fold contention about Cohen. First, that Cohen’s basic method is one of “internalization” and sec-

7 Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum, Verständis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer (Berlin: Schocken, 1935). Translated by Eve Adler as Philosophy and Law (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 24–26.

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ond, that this method opens itself up to its own demise. In his lifelong, if later unconscious, engagement with Cohen, Strauss elaborates on these two contentions in varying degrees of detail. Let us examine each contention in turn. First, Strauss is quite precise in describing Cohen’s method as “internalization” and in so doing recognizes the inner coherence of Cohen’s philosophical agenda, a coherence that has been emphasized by a number of Cohen’s more recent interpreters.8 On the most basic level, Strauss means by “internalization” that Cohen’s arguments about miracles, creation, and revelation concern not the “external” expression of these phenomena but their “internal” meaning. This characterization of Cohen is indeed accurate. Note for example Cohen’s descriptions of creation and revelation in Religion of Reason: [Creation] is no longer a question of a mythical interest in a unique primeval act. . . . the problem of creation transfers its meaning from the realm of causality to the realm of teleology. Consequently the share of reason in religion takes cognizance of the problem of ethics, whereas creation, insofar as it is seen from the point of view of causality, requires only a coming to terms with logic. . . . revelation is the continuation of creation insofar as it sets as its problem the creation of man as a rational being.9

But Strauss’s use of the term “internalization” to describe Cohen’s philosophy goes beyond a description of Cohen’s account of basic theological categories. As Dieter Adelmann has argued in great detail, Cohen’s philosophical system is predicated on his teacher Heymann Steinthal’s notions of inner and outer form.10 Steinthal’s view of language responds to the basic philosophical problem of the German

8 See in particular Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, translated by John Denton (Albany: The State University Press of New York, 1997). 9 Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, hg. von Benzion Kellerman (Leipzig: Fock, 1919). Translated with an introduction by Simon Kaplan, introductory essay by Leo Strauss, as Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972), p. 70. 10 Dieter Adelmann, “H. Steinthal und Hermann Cohen” in Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion, edited by Stéphane Moses and Hartwig Wiederbach (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1997), pp. 1–33. According to Adelmann, Steinthal was attracted to Boeckhs’s idea of philology as “knowledge of the detected one” because Steinthal, as would Cohen after him, was in keeping with an earlier psychology for which “the soul is not a law alone, but is regarded as an ideal state of mind from within” (p. 13).

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idealist tradition: the relation between a priori and synthetic knowledge. Following some of his contemporaries (and August Boeckh in particular), Steinthal understood this philosophical problem in the context of philology as the problem of “knowledge of the detected one” [Erkenntnis des Erkannten].” Adelmann convincingly shows that it is not possible to understand Cohen’s philosophy outside of the horizon of what was for him contemporary philology (from Humboldt to Boeckh, with whom Cohen also studied, to Steinthal).11 Adelmann goes further than previous interpreters of Cohen in suggesting that even as Cohen broke away from his earlier commitment to the interconnection between philosophy and psychology (and from the work of Moritz Lazarus in particular), Cohen’s methodology does not break with Steinthal’s notions of inner and outer form. Adelmann argues that Cohen relies on Steinthal’s notion of inner form in his transcendental method that attempts to account for the unity of consciousness, in his understanding of the relationship between Judaism and philosophy and in his argument about the relation between religion and ethics. I will just lay these arguments out very briefly. Cohen’s transcendental method is based on a reworking of Kant’s view of the relation between a priori and synthetic knowledge. As I will discuss further below, Cohen’s neo-Kantian innovation is to insist that sensation is shaped by thought, or to put it in Steinthal’s terms, that the inner form of thought shapes the outer form of sensation. Adelmann shows also that Cohen’s arguments about the correlation between Judaism and philosophy are based on Steinthal’s earlier view that “the prophetic vision is the inner form of language [itself ].”12 Finally, Adelmann convincingly shows that Cohen’s very argument about the relation between religion and ethics, the theme of Religion of Reason, must be understood in the context of Steinthal’s notions of inner and outer form. Simply put, religion is the inner form, while ethics is the outer form. This argument, indeed, captures Religion of Reason in which Cohen’s task is to elucidate the share that religion has in reason. As Cohen puts the problem: Ethics can recognize and give recognition to man only as a member of humanity. As an individual man he can only be a representative carrier of humanity. . . . Does ethics have the methodological means

11 12

Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 25.

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for establishing it, if its goal is the totality (Allheit) which is realized in humanity? Would not such a division and gradation lie in the general direction of plurality (Mehrheit) and thus be an aberration from ethics’ unifying goal of totality?13

Cohen argues that inwardness (Innerlichkeit) produces true individuals and that only true individuals can form a plurality (as opposed to a totality). Inwardness is produced by way of confession and prayer, which must have a communal context. Hence, the inner form of confession directs the outer form of the congregation, which is true plurality. Religion’s share in reason is the production of the plurality that supports the totality or outer form of ethics.14 Those familiar with Cohen’s philosophy will recognize of course that Adelmann’s reading of Cohen in the context of Steinthal’s arguments about inner and outer form presupposes an argument about the continued coherence of Cohen’s work, from his system to his Religion. I think Adelmann is right in arguing for this coherence (as a number of others have also recently argued) and I’d like to suggest that Strauss recognizes this inner coherence in using the term “internalization” to describe Cohen’s method. I’d like to suggest further that Strauss’s reading of Cohen adds to Adelmann’s analysis an appreciation for the ways in which Cohen’s reliance on Steinthal’s notions of inner and outer form guides Cohen’s approach to history. In order to appreciate Strauss’s claim, we must turn to the relation between Cohen’s philosophical method and his arguments about history, and then to Strauss’s subsequent reshaping of these arguments.

Part Three: Spinoza Strauss begins his 1924 essay “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science,” which analyzes Cohen’s 1915 essay “Spinoza on State and Religion, Judaism and Christianity,” by stating that It is typical of Hermann Cohen’s style that he couches the critique of an idea in the critique of the possibly accidental expression of that idea. This is the way of our intensive and penetrating traditional art of

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Religion of Reason, pp. 13–15. See in particular in Religion of Reason pages xxxvi, 203, and 218 for more discussion of Innerlichkeit. 14

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Those familiar with Cohen will know that Strauss is of course absolutely right about Cohen’s style. We have already mentioned Cohen’s elucidation of his title “religion of reason out of the sources of Judaism” as his introduction to this book. Cohen, like traditional Jewish interpretation, “takes every word seriously and weighs it carefully.” With this in mind, Strauss sums up Cohen’s criticism of Spinoza, which for Cohen is captured in the perhaps seemingly incidental title of Spinoza’s book, “Theologico-Political Treatise”: [Cohen’s] criticism of the title contains in a nutshell the criticism of the book. Philosophy is missing [in the title], and without the link of philosophy the joining together of theology and politics must appear arbitrary. Thus the examination of the title alone arouses the suspicion that the book may have nonobjective presuppositions.16

Strauss proposes in effect to reverse Cohen’s method by showing, by way of a historical-critical approach, that Spinoza was justified in not referring to “philosophy” in his title. For Cohen, there is an “unnatural connection” between the literary critique of the Bible [the “Theologico”] in the title and the “publicist task” [the “Political” in the title]. Because Cohen does not find a logical connection between these words, he concludes that these ideas— the theological and the political—“stand only in a very loose connection with one another.”17 Based on what he calls the “unnaturalness” of this lack of connection in the title, Cohen argues that Spinoza titled his book as such, and made the arguments he made, based not on “objective,” true considerations but on his subjective, negative feelings about Judaism. Strauss argues in contrast that there were historical reasons why Spinoza titled his book as such, and that once we appreciate this,

15 “Cohens Analyse der Bible-Wissenschaft Spinozas” in Leo Strauss Gesammelte Schriften edited by Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1997), volume one, Leo Strauss Gesammelte Schriften edited by Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1997), p. 363/p. 141, translated in Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), edited, translated, and with an introduction by Michael Zank (Albany: The State University Press of New York, 2002). 16 “Cohens Analyse der Bible-Wissenschaft Spinozas.” 17 Ibid., p. 364/p. 141.

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we can understand, contra Cohen, that Spinoza came to his conclusions about Judaism and Christianity on the basis of objective, philosophical considerations.18 Whereas Cohen begins by considering the inner form of Spinoza’s argument (the logical meaning of the title) and then moves to what he regards as the outer form of his argument (the question of Spinoza’s personal character), Strauss begins with what he argues is the outer form of Spinoza’s arguments (Spinoza’s historical context) and moves to the inner form of his argument (the question of whether Spinoza’s arguments are philosophically justifiable).19 Strauss’s argument against Cohen is simple. According to Strauss, because Spinoza sought to protect the freedom of inquiry “from the public powers—and there were two public powers, the secular and the spiritual. . . . [I]n Spinoza’s historical context, the connection between a theory of the state and the critique of the Bible is sufficiently motivated.”20 Once he has shown that the title makes sense given its historical circumstances, Strauss proceeds to argue that the Treatise is not incompatible with the Ethics.21 While Spinoza put himself outside of historical Judaism as he knew it, his rejection of the law is philosophically possible (though not necessarily philosophically defensible). Strauss thus begins and ends in opposite places which Cohen begins and ends. For Strauss, Spinoza’s approach is historically justified and therefore can be made sense of philosophically. For Cohen,

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Ibid., p. 376/p. 152. Before turning to the hermeneutical issues at stake here, let me just lay out Cohen and Strauss’s arguments briefly. According to Strauss, Cohen applies “a historiographic method which stems perhaps from the theological science of apologetics: should a passage by an uninspired author be incomprehensible to the interpreter, or should it seem to the interpreter objectionable, then the interpreter must raise questions about the author’s life.” Cohen turns to the events of Spinoza’s life in order to explain Spinoza’s arguments. According to Cohen, “the critique of the Bible would not have entered this book had it not been prepared by another moment in Spinoza’s life.” This moment of course is the Amsterdam Synagogue’s ban on Spinoza and Spinoza’s response to that ban written in his “protest pamphlet.” For Strauss, Cohen’s argument amounts not only to circular reasoning (“Spinoza would not have written his critique of the Bible if he had not held views critical of the Bible”) but also to hints in which “no misunderstanding is possible” about Spinoza’s hostility to the Jewish people, which makes him look like a “[an] informer, a distinct type characteristic of the history of the persecutions of the Jews” (Ibid., p. 363). 20 Ibid., p. 370/p. 143. 21 Ibid., p. 376/p. 152. 19

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Spinoza’s approach is philosophically impossible and therefore can only be made sense of historically, which means for Cohen by way of Spinoza’s personal life. Let us recall again the distinction between empirical (historisch) and a priori ( geschichtlich) views of history. Again, for Cohen, in Schwarzchild’s words “only those facts deserve the dignity of that name [geschichtlich] which are consciously ordered with an eye toward the rational, i.e. ideal, end.” For Cohen geschichtlich history is the inner form of history, while historisch history is the outer form. History’s ideal end, its inner form, its geschichtlich character, determines the pure will and action to transform the outer form of history, its historisch character. This doesn’t mean for Cohen that empirical history in the present conforms to the rational ideal of history. Rather, in keeping with his transcendental principle that posits the projection of sensation as its fundamental principle (a view that is again in keeping with Steinthal’s notions of inner and outer form), Cohen maintains that history is always projected toward the future (this is what Cohen calls “messianism”). When Strauss rejects Cohen’s method of “internalization” in his 1935 Philosophy and Law, his rejection is in keeping with his earlier criticism of Cohen’s historical method. Indeed, in “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science,” Strauss himself connects Cohen’s philosophical method with his anti-historicist argument. Strauss writes: Is it necessary to point out to Hermann Cohen the idea with which the Critique of Pure Reason begins? It is doubtful that Spinoza’s critique of the Bible begins with the ban; assuming, however, that it begins with the ban, it need not therefore arise from it alone. The essential thing, i.e. the contents, would have arisen from Spinoza’s own context of thought [Denkzusammenhang], while the sense impression of the ban merely provided the occasion: ‘Thus we see that the ostensibly psychological interest makes a critical substitution [Unterschleif ] that is fatal and typical.’ Thus concludes Hermann Cohen his exposition of the previously mentioned idea . . . [in] the third edition of his famous work, Kant’s Theory of Experience.22

As Michael Zank points out, the context for Cohen’s remark in his Kant’s Theory of Experience is his discussion of English sensualism, which Cohen claims is “a common psychological misunderstanding of

22

Ibid., p. 376/p. 152.

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Cartesian philosophy.” In Zank’s words, “[b]y referring to this passage, Strauss portrays Cohen as falling short of his own methodological postulate when he looked for extraneous psychological motivations to explain why Spinoza combined political philosophy with criticism of the Bible.”23 But Strauss’s comment goes beyond claiming that Cohen should have heeded his own warnings about mixing philosophy with psychology. Strauss also raises the question of whether Cohen, in his critique of Spinoza, has not exposed the flaw at the heart of his neo-Kantianism. Let us recall the beginning of The Critique of Pure Reason, to which Strauss refers. Kant writes: There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce representations, partly arouse the activity of our understanding to compare these representations, and, by combining and separating them, work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is entitled experience? . . . But though all our knowledge begins with experience it does not follow that it arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge . . . supplies from itself.24

Strauss evokes Kant’s famous beginning not only to question Cohen’s psychologism but also to question Cohen’s especially internalist or internalizing interpretation of Kant, in which Cohen, from Strauss’s perspective, does not take seriously enough what Kant calls “the raw material of sensible impression.” Let us recall then Cohen’s criticism of Kant’s view of sensation, a criticism that forms the basis of Cohen’s neo-Kantianism and that, I suggest, Strauss wants to call into question by referring to the opening of The Critique of Pure Reason. In the third edition of Kant’s Theory of Experience, Cohen criticizes Kant for not balancing properly the relation between reality and sensation and thereby for obscuring his own transcendental principle. Cohen writes: “Instead of going on from the reality of grounding, which lies beyond extensive intuition, to

23 Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), footnote 21 to the translation of “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science.” 24 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), pp. 41–42.

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sensation, Kant started from sensation and grounded reality in it, as a degree of sensation. Thus the transcendental center of gravity was shifted in favor of the principle.”25 As Andrea Poma summarizes Cohen’s criticism of Kant in relation to Cohen’s construction of his own critical philosophy, “Cohen re-established the correct relationship between reality and sensation, foregrounding the fact that the grounding of reality in the object does not lie in sensation, but for sensation, in the principle of intensive magnitude, and thus in thought.”26 Strauss’s criticism of Cohen then is not only that Cohen gives too much weight to sensation or synthetic knowledge (in psychologizing Spinoza) and but that he gives too little weight to sensation or synthetic knowledge (in ignoring the importance of the historisch context of Spinoza’s work). Strauss suggests, to use the term he applied eleven years later to Cohen, that Cohen’s method is “internalist” not only when it comes to Cohen’s theological categories but also when it comes to Cohen’s approach to history and finally also when it comes to the methodological basis of Cohen’s transcendental method. Strauss criticizes Cohen’s method of moving from the geschichtlich form of history to the historisch form of history, or from the inner form to the outer form, while simultaneously justifying his own opposite movement, which we might describe as moving from the historisch to the geschichtlich, or from the outer to the inner. In “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science,” Strauss is a defender of what he calls “historical-critical” interpretation. But even in this early essay, before Strauss became “Strauss,” Strauss uses the “historical-critical” method to arrive at what he describes as true, philosophical considerations that are beyond history, i.e. whether Spinoza’s arguments make philosophical sense, what Strauss describes as “objectively justified.” As he is in this early essay, Strauss would remain a life-long opponent of a wholly historisch approach to history, which would either reduce truth to historical progress or historical context. In this sense, although highly critical of Cohen in this essay, Strauss, while defending a “historical-critical” method remains in a broad

25 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (Berlin: Dümmler, 1877) reprinted in Werke, hg. Vom Hermann-Cohen-Archiv am Philosophischen Seminar Zürich unter der Leitung von Helmut Holzhey (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1977–1987), vol. 1, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Einleitung von Geert Edel, 1987, p. 540. 26 The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, p. 44.

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sense closer to Cohen’s own goal of arriving at philosophical truth beyond history, than he does to any truly historicist methodology. As Strauss developed his esoteric/exoteric approach to reading texts, he became even closer to Cohen in this anti-historicist goal, while still suggesting, as he does in his Cohen-Spinoza essay as well as in Philosophy and Law, that it is only possible to come to trans-historical truth by working through (and not by by-passing as Cohen does) the historicist method. In this context, it is worth discussing briefly Strauss’s own description of his transformation in the preface to the English translation of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Strauss writes: The change of orientation . . . compelled me to engage in a number of studies in the course of which I became ever more attentive to the manner in which heterodox thinkers of earlier ages wrote their books. As a consequence of this, I now read the Theologico-Political Treatise differently than I read it when I was young. I understood Spinoza too literally because I did not read him literally enough.27

While a full discussion of Strauss’s change of orientation is of course beyond the scope of this essay, we can appreciate for our purposes that Strauss comes to emphasize the necessity of a kind of literal reading that is less historicist than the reading he offers in his initial reading of Spinoza. That Strauss understood Spinoza too literally because he did not read him literally enough means for Strauss that he literally had not paid sufficient attention to Spinoza’s literal style. Yet Strauss’s more literal attention to Spinoza does not lead him to read Spinoza as Cohen does (that is, as starting with a literal rendition of the title). Rather, Strauss continues along the path that he outlines in his Spinoza-Cohen essay in beginning first with a historicist point and then working through this point to come to a trans-historical truth. This trans-historical truth for Strauss is the eternal tension between reason and revelation (a tension that Strauss argues Spinoza misleadingly denies). The sensitivity to history that marks Strauss’s change in orientation concerns his attention, as he says, “to the manner in whichheterodox thinkers of earlier ages wrote their books.” As Strauss puts

27 Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, translated by E. M. Sinclair (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 31.

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it in his essay “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” “[p]ersecution . . . gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing, and therewith to a peculiar type of literature, in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the lines. That literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intelligent readers only.”28 Strauss’s esoteric reading of Spinoza begins with this sensitivity to historical context and concludes with an anti-historicist axiom that concerns the eternal nature of humanity and the special provenance of philosophy for recognizing this eternal nature: Thoughtless men are careless readers, and only thoughtful men are careful readers. Therefore an author who wishes to address only thoughtful men has but to write in such a way that only a very careful reader can detect the meaning of his book. But, it will be objected, there may be clever men, careful readers, who are not trustworthy, and who, after having found the author out, would denounce him to the authorities. As a matter of fact, this literature would be impossible if the Socratic dictum that virtue is knowledge, and therefore that thoughtful men as such are trustworthy and not cruel, were entirely wrong.29

We see here the continuity between Strauss early work on Spinoza and his reorientation toward esoteric writing that would dominate his mature work. Both move from the outer form of empirical history to the inner form of rational truth. I have suggested that this movement is rooted in Strauss’s initial engagement with Cohen’s reading of Spinoza and more particularly in Strauss’s reversal of what he aptly calls Cohen’s method of internalization.

Part Four: Maimonides I turn now to Strauss’s reading of Cohen on Maimonides, particularly in his little discussed essay of 1931, “Cohen and Maimonides.”30 In this essay, Strauss criticizes the details of Cohen’s attempt to elucidate the true rationalism of Maimonides, but Strauss also shapes

28 Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 25. 29 Ibid. 30 “Cohen und Maimuni” in Leo Strauss Gesammelte Schriften edited by Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1997), volume two, Leo Strauss Philosophie und Gesetz—Frühe Schriften, pp. 393–436.

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his own project by arguing that Cohen is right in his conclusions about Maimonides, but for the wrong reasons. And as he does in his essay on Cohen and Spinoza, Strauss argues that Cohen is wrong even on his own terms. Quoting Religion of Reason—“Monotheism cannot have any tolerance with regard to polytheism. Idolatry has to be destroyed absolutely. This decision is the precondition of true monotheism, the monotheism of love for God, of worship grounded in love”31—Strauss evokes Cohen’s own charge with regard to the articulation of true monotheism. Strauss proposes to exhibit no tolerance for what he argues is Cohen’s misreading of Plato and Aristotle, as well as Maimonides, Hegel, and Kant. In assigning himself this (from a Cohenian point of view) “prophetic” task, Strauss notes that he is also in keeping with Cohen’s notion of philosophy, which is the duty to root out all error.32 For all the detail and complexity of argument, Strauss’s general point is fairly straightforward. Strauss argues Cohen misunderstands Maimonides because of his basic methodological misconceptions. Nonetheless Strauss argues that Cohen, perhaps inadvertently, comes to the correct conclusions: that Maimonides represents true rationalism and that Maimonides is truly a Platonist. The details of why Strauss thinks Cohen is wrong go to the heart of Strauss’s own project, which concerns the possibility of a return to pre-modern rationalism. I turn to this general aspect of Strauss’s argument and how it relates to Cohen’s broad philosophical scheme in the conclusion of this essay. What I’d like to address now, however, is the way in which Strauss’s argument regarding Cohen’s approach to Maimonides also describes rather precisely Strauss’s own approach to Cohen. In a general characterization of what he calls Cohen’s “idealizing” approach to Maimonides, Strauss writes: [Cohen’s] new interpretation is not a mutilation but a “transformation,” a transformation from the mythic dawn to later on. [and now Strauss quotes Cohen:] ‘And it is a question whether such transformation is not the best kind of annihilation.” [Religion, p. 204/p. 174] Whoever knows Cohen knows that this question is only rhetorical: [Strauss quotes Cohen again:] “Against every routine approach the insight must prevail

31 32

Religion der Vernunft, p. 60/Religion of Reason, p. 52, translation altered. “Cohen und Maimuni,” p. 408.

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that progress in religious understanding has been accomplished through the revision and reinterpretation of the sources, while these themselves remain preserved in their individual layers and have been rearranged or given different emphasis.” [Religion, p. 44/p. 58]33

Significantly, Strauss quotes this same line of Cohen’s—“And it is a question whether such transformation is not the best kind of annihilation”—34 years later in the 1965 preface to the English translation of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. With both citations, the reference is off by a page. We might immediately want to call this insignificant, yet, in the case of the 1931 essay, the philosophical content of the disclaimer with which Strauss follows this quotation—which comes from the introduction to Religion of Reason—can also be found on the page that Strauss actually quotes. In the comments preceding the ones that Strauss quotes, Cohen himself attests to the rhetorical nature of his question about whether transformation is “not the best kind of annihilation.” Cohen writes: In the very mind which brings forth the new motive, the aftereffect of the institution which is to be fought lingers on. In this development the old motive preserves its right in the new one; it retains its share in the development toward the new one. Thus the new idea remains connected with the old one even then, when it does not entirely eliminate the old institution, but only transforms it.34

Cohen maintains that change in a tradition (and the context here is prophetic change) is in keeping with the original idea and is not in this sense “annihilation.” It is curious then that Strauss, who certainly considers himself a careful reader and writer, not once but twice (in 1931 and 1965) gives an inaccurate reference for Cohen’s comment and that in the case of the 1931 reference that he does not follow this reference with what Cohen actually writes on the page that he cites. This is especially curious because in Strauss’s 1965 reference to Cohen’s question about whether transformation is not the best form of annihilation, he does not follow this quotation, as he does in 1931, with the correct disclaimer that the question for Cohen is only rhetorical. In his preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss in fact implies

33 34

Ibid., p. 401. Religion, p. 176.

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by way of omission that the view that transformation is the best form of annihilation is actually Cohen’s view. The context of Strauss’s quotation of Cohen (who is not referred to in the text) is not Cohen’s thought, but the hermeneutics of tradition more broadly. Strauss writes: Within a living tradition, the new is not the opposite of the old but its deepening: one does not understand the old in its depth unless one understands it in the light of such deepening; the new does not emerge through the rejection or annihilation of the old but through its metamorphosis or reshaping. ‘And it is a question of whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation.’35

What are we to make then of Strauss’s comments about Cohen’s hermeneutical approach both in this early and then in this mature essay? This is especially interesting in the case of the preface to the Spinoza book, whose purpose is Strauss’s attempt to account for his change of orientation and also for the roots of his own intellectual development; roots that he maintains in this essay are still relevant for understanding his later thought. My suggestion is that Strauss’s quotation of Cohen’s question of “whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation” relates not only to his criticism of what is wrong with Cohen’s approach to Maimonides, and therefore to the formation of Strauss’s mature project, but also to Strauss’s own relation to Cohen. Strauss’s relation to Cohen is one of transformation and thus annihilation. In his work on and comments about Cohen, Strauss thus affirms the question that for Cohen is only rhetorical (and hence can’t be answered in the affirmative). For Strauss, transformation is the best form of annihilation. Strauss does not reject but transforms Cohen’s own contentions about Maimonides, Plato, Judaism, philosophy, as well as “contemporary” ethics and politics in order to annihilate Cohen’s very project. Before turning to Strauss’s transformation, and hence annihilation, of Cohen’s project, it is important to note that the term “annihilation” [Vernichtung] has a special meaning in Cohen’s logic, a meaning to which Strauss does not refer but with which a comparison of Strauss’s use of the term is helpful for our purposes. In the sentence

35

Ibid., pp. 24–25.

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preceding his quotation of Cohen’s rhetorical question “whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation” Strauss, once again, states that “the new does not emerge through the rejection or annihilation of the old but through its metamorphosis or reshaping.” Strauss’s reading of Cohen’s use of the term “annihilation” implies that “annihilation,” and of course transformation, are fundamentally temporal matters. But for Cohen, “transformation” and “annihilation” are not temporal matters. This is part of the reason that the question of whether transformation is not the best form of annihilation is by definition only rhetorical for Cohen. “Annihilation” is in fact an important component of Cohen’s logical principle of origin and its relation to judgment. In his Logic of Pure Cognition, Cohen writes, “The most important of the rights of judgment is that of rejecting and annihilating false judgment. . . . Being able to posit the requirement of annihilation [Vernichtung] in itself is the vital question of judgment.”36 A full treatment of the complexities Cohen’s Logic is of course beyond the scope of this essay. But what is relevant for our purposes in regard to the above quotation is that Cohen means to counter Hegel’s principle of identity, which posits A equals not A.37 What “the requirement of annihilation” means for Cohen is that we can judge something to not be something else.38 He argues contra Hegel that this possibility of negation is necessary in conceiving not

36 Cohen continues: “The ‘not’ expressed by this requirement is different completely from the ‘nothing,’ which is the source of something. . . . There is no non-A, and there cannot be a non-A that, as opposed to the nothing of origin, has a fulfilled content. All the doubts that non-A may, however, take on meanings that may be suited to the justification of its content, must come to an abrupt halt, since, in this way, doubt is cast on identity,” Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, in Werke, volume 6 (1977), pp. 106–107. 37 See Hegel’s discussion of identity in his Logic, especially: “Each has an indifferent self-subsistence of its own through the fact that it has within itself the relation to its other moment; it is thus the whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with itself by its other and contains it. But further, it is mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; hence it is a unity existing on its own account and it excludes the other from itself. . . . It is thus contradiction. (Science of Logic, translated by A. V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), p. 431. For Hegel, identity by definition is what it is not; it is therefore different than difference. Its nature, then, is to be different. Identity, therefore, contains in its own definition, its opposite, difference. 38 Cohen contrasts “annihilation” with his notion of the “nothing of origin,” which is a mathematical nothing (a zero) from which something originates (numbers). What “annihilation” does for Cohen is guarantee the possibility of negation.

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just identity but also in making judgment itself possible.39 It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that when Cohen uses the term “annihilation” in his question about “whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation” that Cohen, on his own terms, could only ask such a question rhetorically. Simply put, judgment about truth and falsehood is not a temporal matter for Cohen. Therefore transformation could not be the best form of annihilation or even a form of annihilation at all for “annihilation,” for Cohen, is an atemporal capacity of judgment. Strauss’s use of the term “annihilation” to imply a temporal transformation is in keeping not only with the plain sense of Cohen’s rhetorical question “whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation” but also with his own reversal of what I have described as Cohen’s view of the relation between the inner and outer forms of reason and history. For Cohen, “annihilation” concerns atemporal judgment that in turn shapes history. The inner form produces the outer form. For Strauss, in contrast, the question of “whether such reshaping is not the best form of annihilation” concerns the external historical context’s relation to the truth, the outer form’s relation to the inner form. In a book review of 1931, the same year that he published his essay on Cohen and Maimonides, Strauss describes the necessity of moving from the outer form of historisch truth to the inner form of philosophical truth. He writes: Bearing in mind the classic representation of the natural difficulties in philosophizing, in other words, the Platonic allegory of the cave, one can say that today we are in a second, much deeper cave, than the fortunate ignorant persons with which Socrates was concerned. We need history first of all to reach the cave from which Socrates can lead us to the light. We need preparatory instruction—that is, precisely learning by reading.40

39 It is worth mentioning that for Hegel the notion of “contradiction” is what fuels world history. Cohen’s anti-historicist argument is thus also found in his logic, in his very attempt to deny the premises of Hegel’s logic. 40 Leo Strauss, “Review of Julius Ebbinghaus’s Über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik,” Deutsche Literaturzeitung, no. 52 (Dec. 27, 1931), col. 2453, as cited in Jurgen Gebhard, “Leo Strauss: The Quest for Truth in Times of Perplexity,” in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigres and American Political Thought after World War II, ed. Peter Graf Kielmansegg et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 98.

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Strauss elaborates on the movement from this second cave in Philosophy and Law, in which he suggests that taking seriously the context of philosophizing is the starting point for reaching the truths of philosophy, which are beyond context. Strauss, like Cohen, aims to reach the timeless truths of the philosophic tradition but unlike Cohen Strauss maintains that to do so we must begin by first historicizing philosophy: To that end and only to that end is the ‘historicizing’ of philosophy justified and necessary: only the history of philosophy makes possible the ascent from the second, ‘unnatural’ cave, into which we have fallen less because of the tradition itself than because of the tradition of polemics against the tradition, into that first, ‘natural’ cave which Plato’s image depicts, to emerge from which into the light is the original meaning of philosophizing.41

Strauss reads Cohen by putting him into his philosophical context, thereby teaching his readers to read not only Cohen but also to read. Strauss, even before his self-proclaimed change of orientation, suggests that by learning to read, we may glimpse the timeless truths expressed by Maimonides and Plato. It is in this sense that Strauss temporalizes Cohen’s atemporal term “annihilation” in reading Cohen against himself. We turn now to that reading. Strauss argues not that Cohen is wrong about Maimonides but that Cohen is in fact exactly right that Maimonides is the true model of rationalism and that Maimonides is truly a Platonist and not an Aristotelian. Yet Strauss argues that Cohen’s reasons for arguing as he does—and hence Cohen’s very project—needs to be transformed. This transformation, of course, is the heart of Strauss’s project, which is to rethink the modern prejudice that a return to pre-modern philosophy is impossible. In order to appreciate this transformation and hence annihilation, let us turn then to Strauss’s arguments about Cohen and Maimonides. As he does in the case of Cohen’s interpretation of Spinoza, Strauss begins his criticism of Cohen’s interpretation of Maimonides with a historical-critical point. He argues that the dichotomies that Cohen presents between Hegel and Kant on the one hand and between Aristotle and Plato, on the other, are historically inaccurate, for Hegel

41 This quotation comes from Strauss’s second note to his introduction of Philosophy and Law. See Philosophy and Law, p. 136.

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was a Kantian and Aristotle was a Platonist. This appreciation for the historical placement of a philosopher is in keeping with what I have suggested is Strauss’s affirmative response to Cohen’s rhetorical question, that transformation might be the best form of annihilation. Yes, Hegel and Aristotle are different from Kant and Plato respectively but they are only truly different because of their reliance on their predecessors. Hegel and Aristotle respectively transform Kant and Plato’s respective philosophies and if one is convinced by either of their arguments (which of course Cohen is not) then their success will be based upon this transformation, which amounts to an annihilation of his predecessor. Strauss acknowledges that there is a difference between Plato and Aristotle but he argues that the difference isn’t what Cohen maintains it is. Cohen argues in his 1908 essay on Maimonides that Maimonides is a Platonist and not an Aristotelian because Maimonides has ethics at the heart of system. For Cohen, Plato, ethics, and true rationalism go together. In short, Plato’s great insight is his recognition of the good that is beyond being (a view that would later be picked up by Emmanuel Levinas). Cohen argues that Plato’s notion of the good is not only the height of ethics but of rationalism also because Plato, as opposed to Aristotle, puts ethics on par with science.42 Strauss maintains that Aristotle is a Platonist precisely in the sense in which Cohen argues he is not. Cohen agrees that Aristotle does make a distinction between ethics and science, or more broadly, between ethics and speculation (what Cohen calls cognition). Yet Strauss argues that Plato makes this very distinction and that Aristotle is only following Plato in doing so as well. Strauss claims

42 As Cohen puts it, “This assumption [that Maimonides is ‘an epigone of Aristotle’] seems to have ignored how much it deprecates the religious concept and its inherent value for Maimonidean ethics. With due respect to the god of Aristotle, he is truly not the God of Israel. . . . Due to his principle opposition to the fundamental doctrine of the Good as idea, Aristotle turns into an opponent of ethics as science. . . . [Maimonides’] basic aspiration, that theology should culminate in ethics, attests to his rationalism; likewise every stage of Maimonides’ dogmatics tends towards ethics. Maimonides’ acceptance of the Aristotelian approach towards ethics would thus undermine his rationalism. The difference between the Aristotelian and Maimonidean approach lies consistently and in every respect in the significance of Maimonides’ concept of God for his theology and also, as must be assumed, for his ethics” (Hermann Cohen, Jüdische Schriften III, ed. B. Strauss (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1924), p. 302.

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further that Maimonides is in keeping with both Plato and Aristotle in adhering to such a distinction. Cohen’s entire interpretation of Maimonides, as well as the Cohenian program, becomes questionable in this light. Strauss argues that ethics is not Maimonides’ primary philosophical motivation and by implication that true rationalism is not marked by what Cohen maintains is the confluence between ethics and cognition, as well as between pure and practical reason.43 Strauss implies that if this confluence is not founded in Plato and Maimonides, as Cohen claims it is, then the Cohenian program and Cohen’s ethics in particular fall apart. In the final part of his essay on Cohen and Maimonides, Strauss criticizes Cohen’s interpretation of Maimonides’ doctrine of negative attributes. Cohen claims that Maimonides’ attributes of action determine God as the model of ethics. For Strauss, Cohen’s interpretation denies the metaphysical dimension of Maimonides’ doctrine in favor of ethics.44 Cohen of course would respond that metaphysics is ethics. Indeed, this is the crux of Cohen’s claim about Plato’s notion of the good: that it is both metaphysical and ethical, that its metaphysical reality is its ethical meaning. Strauss’s response to this claim is that for Maimonides the world does not exist because of ethics. Rather the world exists because God created the world.45 According to Strauss, the highest good for Maimonides is not ethical behavior but pure understanding. But even though pure understanding is a higher good than ethical behavior, for Maimonides the philosopher is not the highest possibility for the human being. Rather, the prophet, who combines the rational with the imaginative faculties, is the highest possibility for the human being. Here again Strauss is in agreement with Cohen’s conclusion that prophecy is the peek of humanity but, once again, he transforms the content of Cohen’s argument. Whereas for Cohen, following Steinthal, prophecy represents the inner form of reason, for Strauss, prophecy represents the

43 As Strauss himself notes, this confluence marks Cohen’s philosophy and are the key to his ethics, in which “Das reine Wollen vollzieht sich, vollendet sich in der reinen Handlung” (Strauss’s quotation of Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willen, in Werke, hg. vom Hermann-Cohen-Archiv am Philosophischen Seminar Zürich unter der Leitung von Helmut Holzhey (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1984), Bd. 7, p. 169, as quoted by Strauss in “Cohen und Maimuni,” p. 406). 44 “Cohen und Maimuni,” p. 401. 45 Ibid., p. 421.

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attempt to secure the divine law. In his early essay on Cohen and Maimonides, Strauss begins to develop the arguments he will make a bit later in Philosophy and Law concerning the centrality of law for Maimonides. In Philosophy and Law, Strauss criticizes not Cohen directly but Cohen’s student, Julius Guttmann, for being blind to the relation between philosophy and law in medieval Jewish philosophy. From Strauss’s perspective, Guttmann’s blindness in this regard is predicated on a modern and indeed a Cohenian prejudice: the belief that modern philosophy is superior to medieval philosophy. The reason for this blindness interestingly is also blindness to what Strauss contends is the real difference between Aristotle and Plato. Strauss holds that their true difference concerns not the relation between ethics and cognition but the status of philosophy itself. Drawing on Avicenna in his 1931 essay, and then also on Alfarabi in Philosophy and Law, Strauss argues that the medieval Islamic philosophers whom Maimonides followed aligned themselves with Plato rather than with Aristotle. According to these Islamic philosophers, Plato understood philosophy to be both constrained and made possible by the law. For the medieval Islamic philosophers, the relation between philosophy and law in Plato (and the Plato of the Laws in particular) philosophically anticipates the proper relation between philosophy and revelation. What then is, according to Strauss, the proper relation between philosophy and revelation from the Maimonidean perspective? In answering this question, we come full circle in Strauss’s transformation of Cohen’s interpretation of Maimonides, and indeed of the Cohenian project more broadly. Let us recall Strauss’s comments in the introductory essay to Cohen’s Religion of Reason about Cohen’s view of law. Strauss writes: [Cohen] has the courage to say that Revelation and Law are identical. According to him, the Law is either the moral law or is meant to contribute to man’s moral education. More precisely, all particular commandments concern means; their suitability is therefore subject to examination. In the last analysis the Law [for Cohen] is symbol.46

46 Leo Strauss, introductory essay to the English translation Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason, in Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, p. xxxvi.

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Strauss agrees with Cohen that revelation and law are identical but, once again, he contends that Cohen has come to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. That revelation and law are identical for Cohen means that there is a fundamental confluence between philosophy and revelation (as Strauss notes the law for Cohen is the moral law). In contrast, that revelation and law are identical for Strauss means that there is a fundamental tension between philosophy and revelation. Strauss argues that Maimonides, in following the Islamic interpretation of Plato, recognizes this tension and thereby recognizes the limitation imposed on philosophy by the law. According to Strauss, Maimonides is more Platonic than Aristotelian because Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, understands philosophy as unrestrained in regard to the law. Strauss also ironically brings Cohen closer to Aristotle in this interpretation, for he notes correctly that the suitability of the commandments for Cohen is “subject to examination.” Where Cohen’s notions of revelation and law bolster modern philosophy, Strauss’s arguments about revelation and law are meant to show the limitations of philosophy as it has been classically conceived.47

Conclusion The details of Cohen’s and Strauss’s respective interpretations of Maimonides are no doubt fascinating. Their readings have had an after life of their own, an after life that in many ways continues to define contemporary readings of Maimonides. The concern of this essay, however, is not with the details of their respective readings of Maimonides but with their respective hermeneutic methods. I have suggested that Strauss both criticizes what he calls Cohen’s method of internalization, which he also calls Cohen’s method of idealization, and applies his criticism of Cohen not only to medieval Jewish

47 It is important to mention that Strauss’s reversal here is by no means straightforward. Philosophy for Cohen is limited in an important sense by secular law, which is the starting point for Cohen’s transcendental deduction of the self. Yet Strauss’s attempt to bring Cohen closer to Aristotle, even if problematic on Cohen’s own terms, only underscores Strauss’s basic question about the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. Indeed, Strauss’s mature work is oriented around an argument about the inadequacy of modern law, an inadequacy that he argues is sustained and marked by the blindness of modern rationalism.

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philosophy but also to Cohen himself. Strauss transforms Cohen and hence is profoundly indebted to him, not only in terms of his own turn to medieval philosophy but also in terms of his subsequent readings of Plato and the question of contemporary politics and ethics. But in this transformation Strauss also attempts to annihilate Cohen’s entire philosophical scheme, which includes not just his hermeneutic, but also his arguments about Judaism, philosophy, revelation, law, religion, and ethics, and even his transcendental principle. Strauss’s transformation of Cohen begins and ends in his own hermeneutical grappling with the relation between history and truth (a theme which of course marks Cohen’s entire work). By way of conclusion, I’d like to consider briefly the coherence of Strauss’s scheme in relation to Cohen’s and then, even more briefly, the coherence of Cohen’s scheme in relation to Strauss’s. In “Cohen and Maimonides,” Strauss explicitly brings himself closer to the historicist view and distances himself from Cohen’s neoKantian view of Maimonides. He writes: To understand the author as he understood himself, that is precisely the ambition of the historian; but allegory appears to the historical consciousness as the mutilation of the text. . . . [Yet] Allegory and the critique of allegory go together as one, [they agree] that it is the particular task of interpretation to mediate: to understand as the author understands himself. Cohen, on the other hand, proceeds from the Kantian insight, that it is possible to understand an author better than he understood himself. Cohen names this “understanding an author better than he understood himself,” “idealizing interpretation.”48 This idealizing interpretation differentiates itself from allegorical interpretation through the consciousness of the interpreter’s distance from the author, in fact by his superiority to the author.”49

As we have seen in regard to both his interpretations of Spinoza and Maimonides, Strauss agrees with the historicist that the goal of interpretation is to understand an author as he understood himself. Strauss maintains in this passage that the historicist unknowingly shares this basic aspiration with the allegorical method of Maimonides. It is Cohen’s idealizing method—the attempt to understand an author better than he understood himself—that, from Strauss’s perspective,

48 49

I’ve added the second quotation marks for the sake of clarity. “Cohen und Maimuni,” pp. 400–401.

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destroys the possibility of allegorical interpretation, and hence of a return to medieval rationalism. As Strauss himself acknowledges, Cohen doesn’t want to return to medieval rationalism, not only because he believes that modern rationalism is superior but more basically because he believes that modern rationalism has triumphed and will continue to triumph. Because of his optimism, Cohen does not even ask the question about the possibility of a return. It remains an open question whether Strauss can succeed at arriving at a non-historicist position, starting from a historicist premise as he does. Indeed, Strauss’s own relation to Cohen sharpens this question. If transformation is the best form of annihilation, how can Strauss claim that there is eternal truth of any sort? Has he not consigned himself to the same trap he describes in Natural Right and History, that “Historicism thrives on the fact that it inconsistently exempts itself from its own verdict about all human thought”?50 At the same time, Strauss’s challenge to Cohen pertains not only to Cohen’s view of history but to our interpretation of Cohen today. Strauss is absolutely right that Cohen shares in the modern view (what Strauss calls prejudice) that modern philosophy is superior to pre-modern philosophy. And Strauss is right again that Cohen believes this because of his faith in modern reason. As Strauss puts it in his introductory essay to Religion of Reason, “Cohen seems almost to face the possibility actualized not long after his death by national socialism. But his ‘optimism’ was too strong.”51 The most basic question that must be asked of Hermann Cohen today is Cohen’s own question. Has history made questionable not just Cohen’s optimism but Cohen’s belief in the superiority of modern philosophy? It is in answering this question in the affirmative that Leo Strauss became Leo Strauss. And it is a resounding “no” to this question that makes Hermann Cohen Hermann Cohen.

50 Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1950), p. 25. 51 Leo Strauss, introductory essay to the English translation of Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason, p. xxxvi.

HERMANN COHEN AND RABBI JOSEPH SOLOVEITCHIK ON REPENTANCE Lawrence Kaplan McGill University

I. Introduction The late Steven Schwarzschild, a distinguished Neo-Kantian who believed that Hermann Cohen’s philosophy was or better is the true Jewish philosophy, once suggested that Cohen’s “philosophical theology of repentance” had a “massive influence” on the conception of repentance developed by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik.1 He, alas, died, however, before writing anything further on the subject. Reinier Munk in his book, The Rationale of Halakhic Man: Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish Thought, a revised and expanded version of his dissertation, refers to Schwarzschild’s claim, stating that it “needs further investigation.”2 The purpose of this paper is to provide that “further investigation” and to determine the extent of the influence of Cohen’s philosophical theology of repentance on Soloveitchik and the limits of that influence. I would like to use as my point of departure a question I had raised in an earlier paper of mine, “Hermann Cohen’s Theory of Sacrifice in Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism.”3 There I first noted that: Interestingly and revealingly, Cohen in his discussion of repentance, sacrifice, and shegagah, never indicates that the gemara in Yoma 86b in 1 Steven Schwarzschild, “The Title of Hermann Cohen’s ‘Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,’ ” Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, Translated and with an Introduction by Simon Kaplan, 2nd Edition (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1995), p. 20. [Henceforth: RR] 2 Reinier Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1996), p. 128, note 3. 3 “Hermann Cohen’s Theory of Sacrifice in Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,” “Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism”: Tradition and the Concept of Origin in Hermann Cohen’s Later Work, Helmut Holzhey, Gabriel Motzkin, and Hartwig Wiedebach (eds.) (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000), pp. 191–204.

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its discussion of the statement of Resh Lakish, “Great is repentance for deliberate sins are accounted to him as inadvertent sins” concludes that this statement refers only to repentance performed out of fear (teshuvah mi-yirah). However, the gemara goes on to argue, the transforming power of repentance performed out of love (teshuvah me-ahavah) is so great that with reference to such repentance another statement of Resh Lakish applies, “Great is repentance for deliberate sins are accounted to him as meritorious deeds.”4

I then proceeded to ask: Now it would seem that the repentance described by Cohen in Religion of Reason is a type of repentance out of love and not repentance out of fear. Why then does Cohen cite only the weaker statement of Resh Lakish and not his stronger statement? Why can’t he make the radical affirmation about the power of repentance out of love made by the rabbinic tradition?5

But rather than answering the question there, I concluded by saying: Since however, this paper is a discussion of Cohen’s theory of sacrifice and not his theory of repentance, this is not the appropriate place to attempt an answer.6

In the footnote to that paragraph I went on to comment: In this connection, it is worth noting that R. Soloveitchik bases his whole theory of repentance on precisely this rabbinic claim that repentance out of love transforms deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. R. Soloveitchik’s fundamental point is that had only the written Law been revealed a person would be able to attain only the level of repentance out of fear. It is only thanks to the revelation of the oral Law that an individual can attain the higher level of repentance out of love. We may say that despite the strong influence of Cohen on R. Soloveitchik’s theory of repentance, R. Soloveitchik is able to take this crucial step beyond Cohen, first, thanks to his profound rootedness in and understanding of the halakhic tradition, and, second, thanks to his creative use of Max Scheler’s important and highly influential essay, “Repentance and Rebirth.” But, again, a full discussion of R. Soloveitchik’s view of repentance, like a full discussion of Cohen’s view, must await another occasion.7

4 5 6 7

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. p. p. p.

199. 199. 199. 199, n. 35.

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This “other occasion” has now arrived. I will first present Cohen’s theory of repentance, then R. Soloveitchik’s. In the course of so doing, I will also at several “appropriate” places in the discussion put forward a number of possible answers as to why Cohen ignores the famous statement of Resh Lakish “Great is repentance [out of love] for deliberate sins are accounted to him as meritorious deeds.”

II. Cohen’s Theory of Repentance As is well known, if, for Cohen, the individual discovers himself as an individual in sin, it is only the possibility of repentance, of the liberation from sin, of the self-transformation of the individual, that makes the individual into an I. As Cohen states: Liberation from sin has to become the goal, and only through the attainment of this goal will the new I be begotten. . . . Liberation [from sin] is necessary for the transformation of the individual into the I.8

What, then, is liberation from sin, repentance for Cohen? The first step on this road to return is the sinner’s own confession of guilt, his execution of punishment upon himself. For it is only this confession that prevents repentance from being a mere moral abstraction. As Cohen writes: The confession of sin is the penance, which the sinner takes upon himself. This confession with all the agony and distress, with all the overwhelming remorse which borders on despair is the beginning of the execution of punishment which the sinner must impose upon himself, if God is to liberate him. This self-punishment is the first step on the road to return which is open to him.9

To return to confession itself, this confession of guilt would, in turn, become a moral abstraction were it not connected with a public institution of worship. To begin with, in the time of Ezekiel, this public institution was the national institution of sacrifice in the Temple, though in the fullness of time, prayer in the synagogue took the place—and rightfully so—of sacrifice as the public institution of divine

8

RR, p. 187. Cf. p. 193. RR, p. 195. Note, however, that in this statement Cohen links remorse with confession, while on p. 203 he appears to speak of remorse as preceding confession. 9

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worship connected with confession. I discussed this last point at some length in my previously mentioned paper10 and will not elaborate here. One point though, which I did not mention in that paper is worthy of note. Even in sacrifice the priest only accords expiation, a ritual cultic matter, but only God effects atonement, in the sense of reconciliation.11 I will return to this point later on.12 The individual himself, in his confession, accepts full moral responsibility for his sin and views it as being deliberate. But in the correlation with God, which here takes place in the public, communal arena, the sin is deemed by God to be shegagah, to be inadvertent, and is forgiven accordingly. For in Cohen’s view, “all human sin is error, [. . .] is wavering and vacillation.”13 And in this connection Cohen refers to Resh Lakish’s comment “Great is repentance for deliberate sins are accounted to him as inadvertent sins.”14 But, as Cohen writes: This self-knowledge of sin is a transitional point for engendering the I, but is not the conclusion. The conclusion is the atonement that depends on the consciousness of liberation from guilt.15

Confession then, Cohen writes, “is the first step toward action, which in turn proceeds in two steps: in the casting away of sins and in the new creation,”16 that is, the creation of a new heart and a new spirit that is, in turn, a new I. But for Cohen—and here we see the inextricable link between the religion of reason and ethics—this new heart and new spirit, this new I, “are and remain tasks.”17 The new I is not a substantial self. “As little as it is possible to imagine that a new heart is formed in actuality, so little is it possible for the meaning of the new I which is to be formed to have a definite shape.”18 But what is this task? Basing himself on the verse in Leviticus 11:4, “Make yourselves holy and be holy, for I the Lord am holy,”

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

“Hermann Cohen’s Theory of Sacrifice,” pp. 196, 202. RR, pp. 198–99. See below, note 27. RR, p. 200; cf. p. 223: “all man’s sin is shegagah.” See the “Annotations from Hebrew Sources,” p. 467, note 44. RR, p. 199. RR, p. 203. RR, p. 204. RR, p. 204.

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Cohen defines the task as that of self-sanctification.19 And basing himself on the watchword of Rabbi Akiva—a watchword that became Cohen’s watchword—“Happy are you O Israel. Who purifies you? And before Whom do you purify yourselves? Your Father in Heaven” (Yoma 85b), Cohen identifies self-sanctification, kedushah, with selfpurification, taharah.20 Four features characterize this task of self-sanctification or selfpurification. First, it is infinite, unending, unceasing. Self-sanctification, Cohen writes, “relates to every moment of man’s life;”21 it is a process of continuous rejuvenation. And, Cohen adds, “In this continuous rejuvenation”—and, we may say, in it alone—“the I it has its only existence and permanence.”22 Again we see that for Cohen the I is not a substantial self, but an unending task. Second, this self-sanctification or self-purification must be performed entirely by man. To cite Cohen: Only man can actualize self-sanctification; no God can help him in this. God already effects much in giving the commandment. . . . But the task is put upon man. It is infinite because the solution is infinite.23 God as a collaborator would have to bring the solution to a final end. . . . It would [therefore] contradict the [infinite nature of the] task if God should have a share in handling it.24

Third, Repentance applies not so much to the individual sin, but to the “way” of sin. Sin, to cite Cohen, “is not an isolated unit, but something connected to the whole framework of life.”25 Therefore, Cohen continues: Repentance can become thorough and serious only when it aligns each single sin with the whole frame of life. . . . Each particular sin must be looked upon as the embodiment of the man, as a token of his essence.26

Fourth, while only man can perform self-sanctification or selfpurification, it must be performed before God and directed to Him; 19

RR, pp. 204–5. RR, pp. 223–24. As has often been observed, Cohen transposes R. Akiva’s statement. In the original it read “Happy are you O Israel. Before Whom do you purify yourselves? And Who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven.” 21 RR, p. 205. 22 RR, p. 205. 23 Note the return here to the first feature. 24 RR, p. 205. 25 RR, p. 205. 26 RR, p. 206. 20

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Man provides self-sanctification or self-purification, while God provides forgiveness and pardon, which, Cohen adds, are “fundamentally sever[ed ] . . . from the wholly mythological, original form of atonement.”27 Indeed, the forgiveness of sin becomes the most appropriate function of God’s goodness. For Cohen, then, faith in God means trust in God’s goodness, that is, trust in God’s forgiveness of sin. And it is precisely this faith and trust that endows man with the confidence to undertake the arduous task of self-sanctification.28 But precisely in light of Cohen’s claim that it is man who performs self-sanctification or self-purification, two difficult questions arise. First, what exactly is the significance of this forgiveness? And second, why must God provide it? Cohen’s own answers to these questions are less than clear. But since Andrea Poma, in his important monograph, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, discusses this issue in an exemplary manner, I will pass over it here.29 Cohen succinctly and powerfully presents the essence of his conception of repentance when he states: Redemption is liberation from sin. . . . “Before God [lifne Ha-Shem]”: This is the watchword of the whole deed of repentance, of selfsanctification, and of redemption.30

I would like at this juncture to briefly touch upon one point of similarity and one point of difference between Cohen’s conception of repentance and that of Maimonides. The point of similarity: Cohen’s insistence that self-sanctification or self-purification must be performed entirely by man and that God

27 RR, p. 214. Cf. Ibid., pp. 198–99, where Cohen distinguishes between expiation and atonement proper. It is the priest who “during the sacrifice” performs the various ritual functions and “symbolic acts which have the purpose of expiation.” God, however, takes no part “in this performance of sacrificial expiation.” On the other hand, atonement proper “is not achieved through expiation, but depends upon the self-purification for which man has to strive in his confession of sin,” and it is to be effected by God. In light of Cohen’s remarks in RR, p. 214, we may identify expiation with “the wholly mythological, original form of atonement” and atonement proper with God’s forgiveness and pardon. 28 RR, pp. 208–15. Cf. the insightful discussion of Andrea Poma in “Lyric Poetry and Prayer,” “Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism”: Tradition and the Concept of Origin in Hermann Cohen’s Later Work, pp. 136–37; as well as my discussion in “Hermann Cohen’s Theory of Sacrifice,” pp. 197–98, 202, n. 42. 29 Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, translated from the Italian by John Denton (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1997), pp. 230–31. 30 RR, pp. 230–31.

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does not have any share in it reflects Maimonides’ insistence in Laws of Repentance 6:5 that God’s instructing man in the way of repentance simply means that 1) He sent prophets to them to inform them of the ways of God and to turn them back to the good; and that 2) He imbued them, to begin with, with the power to study and understand. Maimonides adds that as long as a man follows in the ways of wisdom and righteousness he desires them and pursues them. Therefore, the statement, “He who comes to be purified is aided,” does not mean that he is aided by God, but rather that he is naturally aided by the virtuous circle that he has created. We may contrast this naturalistic and humanistic approach to repentance on the parts of both Maimonides and Cohen to the approach taken by the great medieval rabbinic scholar and pietist Rabbenu Yonah in his classic work, Sha'arei Teshuvah (Gates of Repentance). At the very beginning of that work Rabbenu Yonah declares: And it has been clearly explained in the Torah that God assists penitents in such circumstances when their nature is unable to attain [the rank of repenting out of the fear and love of God]; and He will renew within them a spirit of purity to attain the rank of loving Him.31

As we shall see, on this point R. Soloveitchik agrees with Maimonides and Cohen and not with Rabbenu Yonah. The point of difference. Here appearances can be misleading. In connection with his statement, “a turning away from sin is possible; man can become a new man,”32 Cohen cites Maimonides’ statement in Laws of Repentance 2:4, “It is one of the ways of repentance that a penitent . . . should change his name, as if to say that I am a different person and am not the same person who performed those [sinful] deeds.”33 Cohen, here, at first glance, would again seem to be walking in the footsteps of Maimonides. But Cohen immediately goes on to say, “This possibility of self-transformation makes the individual into an I.”34 Precisely at this point, so it appears to me, Cohen’s thought diverges significantly, even radically, from that of Maimonides.

31 32 33 34

Sha'arei Teshuvah 1:1. RR, p. 193. See the “Annotations from Hebrew Sources”, p. 466, note 38. RR, p. 193.

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For Maimonides, the importance of repentance is that it is a process whereby a person changes from being a bad man to being a good one. There is no value for Maimonides, contra Cohen, in the emergence of an I, in individuality per se. For Cohen, who views repentance as an act of self-creation, creativity and self-creation are primary values. Not so for Maimonides! For him, man’s perfection lies in the development of his intellect, an intellect that is objective and impersonal in nature, its function being to “distinguish between truth and falsehood . . . with regard to what is of necessity.” 35 As we shall see, on this point R. Soloveitchik agrees with Cohen and not with Maimonides. Before we move on to R. Soloveitchik’s theory of repentance, let me attempt to provide a preliminary answer to our original question. As I had noted in my previous article, “It would seem that the repentance described by Cohen in Religion of Reason is a type of repentance out of love and not repentance out of fear.”36 Indeed, as we shall soon see, many of the features that, as we already saw, characterize repentance for Cohen, namely, separation from the path of sin, purification, forgiveness, and redemption, are explicitly linked by R. Soloveitchik with repentance out of love. The question thus arises with full force as to why Cohen is unable to affirm, as do the rabbis, that in repentance out of love deliberate sins are accounted to him as meritorious deeds. We may suggest that given the critical role of sin, for Cohen, as a transitional point between ethics and religion, as a necessary stage in the emergence of individuality, he could not have claimed that repentance transforms deliberate sins retroactively into merits, for he would have then retroactively lost sin as that starting point. To be sure, as Poma astutely and correctly notes, “It is wrong to say that Cohen in Religion of Reason grounds man as an individual in consciousness of sin. He actually grounds him in consciousness of the correlation between sin and redemption.”37 But, nevertheless, sin is a critical element in the process of the emergence of man’s indi-

35 Guide of the Perplexed 1:2. And see, in this connection, the penetrating comments of Eliezer Goldman in his review of David Hartman’s Torah and Philosophical Quest, Da'at 1 (1977), pp. 143–44. 36 “Hermann Cohen’s Theory of Sacrifice,” p. 199. 37 “Lyric Poetry and Prayer,” p. 137.

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viduality. As Cohen himself states in Der Begriff der Religion: “Sin is a ferment of morality, and the stage of the individual’s sin is thus a permanent part [emphasis added] of the conceptual chain of moral man.”38 But if repentance transforms deliberate sins into merits, sin would retroactively turn out to be only a temporary part of that conceptual chain. To again cite Poma, “From Cohen’s critical point of view, man the sinner, man who is conscious of his sin, and man who is converted and obtains redemption are inextricably linked.”39

III. R. Soloveitchik’s Theory of Repentance40 A. Repentance out of Fear and Repentance out of Love R. Soloveitchik never devoted a major essay to a full explication of the subject of repentance. He did, however, devote an important section of Part II of Halakhic Man, written in 1944, to a discussion of repentance,41 and, similarly, the conclusion of his essay “Sacred and Profane,” written slightly later than Halakhic Man, is also devoted to that subject.42 Most important, from 1954–1980 R. Soloveitchik 38 Der Begriff der Religion p. 65, cited in Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, p. 225; and in Michael Zank, The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Providence, Rhode Island: Brown Judaica Series, 2000), p. 372. I would like to acknowledge here the great help I have drawn from the important monographs of Poma and Zank for my analysis of Cohen’s theory of repentance. 39 Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, p. 225. 40 This section is an extensively revised version of a draft that I first wrote in the early 1980s. In the interim, two studies of R. Soloveitchik’s theory of repentance have appeared: Yitzhak Blau, “Creative Repentance: On Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Concept of Teshuvah,” Tradition 28:2 (Winter, 1994), pp. 11–18; and Eliezer Goldman, “Teshuvah u-Zeman be-Hagut shel ha-Rav Soloveitchik [= Repentance and Time in the Thought of R. Soloveitchik”] Emunah bi-Zemanim Mishtanim, Avi Sagi (ed.), ( Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1996), pp. 175–89. While both articles contain valuable insights into selected aspects of R. Soloveitchik’s theory of repentance, neither seeks to set forth the type of comprehensive analysis attempted here. 41 Ish ha-Halakhah first appeared in the journal Talpiyyot 1:3–4 (1944), pp. 651–35. Subsequently the essay was published in the volumes, Be-Sod ha-Yahid ve-ha-Yahad, ed. Pinhas Peli ( Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), pp. 37–188; and Ish ha-Halakhah—Galui veNistar ( Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979), pp. 11–113. For an English translation, see Halakhic Man, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983, translated by Lawrence Kaplan. All page references are to the English translation. The section on repentance is Part 2:III, pp. 110–17. 42 “Sacred and Profane: Kodesh and Hol in World Perspectives,” Gesher 3:1 (1966), pp. 5–29.

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delivered an annual public discourse on repentance in Yiddish in New York City to an audience that ultimately numbered in the thousands. Several of the discourses from the 50s and 60s were transcribed, translated, and edited by Pinhas Peli and appeared in both Hebrew and English versions. Similarly, several of the essays from the 70s have appeared in both English versions, edited by Arnold Lustiger, and Hebrew versions, edited by Moshe Krone.43 If we combine various of the crisscrossing and interweaving themes and motifs regarding repentance developed by R. Soloveitchik in Halakhic Man, “Sacred and Profane,” and a number of the discourses on repentance, a rich, profound, and comprehensive picture of Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance emerges. Indeed, by putting together the pieces that need to be put together, by making the connections that demand to be made, certain new and often startling insights into the nature of repentance that until now had only been implicit in R. Soloveitchik’s thought come to light. The primary distinction with which R. Soloveitchik operates in his discussions of repentance is the distinction between repentance out of fear (teshuvah mi-yirah) and repentance out of love (teshuvah meahavah), which, as we have seen, the gemara in Yoma 86b draws in order to resolve the apparently conflicting statements of Resh Lakish, “Great is repentance for deliberate sins are accounted to him as inadvertent sins” (repentance out of fear), and “Great is repentance for deliberate sins are accounted to him as meritorious deeds” (repentance out of love). If we connect R. Soloveitchik’s scattered statements on the subject, we find the following contrasting themes and motifs clustered about repentance out of fear and repentance out of love, as set out in the chart below.44 43 Pinhas Peli, 'Al Ha-Teshuvah, Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979 [= On Repentance in the Thought and Oral Discourse of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1996]; Moshe Krone, Yemei Zikkaron, Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1986; Arnold Lustiger, Before Hashem You Shall be Purified: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Days of Awe, Edison, New Jersey: Ohr Publishing, 1998. 44 This chart is based upon Halakhic Man, Part 2:III; “Sacred and Profane;” the essays “Kapparah ve-Taharah” [= “Absolution and Purification”], “Bi'ur ha-Ra o Ha'alato” [= “The Extirpation or Sublimation of Evil”], “Ha-Yahas beyn Teshuvah li-Behira Hofshit” [“The Relationship between Repentance and Free Will”], and “Kapparah, Yissurim, ve-Geulah [= “Absolution, Suffering, and Redemption”], all of which are to be found in 'Al Ha-Teshuvah [= On Repentance in the Thought and Oral Discourse of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik]; and an as yet unpublished Discourse on Repentance that R. Soloveitchik delivered in 1968. The distribution of the themes

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Table 1. REPENTANCE OUT OF FEAR

REPENTANCE OUT OF LOVE

Confession (Vidui ) Separation from a particular sin Extirpation of evil Deliberate sins transformed into inadvertent ones God passing over sin Absolution (Kapparah) Pardon (Mehilah) God’s mercy (Hesed ) God as a remote transcendent Deity accessible only through cultic mediation Written Torah Sacrifice and Ritual

Inward repentance Separation from the path of sin Sublimation of evil Deliberate sins transformed into meritorious deeds God uplifting sin Purification (Taharah) Forgiveness (Selihah) God’s justice (Din) God as our “Father, Companion, and Intimate Counsellor” Oral Torah Purification (Taharah) Being divested of one’s status as a Rash'a Self-Creation (Yezirah) Redemption (Geulah) Cleaving to God (Devekut)

in the above mentioned works is as follows: Confession (Vidui ), Absolution (Kapparah), God’s mercy // Inward repentance, Being divested as of one’s status as a rash'a, Self-Creation, Deliberate sins transformed into meritorious deeds (Halakhic Man); Absolution, Extirpation of evil, Sacrifice and Ritual, God’s mercy, God as a remote transcendent Deity accessible only through cultic mediation // Taharah, Deliberate sins transformed into meritorious deeds, Self-Creation, God as our “Father, Companion, and intimate Counsellor” directly accessible to man without any cultic mediation (“Sacred and Profane”); Absolution (Kapparah), Pardon, Sacrifice and Ritual, Separation from a particular sin, God’s mercy // Purification (Taharah), Being divested of one’s status as a rash'a, Self-Creation, Inward Repentance, Separation from the path of sin, God as our Father, Redemption, God’s justice (“Absolution and Purification”); Repentance out of Fear, Extirpation of evil, Deliberate sins transformed into inadvertent ones, God passing over sin, Absolution (Kapparah) // Repentance out of Love, Sublimation of evil, Deliberate sins transformed into meritorious deeds, God uplifting sin, Purification (Taharah) (“The Extirpation or Sublimation of Evil”); Repentance out of Fear, Extirpation of evil, Deliberate sins transformed into inadvertent ones, Absolution (Kapparah) // Repentance out of Love, Sublimation of evil, Deliberate sins transformed into meritorious deeds, Self-Creation (Yezirah) Forgiveness (Selihah) (“The Relationship between Repentance and Free Will”); Absolution (Kapparah), Pardon (Mehilah), God’s mercy (Hesed ) // Purification (Taharah), Forgiveness (Selihah), Redemption (“Absolution, Suffering, and Redemption”); God’s mercy (Hesed ), Written Torah // God’s justice (Din), Oral Torah (“Discourse on Repentance, 1968”).

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Let us now, using these themes and motifs,45 attempt a full and rounded picture of these two types of repentance, as R. Soloveitchik sees them.46 What is repentance out of fear, and what does it achieve? The person who repents out of fear recognizes the fact that he has sinned. He regrets his past misdeed and resolves not to commit it again in the future. He thereby fulfils his halakhic requirement of repentance. But his repentance is limited to one particular sin, a single isolated action. He experiences remorse for that particular sin, he puts that particular sin behind him, as he seeks to extirpate the evil, to blot out the past deed from his consciousness. But, otherwise, he is unchanged. His whole personality, his whole mode of living, his entire spiritual makeup is the same as before. He has separated himself from a particular sin, but not from the path of sin. He has turned away from the particular sin, but has not experienced a turning of his whole being. For his repentance derived not from any profound self-evaluation, from any penetrating and shattering introspection. Rather he sensed after the sin an obscure feeling of dissatisfaction, discomfort, and disillusionment. He dimly heard, without full understanding, a voice proclaiming in his inner ear that his end would be bitter indeed. And trembling, filled with fear, he repents.47 He repents, but does not change. He is the same as before he sinned. There is fear before this accusing voice, but there is no understanding, and, most of all, no love. Nevertheless, despite the fact the repentance was out of fear, he has still fulfilled his halakhic obligation; and if he performs the required ritual act of confession, God, in His infinite mercy, will grant him atonement, absolution. What is the nature of this absolution? Essentially it is an act of waiver, of pardon, on God’s part. God, in His mercy, pardons man his guilt; He waives the debt that the sinner owes him as a result of the sin he committed. Each sin, by definition, makes man liable

45 The only themes that will not be discussed for the present are Written Torah and Oral Torah. The discussion of the connection between Repentance out of Fear and the Written Torah and Repentance out of Love and the Oral Torah will be reserved for section IIIC of this paper. 46 Since this is a composite portrait woven together from the motifs found and developed in the works listed in note 44, individual references will not be given except where deemed necessary. 47 “Kapparah ve-Taharah,” pp. 28–29; “Ha-Yahas beyn Teshuvah li-Behira Hofshit,” pp. 218–22; Halakhic Man, p. 113.

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to God for punishment. But, just as in the realm of civil law a man can waive a debt that another owes him, so God, in His mercy, may waive the punishment to which the sinner has made himself liable. This, as we have emphasized, is an act of mercy on God’s part. For in terms of strict justice, why should the sinner be absolved? He sinned. The sin is an objective act that cannot be undone, or at least not through repentance out of fear. Nevertheless, God chooses to pass over the transgression; in His infinite patience and tolerance He averts His eyes from transgressors. Because the sinner repented God accounts the sin performed deliberately as though it had been performed inadvertently. In His mercy, He treats the matter as though the sinner had not realized the full seriousness, gravity, and horror of sin. And, yet, even though the deliberate sin is accounted as inadvertent, or, rather, precisely because it is still accounted as inadvertent, the absolution is not complete. Therefore, God, in a second act of mercy, provides sacrificial, cultic, ceremonial rites whereby the sinner can obtain full absolution from the sin, which is now, as a result of repentance out of fear, considered inadvertent. As R. Soloveitchik emphasizes, this absolution (kapparah) is “theological, transcendent, and non-rational.” It is only as a result of “cultic worship acts” that man can be brought into “contact with a transcendent, incomprehensible divinity,” and receive absolution. For, from a rational standpoint, how can God simply erase the past? In this respect, as R. Soloveitchik freely admits, the absolution granted to the sinner who performs repentance out of fear and subsequent cultic rites is simply a Jewish expression of the universal phenomenon of absolution, a phenomenon familiar to Christians as well as Jews.48 It is in contrast to repentance out of fear, as R. Soloveitchik presents it, that his portrait of repentance out of love stands out in bold relief. The sinner who repents out of love does not merely separate himself from a particular sin, but turns aside from the path of sinners. He is not satisfied with merely repenting of a particular misdeed, but remaining otherwise unchanged. Rather he puts his whole previous way of life, all his previous spiritual conceptions and attitudes behind him. For his concern is not with this or that isolated sin that he committed, but with the type of person that he was that he could commit such sins. It does not suffice, in his view, to pluck

48

“Sacred and Profane,” pp. 24–25.

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this or that noxious spiritual weed from his being. Rather what is necessary is to transform that sick and unwholesome spiritual soil in which such weeds could take root and flourish. For his repentance derives from love of God, that love of God that yearns for His closeness and presence. And the sinner who repents out of love realizes that it was not so much this or that particular sin that separated him from God as much as his whole mode of existence, of feeling, of perception, his general spiritual blindness, callousness, and insensitivity. And he knows that only a repentance of being, a repentance which accomplishes a transformation of self can admit God back into his world, that very God whom he had, through his own behavior and attitudes, expelled. Here the Hebrew word “teshuvah” should be translated not as “repentance,” but rather, in accord with literal meaning, as “turning.” The sinner had turned away from God. Now he turns toward Him. And as he makes that turn there is, and necessarily must be, a shift in his entire spiritual stance and posture. What then does the sinner who repents out of love do? He performs two acts, each one dialectically related to the other. First, as we have said, he transforms his whole personality. He engages in a process of self-sanctification and self-purification, and creates within himself a new heart and spirit. Second, he does not merely extinguish his past but transforms it, uplifts it so that it may serve as a positive source of good. And these two acts or processes, as noted, are dialectically related. For the repentant sinner in transforming his past discovers that in so doing he is transforming his whole personality, he finds himself building and creating a new self precisely out of the ruins of the old one. Conversely, it is his self-transformation that enables him to so thoroughly transform his past. We will examine this process of self-transformation later on, but first let us examine its results. To start with, the sinner who repents out of love extinguishes the quality of guilt that had attached itself to his personality. To phrase it in halakhic terms, he divests himself of his status as a rash'a, as a wicked person. And, so R. Soloveitchik argues, being divested as of one’s status as a rash'a is independent of obtaining atonement. Thus he notes that Maimonides rules that confession is an indispensable preliminary for obtaining atonement. “The sinner does not obtain atonement until he confesses.”49 On the other hand, Maimonides 49

Laws of Repentance 1:1.

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rules that if a man tells a woman “Be thou betrothed unto me on condition that I am a completely righteous person,” then even if he was a completely wicked person up until that very moment, she is doubtfully betrothed to him, for perhaps he had thoughts of repentance in his heart.50 Now certainly here the man did not confess, and, therefore, he could not obtain atonement for his sins. Nevertheless, he is divested of his status as a rash'a, for repentance per se suffices to divest him of that status, even if unaccompanied by confession, which is required only for the purpose of obtaining atonement.51 But not only does this change of status not require the obtaining of atonement as a preliminary stage, but it goes far beyond the obtaining of atonement. Thus R. Judah the Prince rules that Yom Kippur confers atonement even upon those who did not repent on that most solemn of days.52 Nevertheless, even according to this view, so R. Soloveitchik argues, the person who did not repent on Yom Kippur, though he had obtained atonement as a result of the intrinsic holiness of the day, would still remain a rash'a. Consequently, if he had committed a sin before Yom Kippur which would have disqualified him to be a witness, he would remain so disqualified even after Yom Kippur, despite his having obtained atonement.53 But more. This mode of repentance does not only divest the sinner of his status as a rash'a, does not only extinguish the quality of guilt that had attached itself to his personality, but it purifies and sanctifies him. Indeed, we may say that for R. Soloveitchik repentance out of love is identical with the process of self-sanctification

50

Laws of Marriage 8:5, based upon Kiddushin 49b. For this analysis, see Halakhic Man, pp. 110–11, and, in particular, the very acute halakhic analysis in notes 119 and 120 (pp. 159–60). R. Soloveitchik in note 120 attributes this distinction between repentance and confession to the Minahat Hinukh, commandant 364. The reader should note, however, that the Minahat Hinukh formulates his distinction in two different ways and R. Soloveitchik essentially relies upon and develops the second formulation. This distinction was first suggested by R. Soloveitchik in a letter he wrote to his uncle, R. Menahem Krakowsky in 1932. See Iggerot Ha-Grid Ha-Levi ( Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 23–24. Note, as well, that R. Isaac Hutner, at the beginning of essay 27 in Pahad Yitzhak: Yom ha-Kippurim (New York: Gur Aryeh Institute, 1978), pp. 224–25, draws precisely the same distinction, indeed using the very same terminology as does R. Soloveitchik and the very same examples. See below, note 53. 52 Yoma 84b. 53 Iggerot Ha-Grid Ha-Levi, p. 23; and “Kapparah ve-Taharah,” p. 18. This argument is not to be found in Halakhic Man, but it is a logical, indeed necessary, extension of R. Soloveitchik’s thesis as developed there. For a similar argument, see R. Isaac Hutner, Pahad Yitzhak: Yom ha-Kippurim, p. 225. 51

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and self-purification. As a result of repentance out of fear the sinner is granted absolution so that his liability is waived. Repentance out of love purifies the sinner from the defilement brought about by sin. Here, however, we must distinguish the link connecting repentance out of fear with absolution from the link connecting repentance out of love with purification. The absolution obtained as a result of repentance out of fear is granted by God Himself in a transcendent act of grace. The purification accomplished by repentance out of love is accomplished by man himself. It is an act of selfpurification, performed by man and only by him. As R. Soloveitchik states: “Purification is conditional upon drawing near and standing directly before God. . . . The act of purification is something each man must perform by himself, each man in his own heart.”54 In sum, if the conferring of absolution follows upon repentance out of fear, the process of purification, as we have already stated, is identical with repentance out of love. And yet more. While repentance out of fear is only able to reduce deliberate sins into inadvertent sins, repentance out of love can transform deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. And here again, we must distinguish the link connecting repentance out of fear with the transformation of deliberate sins into inadvertent sins from the link connecting repentance out of love with the transformation of deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. As a result of repentance out of fear God, in His infinite mercy, accounts deliberate sins as inadvertent ones. But in performing repentance out of love it is the individual himself who, through “an absolutely decision of the will and intellect,”55 transforms his deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. Indeed, again analogous to what we said before, if the transformation of deliberate sins into inadvertent ones follows upon repentance out of fear, transformation of deliberate sins into meritorious deeds is identical with repentance out of love. In sum, repentance out of love = self-purification (taharah) = the transformation of deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. If as a result of repentance out of fear God waives the liability the sinner has incurred (mehilah), as a result of repentance out of love God truly forgives man his sins (selihah). Moreover, as we have

54 55

“Kapparah ve-Taharah, p. 19. Halakhic Man, p. 112.

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noted, unlike the act of waiver on the part of God with respect to the man who repents out of fear, which is an act of mercy, God’s act of forgiveness with respect to the man who repents out of love is not an act of mercy, of grace, but an act of justice. For has not the repentant sinner in turning and returning to God out of love transformed his sins into a source of good? Is he not a different person from the sinner he once was? Is he not a new person? God here does not have to avert His eyes from the sin. For the sin, in truth, no longer exists. It has been transformed by the repentant sinner into a source of merit. God therefore does not have to pass over the sin; rather He, together with the repentant sinner, lifts up the sin. And the God who forgives the person who repents out of love his sin is not a transcendent incomprehensible Deity, but rather “God as our Father, Companion, and intimate Counsellor.”56 In light of the above we can understand why R. Soloveitchik insists that self-purification (Taharah) as opposed the act of absolution (Kapparah) is not dependent on any cultic rites. R. Soloveitchik, like Cohen, would often cite the famous watchword of Rabbi Akiva: “Happy are you O Israel. Before Whom do you purify yourselves? and Who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven,” and interpreted it as follows: [This statement of Rabbi Akiva was uttered] in Yavneh, the first Yom Kippur in exile, [when] the Jews were left without the Temple and its ceremonial rites for Atonement (Kapparah). The Jewish community was perplexed and disconsolate. . . . They could not see how to dispense with all the [sacrificial rites] which used to take place in the Temple on the Day of Atonement. The act of Teshuvah was closely associated in their minds with all these external and ceremonial acts. How can the Jew obtain absolution . . . before God without the intercession and worship forms of the high priest? . . . Then rose Rabbi Akiva, the majestic metzahek, the unswerving “optimist,” and he said: Indeed we have been bereft of the temple and its divine dispensation of grace for atonement of sin. But we have lost only Kapparah, atonement and penitence, but not Taharah, purification. The act of Kapparah will not be as complete and perfect now as it was when the cultic worship acts of the High Priest brought man into contact with transcendent and incomprehensible divinity. But we Jews have brought another message of Teshuvah to man, that of Taharah. . . . The act of Taharah . . . awakens a creative force that shapes a new and

56

“Sacred and Profane,” p. 27.

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lawrence kaplan loftier personality. There is no place here for worship or sacrifices. The performance of Taharah is not directed at transcendent divinity but at God as our Father, Companion, and intimate Counsellor who does not require any mysterious cult ceremonies or sacrifices. This Taharah is based on an intimate relationship between man and God, creature and Creator, son and Father. And this communion of Godman has not been affected by the loss of outward ceremonial rites.57

What is the basis of R. Soloveitchik’s claim that Kapparah is dependent upon the Temple and its ceremonial rites, while Taharah is not? I would suggest the following. We have seen that R. Soloveitchik links Kapparah with repentance out of fear. But we have further seen that repentance out of fear suffices only to the extent that God, in His mercy, accounts the sin performed deliberately as though it had been performed inadvertently. But precisely because the deliberate sin is accounted as inadvertent, the Kapparah is not complete. God therefore in a second act of mercy provides sacrificial, cultic, ceremonial rites whereby the sinner can obtain full Kapparah for the sin, which is now, as a result of repentance out of fear, considered inadvertent.58 However R. Soloveitchik links Taharah, the unending process of self-purification with repentance out of love, and repentance out of love transforms deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. Moreover, it is man himself, to be sure “standing before God,” who so transforms them. While the Temple was still standing the sacrifices symbolized that radical act of self-transformation whereby an old self died and a new self was born, paradoxically out of the very transformation of the old self.59 However, even after the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were bereft of cultic ceremonies and sacrifice, man himself, through the act of Taharah, self-transformation and selfpurification, is still able to transform deliberate sins into meritorious deeds. God’s forgiveness, as an act of justice, is thereby assured, and there is no need for cultic ceremonies and supernatural grace.

57 Ibid., pp. 26–27; Cf. “Kapparah ve-Taharah, pp. 19–20; and “Bi'ur ha-Ra o Ha'alato,” pp. 186–87. 58 See Jacob Milgrom, Cult and Conscience (Leiden: Brill, 1976), pp. 117–124. “The repentance of the sinner, through his remorse and confession, reduces his intentional sin to an inadvertence, thereby rendering it eligible for sacrificial expiation. . . . Confession is the legal device to convert deliberate sins into inadvertencies thereby qualifying them for sacrificial expiation.” And, as Milgrom acknowledges (p. 117, n. 431), his analysis of this biblical teaching was anticipated by the noted nineteenth century biblical commentator, S. D. Luzzato in Ha-Mishtadel on Lev. 5:1. 59 “Bi'ur ha-Ra o Ha'alato,” pp. 164–68.

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But at this point a problem arises. We have just seen that R. Soloveitchik asserts that the Kapparah obtained as a result of repentance out of fear flows from God’s mercy, while the Selihah obtained as a result of repentance out of love, that is as a result of the act of Taharah, is an act of justice on God’s part. But we have also just seen that R. Soloveitchik asserts as well that God as the source of Kapparah relates to man as “transcendent and incomprehensible divinity,” while the Taharah resulting in Selihah is “directed at . . . God as our Father, Companion, and intimate Counsellor.” But do not these two assertions give rise to a paradoxical conclusion? It is the God of mercy who is the “transcendent and incomprehensible divinity,” while the God of justice is “our Father, Companion, and intimate Counsellor.” Would not precisely the opposite seem more reasonable? It should be the merciful God who is close to us and the stern God of justice who is distant removed and transcendent. But it is precisely here, I would claim, that R. Soloveitchik reveals the greatness of halakhic Judaism and himself as a true halakhic man. In Judaism, as R. Soloveitchik understands it, man’s link to God is established primarily through the medium of Torah and halakhah, that is an ordered rational structure, wholly accessible, indeed handed over, to man’s intellectual comprehension, all the laws of which are justice and righteousness, wisdom and truth. As R. Soloveitchik states: The approach to God is made possible by the halakhah. Primarily, halakhic man cognises God via His Torah, via the truth of halakhic cognition. There is truth in the halakhah, there is a halakhic epistemology, there is a halakhic thinking “the measure thereof is longer than the earth” ( Job 11:9). There is a Torah wisdom “that is broader than the sea” (ibid.). And all of these are rooted in the will of the Holy One, . . . the revealer of the Law. This approach is . . . a theoretical-normative one. It is via this ideal [halakhic] world . . . that man approaches God. We require neither miracles nor wonders to prove the existence of God, for the halakhah itself bears witness to its Creator.60

Therefore, in Judaism the God who is manifest via the halakhah, the God to whom man is linked through the halakhah in an indissoluble bond, is precisely God as the God of truth and righteousness. It is to this aspect of God that halakhic man finds himself irresistibly drawn, it is God in this guise whom halakhic man experiences as

60

Halakhic Man, pp. 85–86.

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“Father, Companion, and intimate Counsellor,” and not God in His function of bestower of incomprehensible benevolence. To return to R. Soloveitchik’s portrait of repentance out of love: repentance out of love is not just an act of Taharah, of self-transformation and self-purification; it is also an act of self-creation. As R. Soloveitchik states: A person is creative; he was endowed with the power to create at his very inception. When he finds himself in a situation of sin, he takes advantage of his creative capacity, returns to God, and becomes a . . . selfcreator and self-fashioner. Man through repentance creates himself, his own “I.”61

Even more striking, repentance out of love is a redemptive act. And in light of what we have said it is a redemptive act wherein man redeems himself. As R. Soloveitchik declares in a remarkable passage: “The sinner who returns in repentance [out of love] become his own messianic king, and redeems himself from the pit-of-captivity of sin.” For, as he immediately goes on to explain, the true redemptive act, whether on the personal or the national level, “does not seek to liquidate the evil, but rather to transform the evil into good, the sin into holiness, the hatred into love.”62 We must therefore expand our previous equation to read as follows: repentance out of love = selfpurification (taharah) = self-sanctification = the transformation of deliberate sins into meritorious deeds = self-creation = self-redemption. And finally, for R. Soloveitchik, the man who repents out of love not only redeems himself, but also cleaves to God; indeed, he becomes a dwelling place for the Shekhinah. This claim would appear to follow from an equation that R. Soloveitchik himself draws in Halakhic Man: “the realization of the Halakhah = contraction [of the divine Presence into the world] = holiness = creation [of worlds].”63 For if we maintain, as indeed R. Soloveitchik does in Halakhic Man, that the idea of man as creator in Judaism refers not just to man as creator of worlds, but first and foremost to man as the creator of himself,64 we must modify this equation to read: repentance out of love

61 62 63 64

Ibid., p. 113. “Ha-Yahas beyn Teshuvah li-Behira Hofshit,” p. 236. Halakhic Man, p. 109. Ibid., p. 109.

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= self-sanctification = self-creation = contraction of the divine presence within one’s own self.65 At this juncture let us pause to see to what extent R. Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance accords with that of Cohen and to what extent the former’s conception departs from the latter’s. As I already indicated, many of the features that R. Soloveitchik links with repentance out of love, namely, separation from the path of sin, purification, forgiveness, and redemption, characterize, for Cohen, repentance in general. Moreover, as our presentation should have made clear, R. Soloveitchik agrees with Maimonides and Cohen, as opposed to Rabbenu Yonah, that self-sanctification or self-purification must be performed entirely by man and that God does not have any share in it. Finally, it is also clear that R. Soloveitchik agrees with Cohen, as opposed to Maimonides, in judging creativity and self-creation to be primary values and in viewing repentance as an act of self-creation. Particularly striking, both Cohen and R. Soloveitchik sharply contrast Kapparah, cultic, ritual expiation, and Taharah, self-purification, deprecating the former, while glorifying the latter. Of course, Cohen as a liberal Jew sees Judaism as moving in an evolutionary fashion from Kapparah, accorded by the priest, to Taharah, as a result of which God himself effects atonement in the sense of reconciliation; consequently, for him, the sacrificial service in the Temple with its emphasis on Kapparah is left behind entirely in the progressive advance of Judaism as a religion of reason. R. Soloveitchik, by contrast, as a leading spokesman for traditional rabbinic Judaism, places the Temple with its emphasis on the Kapparah attained through “the cultic worship acts of the High Priest” and the creative inward act of Taharah “based on an intimate relationship between man and God, creature and Creator, son and Father” side by side. Yet, at the same time, it is clear that R. Soloveitchik agrees with Cohen in elevating Taharah over Kapparah, inasmuch as he links Taharah as a naturalistic, inward, creative act of self-purification with repentance out of love, while he links the Kapparah attained though the sacrificial, cultic, ceremonial rites with repentance out of fear.

65 I will return to the connection between a person’s repenting out of love and his becoming a dwelling place for the Shekhinah in section IIIC of this paper.

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Precisely here, I would argue, the philosophical side of R. Soloveitchik clearly emerges. Scholars have debated whether R. Soloveitchik belongs more to the camp of the philosophers or to the camp of the mystics.66 But one good test, in my view, in determining to which of the two camps a particular thinker belongs is to examine that particular thinker’s attitude toward sacrifices. Mystics and such mystically inclined philosophers as Judah Halevi view the sacrificial service in an exceptionally positive light as constituting the mystery, par excellence, of Judaism.67 On the other hand, philosophers, the most notable example being Maimonides, view the sacrificial service as a rather inferior, material, and outward form of divine worship.68 On this critical issue, as I believe my analysis demonstrates, R. Soloveitchik comes down clearly on the side of the philosophers. To be sure, R. Soloveitchik, like Maimonides and unlike Cohen, sees the sacrificial service as binding and obligatory and only temporarily suspended, but that cannot change the fact that all three stand together in their generally deprecatory attitude toward sacrifices as well as in placing the inward service of the heart as expressed in repentance and prayer on a higher level than the sacrificial service. Regarding one critical aspect, however, R. Soloveitchik’s characterization of repentance out of love differs from Cohen’s characterization of repentance in general. For R. Soloveitchik, as we have seen, repentance out of love leads not only to redemption—on this point R. Soloveitchik is still following Cohen—but also to devekut, to cleaving to God, to becoming a dwelling place for the Shekhinah. But it is precisely this claim on the part of R. Soloveitchik that Cohen, if he is to remain true to his philosophy, must deny. For Cohen the gap between God and man can never be overcome. Rather, God

66 The reader may wish to contrast my approach to this question with that of Rivka Horwitz, as set forth in articles which appeared back to back in Emunah biZemanim Mishtanim (above n. 40). See Rivka Horwitz, “Yahaso shel ha-Rav Soloveitchik le-Havayah ha-Datit ve-li-Mistorin” [R. Soloveitchik’s Attitude towards Religious Experience and Mysticism”], pp. 45–74; and Lawrence Kaplan, “Motivim Kabbaliyyim be Haguto shel ha-Rav Soloveitchik: Mashma'uttiyim o 'Itturiyyim?” [“Kabalistic Motifs in the Thought of R. Soloveitchik: Substantive or Decorative?”], pp. 75–93. 67 See Kuzari 2:25–28 and 3:11. For an analysis of the Zohar’s teaching(s) concerning sacrifices, see I. Tishby, Mishnat ha-Zohar, Vol. 2 ( Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1975), pp. 187–213. However, as Tishby shows (pp. 213–15), the author of Ra'aya Mehemna and Tikkunei Zohar, with his radical spiritualizing tendencies, displays a highly ambivalent attitude toward sacrifices. 68 Guide 3:32.

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as the infinite moral ideal can only be asymptotically approached in the never-ending process of the individual’s moral self-transformation. We are now in a position to offer yet another answer to our original question as to why Cohen is unable to affirm, as do the rabbis and as does R. Soloveitchik in their wake, that in repentance out of love deliberate sins are accounted to the repentant sinner as meritorious deeds. For to say that the individual via repentance out of love can transform deliberate sins into meritorious deeds is to say that via repentance out of love the individual, if only for a brief moment, is able to bridge the gap between himself and the moral ideal. But it is precisely the possibility of bridging this gap that Cohen must deny. B. The Dynamics of Repentance out of Love While we have pieced together the various elements in R. Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance out of love, we have yet to understand how, for him, repentance out of love is truly possible. How can man in returning to God out of love transform and uplift his past, how can he transform his deliberate sins of the past into a source of future merit and holiness? Is not the past irretrievably past? And, for R. Soloveitchik, repentance out of love is by its very nature accessible to man’s understanding. Unlike the absolution obtained as a result of repentance out of fear, the self-purification that is identical with repentance out of love is a rational psychological process. As I noted briefly in an earlier article,69 R. Soloveitchik in approaching this issue of the nature of repentance out of love in its psychological and phenomenological aspects relies heavily, as he himself admits,70 on Max Scheler’s classic essay “Repentance and Rebirth.”71 For both Scheler and R. Soloveitchik, in order to understand true repentance we must distinguish between two modes of time: 1. “objective time wherein natural events take place,” to use Scheler’s phrase,72

69 “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” Tradition 14:2 (Fall, 1973), pp. 43–64. 70 Halakhic Man, Notes 125 and 127 (p. 161). 71 “Reue und Wiedergeburt,” Vom Ewigen im Menschen (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 27–59; “Repentance and Rebirth,” On the Eternal in Man, trans. Bernard Nobel (London, 1960), pp. 35–65. All page references are to the English translation. 72 Ibid., p. 39.

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or “the simple experience of unidimensional time . . . operating in the physical realm” to use R. Soloveitchik’s terminology;73 and 2. “the temporal life-streams [related] to our permanent personal self ”—Scheler,74 or “time as grounded in the realm of eternity”— R. Soloveitchik.75 In objective physical time the past is irrevocably past, the future not yet here. It is a uniform, one-dimensional, one-directional continuum. However, as far as our spiritual existence is concerned, “every single life moment corresponding with just one indivisible point of objective time, contains within itself its three extensions: the experienced past, the present being experienced, and the future, whose ingredients are constituted by awareness, immediate memory and immediate expectation.”76 The man who abides in the shadow of eternity knows of a “simultaneous past, present and future.” He is intimately acquainted both with “a past that persists in its existence, that does not vanish and disappear, but . . . enters into the domain of the present and links up with the future,” and with “a future that is not hidden behind a thick cloud, but reveals itself now in all its beauty and majesty . . ., a future [that] drawing on its own hidden roots infuses the past with strength and might, vigor and vitality.” For him, “both past and future are alive, both act and create in the heart of the present.” For him, “past, present, and future merge . . . together, [resulting] in a new three-fold time structure . . . adorned with a splendid unity.”77 But how may this living past be transformed? Here Scheler and R. Soloveitchik differ. For Scheler, the past may be transformed only if man focuses on it and it alone. The direction is wholly retrospective. In Scheler’s view, the events of the past continue to live on and affect the present and future course of events. The sins and misdeeds of the past engender the quality of guilt that accretes to one’s soul. It is this guilt that in its sicklied luxuriant growth smothers all of man’s creative and positive powers. But this guilt derives its ongoing power, its deadly and deadening force, precisely because

73 74 75 76 77

Halakhic Man, p. 115. “Repentance and Rebirth,” p. 39. Halakhic Man, p. 115. “Repentance and Rebirth,” p. 40. Halakhic Man, p. 114.

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man’s evil past which gave rise to this guilt in the first place is unremembered, evaded, ignored, indeed actively, if unconsciously, suppressed. Here Scheler agrees with Freud that the past exerts its dominion over us not through its being remembered but through its being repressed. Guilt is most effective in wreaking its havoc on the vital core of man’s person precisely when man is unaware of its existence. Indeed, as Scheler points out, “one of the most mysterious ways in which guilt works is that it provides its own concealment and blunts all sensitivity to its existence.”78 Man in repenting engages in an active, directed act of memory that serves to bring to light the submerged, yet ever active past. The past is no longer repressed but remembered. And being remembered, it loses its hold over man. “For remembering is the beginning of freedom from the covert power of the remembered thing and occurrence. It is precisely by being remembered that experiences . . . become detached from the center of the self . . . and lose their direct impact.”79 Repentance then is “a purposeful movement of the mind aimed at whatever guilt has accumulated in a human being,”80 a movement that creates a profound awareness of the psychic quality of guilt accreting to the human soul and thereby annihilates that guilt. But what happens after repentance has extinguished the dark workings of guilt? Here Scheler appears to waver. On the one hand, Scheler argues that a spontaneous moral regeneration will take place once “the life-nerve of guilt’s action and continuance”81 is killed by repentance. “Life [will] begin with a spontaneous virginal beginning. . . . Young forces . . . dormant in every soul . . . unhampered [now] by the tangled growths of oppressive guilt . . . will rise up of their own accord.”82 On the other hand, Scheler argues that “repenting is equivalent to reappraising part of one’s past life and shaping for it a mint new-worth and significance.”83 Here it would seem that it is not enough that a person extinguish the guilt that is the “dark work of the [evil] deeds in the very soul,”84 but that he must transform

78 79 80 81 82 83 84

“Repentance and Rebirth,” p. 54. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., pp. 41–42. Ibid., p. 55.

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the significance of these past deeds. To be sure, this can be done. As Scheler argues: There is no part of our past life, which . . . might not be genuinely altered in its meaning and worth through entering our life’s total significance as a constituent of the self-revision that is always possible. . . . [Every] event lying in the past has the capability of directly affecting every future event . . .; the total efficacy of an event is in the texture of life, bound up with its full significance and final value; [therefore] every event of our past remains indeterminate in its significance and incomplete in its value until it has yielded all its potential effects. Before our life comes to an end the whole of the past, at least with respect to its significance, never ceases to present us with the problem of what we are going to make of it. For no sooner does a section of objective time enter into the extension-category of our experience that we know as our past than it is deprived of that fatality and completion which past events in nature possess. As past this time content becomes ‘ours’—is subordinated to the power of the personal self.85

We have returned here to our starting point, the two conceptions of time. But while Scheler demonstrates that it is possible for man to “shape for [his past] a mint new-worth and significance,” he does not tell us how man concretely is to do this. How does one, through the power of the “personal self,” transform the negative past into a positive future? To be sure, Scheler states that “perfect repentance even raises man above the state of innocence into a higher existence which but for prior sin and subsequent repentance, would have been unattainable.”86 And—in what can appear only as a bitter irony to the Jewish reader—Scheler, the Jew turned Catholic, in his abysmal ignorance of (or, perhaps better, his pathological attitude to) Judaism,87 contends that this central rabbinic doctrine, “particularly characterizes

85

Ibid., pp. 40–41. Ibid., p. 63. 87 See Gershom Scholem’s highly revealing insights in From Berlin to Jerusalem (New York: Schocken, 1980), p. 136 into Scheler’s attitude toward his Jewishness. As Scholem discloses, though both of Scheler’s parents were “good Jews from Bavarian Jewish families,” he liked to create bogus genealogies for himself, inventing for himself a Protestant mother or father as the occasion demanded. The Encyclopedia Judaica article on Scheler (Vol. 14, Col. 952) in attributing to him an “upper middle-class Protestant father”—“a distinct touch, that!—is just one of the latest victims of Scheler’s “pathological [albeit] amusing” fabrications, and needs to be corrected accordingly. 86

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the Christian concept of repentance”88—but he does not explain how a person, through perfect repentance, can actually rise to this level. R. Soloveitchik, like Scheler, believes that the past, as far as a person’s spiritual existence is concerned, is not wholly determined, complete, and unalterable. To be sure, every cause has its effects, every event its repercussions—R. Soloveitchik does not advocate a total rejection of determinism—but the individual can mould and shape the effect of his past deeds.89 But for R. Soloveitchik, unlike Scheler, it is not primarily through awareness of and remorse over the past that a person can shape that past but rather through the attainment and possession of a future that is already living in the present and that is thus able to enter into and give direction to that past. R. Soloveitchik thus defines repentance as follows: 1) a retrospective reflection upon the past, separating out that which is living in it from that which is dead; 2) a vision of the future in which one distinguishes between a future that is already present and one that has not as yet been “created”; 3) an examination of the cause located in the past in the light of the future, thereby determining its direction and destination.90

And even more concisely: “The main principle of repentance is that the future dominate the past and reign over it in unbounded fashion.”91 For R. Soloveitchik, then, repentance has as its aim the transformation of the past, the rectification and elevation of evil, but the mode of accomplishing this transformation, rectification, and elevation is not so much contrition over the past as resolve for the future. How are we to explain R. Soloveitchik’s divergence from Scheler on this crucial point? On one level, in terms of external influences, we may attribute this divergence to the influence of Martin Heidegger on R. Soloveitchik. As I noted in a previous article,92 R. Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance is very similar to Heidegger’s conception of time. For Heidegger, as one scholar has observed:

88 89 90 91 92

“Repentance and Rebirth,” p. 63. Halakhic Man, pp. 116–17. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 115. “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” p. 63, n. 63.

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lawrence kaplan The basic tense of existential-time is future. It moves not from past through present to future, but out of the future through the past to the present. Reaching out to the future it turns back to assimilate the past that has made the present.93

Moreover, not only is the similarity between the two conceptions striking but R. Soloveitchik specifically refers to Heidegger’s Being and Time in the notes to Halakhic Man.94 The influence then is undeniable. Nevertheless, merely to explain the difference between Scheler and R. Soloveitchik in terms of external influences and the literary history of ideas would be to rest content with superficialities. For in the case of any great thinker who is influenced by another the question to be asked is: What are the internal problems and issues with which the thinker is confronted, what are the basic structures and dynamics of his thought that allow him, indeed compel him, to absorb certain influences and reject others? A truly great thinker is more than the sum total of the intellectual influence operating upon him. Rather, he draws upon these influences in a creative and innovative way, always maintaining his own identity, uniqueness, and originality. It follows that the primary reasons for R. Soloveitchik’s divergence from Scheler must be internal and structural in nature. Negatively, we can view R. Soloveitchik’s position as a response to and correction of the weakness in Scheler’s position that I noted earlier. As I indicated, Scheler’s analysis may be faulted for not accounting precisely for the medium whereby an individual shapes for his past life “a mint new-worth and significance.” For R. Soloveitchik, it is the living, present ever-active future revealing itself in the here-and-now that constitutes the medium whereby this process of shaping can take effect. The future imprints its stamp on the past and determines its image. . . . The cause is interpreted by the effect, moment a by moment b. The

93 Marjorie Grene, “Heidegger,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3, edited by Paul Edwards, (Glencoe: Free Press, 1967), p. 461. For Heidegger’s conception of the future, se the index to Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1996), under “Future, futural.” The following statements are typical: “In a way, having-been arises from the future” (p. 299); “[The] primary meaning [of existentiality] is the future” (p. 301); “Primordial and authentic temporality temporalizes itself out of the authentic future, and indeed in such a way that, futurally having been, it first arouses the present. The primary phenomenon of primordial and authentic temporality is the future” (pp. 302–3). 94 See Halakhic Man, notes 4 (p. 141) and 147 (p. 164).

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past by itself is indeterminate, a closed book. It is only the present and the future that can pry it open and read its meaning.95

More important, positively, R. Soloveitchik’s position should be seen as a careful and profound attempt to explain and justify, in phenomenological terms, the halakhic conception of repentance. In the light of R. Soloveitchik’s analysis, all three constituent elements of the halakhic definition of repentance: recognition of sin, contrition over the past, and resolve for the future receive their just philosophic and phenomenological due. But in a more general sense I would like to argue that R. Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance, wherein the person transforms his past by first turning to the future is not just an attempt to give philosophic expression to halakhic categories through creatively and selectively drawing upon both Scheler and Heidegger, but, even more fundamentally, reflects and expresses his basic religious sensibility and outlook. R. Soloveitchik emerges here, as elsewhere in his writings, in his true stature as a great Lithuanian Gaon, as the outstanding representative in our time of the great Mitnaggdic tradition associated with the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, and Rabbi Hayyim of Brisk, who not only personally embodies that tradition but has raised it to the level of self-consciousness, has given it philosophical voice, so that it can speak in universal religious and phenomenological terms. In this regard, to view repentance primarily through the prism of contrition, as does Scheler, to focus exclusively upon the past, is alien to the spirit of halakhic man as R. Soloveitchik both portrays him and embodies him. Scheler’s approach to repentance in its total emphasis upon contrition is all too reminiscent of the Musar school, which R. Soloveitchik subjects to a very sharp and stringent critique in Halakhic Man.96 For R. Soloveitchik, the prime fault of the Musar program, particularly in the version propagated by R. Isaac Blaser, is that it tends to get mired and stuck in the past, that it gives rise to a sense of gloom, melancholy, depression, and despair among its adherents, so inimical to the sense of dignity and responsibility that characterizes the halakhic individual.

95 96

Halakhic Man, p. 115. Ibid., pp. 74–76.

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lawrence kaplan One must not waste time on spiritual self-appraisal, on probing introspections, and on the picking away at the “sense” of sin. Such a psychic analysis brings man neither to fear nor to love of God, nor, most fundamental of all, to the knowledge and cognition of the Torah. The Torah cannot be acquired in a state of melancholia and depression. Man’s entire psychic being must be committed to the regime of the cognition of Halakhah, and it is through such service that man can be saved from experiencing despair. The disjunctive emotions of fear and anxiety, if not rooted in Halakhah, can give rise to destructive consequences that will far outweigh any putative gains.97

To be sure, the halakhah requires contrition as part of repentance; it requires that we focus upon and transform our past. But the vantage point from which we attain our focus, the medium whereby that transformation takes place, is the future, a future comprised of the study of Torah and the performance of commandments. In this respect it is striking that the one essay on repentance by a Lithuanian Gaon that gives philosophical and phenomenological voice to the Musar point of view, “Repentance” by Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg,98 leans heavily on Scheler throughout, particularly with regard to identifying repentance almost entirely with contrition. Indeed it is striking that R. Weinberg in his essay hardly ever speaks about resolve for the future. Rather R. Weinberg accepts the Musar doctrine of Rabbi Isaac Blaser, which sees contrition as the key to repentance.99 He then proceeds to raise against it the very same philosophical and psychological objections cited by Scheler100 and then justifies the necessity and effectiveness of contrition in almost exactly the same terms as Scheler.101 We may say then that it was

97

Ibid., pp. 74–75. “Repentance,” Lifrakim (second abridged edition, Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 121–38. 99 See R. Isaac Blaser, “Contrition: The Fundamental Principle of Repentance,” Kokhvei Or ( Jerusalem, 1974), p. 136, where he declares: “The fundamental principle of repentance is contrition as opposed to abandoning the sin. Except without abandoning the sin there can be no contrition.” And compare Sha'arei Teshuvah 1:11. 100 Compare R. Weinberg’s discussion of the various modern critiques of repentance (“Repentance,” pp. 122–24) with Scheler’s presentation of those same critiques (“Repentance and Rebirth,” pp. 36–36, 48–52). The dependence is obvious. 101 R. Weinberg, toward the beginning of his essay (p. 126), refers to Scheler’s essay but this single reference by no means reveals the full extent of Scheler’s influence on R. Weinberg. Indeed, large parts of R. Weinberg’s essay are in truth (surprisingly unacknowledged) Hebrew paraphrases of Scheler’s essay. In addition to the parallel pointed out in the previous note, the following parallels stand out: R. Weinberg’s discussion of “memory” (pp. 127–30) relies heavily on Scheler’s analy98

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R. Weinberg’s Musar inclinations that made him so open to accepting Scheler’s general approach to repentance without any serious modifications. In contrast, then, to this Musar approach to repentance, with its almost exclusive focus on contrition and its slighting of resolve for the future, R. Soloveitchik’s approach attempts to do justice to all the constituent elements of the halakhic definition of repentance and hold in balance its two-fold emphasis on the prospective glance to the future and the retrospective glance to the past. * * * * We have seen that for R. Soloveitchik the future, as a result of the act of repentance, determines the meaning of the past, that it changes its vectorial force. But if in examining repentance as a transforming force, we focus not so much on the dimension of time, but rather more on the sin itself, its roots and effects, we may ask how, for R. Soloveitchik, can man’s sinful drives, the sin itself and its defiling effects, be transformed into a source of good. With regard to this question, R. Soloveitchik offers three distinct answers.

sis of the “peculiar nature which memory plays in the act of repentance” (pp. 43–46); his conception of the nature of the effects of sin (p. 131) calls to mind Scheler’s discussion of guilt “as a quality, not a feeling” (pp. 54–55); his notion of the rectification of sin (p. 132) is a paraphrase of Scheler’s description of repentance as an “attack upon guilt” (p. 50); his discussion of renewing the past (p. 134) derives from Scheler’s discussion of the subject (pp. 39–40); his analysis of the indeterminate nature of past events (p. 134) is a paraphrase of Scheler’s views on this issue (p. 40); finally, R. Weinberg’s discussion of the different levels of man’s soul and his use of this notion to deal with the issue of repentance and causality (p. 137) is derived directly from Scheler’s very profound and penetrating remarks on this matter (pp. 46–47). In light of the above, I believe it would not be unfair to say that R. Weinberg’s essay is, in effect, a free reworking of Scheler’s essay, garnished and decked out with appropriate rabbinic references, particularly at the essay’s beginning and end, and thereby suitably “Judaized.” In general, Scheler’s statement in the “Preface” to the second edition of On the Eternal in Man, about the “keen interest and comprehensive criticism” (p. 15) his work received in Jewish theological and philosophical circles is fully borne out by the striking fact that the three major, twentieth-century philosophical treatments of repentance by outstanding rabbinic figures, namely, “Repentance” by R. Weinberg, Halakhic Man by R. Soloveitchik, and “Grundgedanken der Religionsphilosophie Max Schelers” by R. Joseph Wohlgemuth, Festgabe für Jacob Rosenheim, ed. Heinrich Eisenmann (Frankfurtam-Main: J. Kaufmann, 1931), pp. 19–71, all explicitly acknowledge their debt and indeed are deeply indebted to Scheler’s essay.

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The first answer focuses on the results of sin. Sin will inexorably sever a man from God, but precisely in the moment of separation, he may yearn for God as he has never yearned before and so achieve a relationship of closeness that he never achieved before. ‘The Lord appears to me from afar’ ( Jer. 31:2). Man, when God is close, is blind. As long as the Creator is near, as long as the Shekhinah is hovering about, man does not sense the shining happiness streaming from this wondrous closeness, man does not feel the secret vigor, joy, and bliss that flow spontaneously from God’s nearness. . . . Consequently, man sins; God departs and leaves man alone. Only then does lonely man comprehend the magnitude of his loss and he nostalgically reaches for God. . . . God becomes visible to man only from a distance. . . . God allures and fascinates man from the infinite, uncharted lanes of the Beyond. . . . The sinner sees from afar and the distance intensifies his longing. . . . The distance enchants, capturing his heart and drags him on, on. . . . And then he runs. He runs faster than he used to run before he was separated from God. It is the strength of yearning that breaks forth after it had been suppressed for so long that drives him on with a mighty force to the Infinite One.102

In a word, sin, precisely because it alienates man from God, can paradoxically, through man’s resolve, become a source for a more intimate relationship with God than existed before the sin. However, for R. Soloveitchik, it is not simply the sense of alienation, of loss, resulting from the sin that can be transformed into a source of good. The sin itself, or rather man’s sinful drives, can also be so transformed. This happens in two distinct, dialectically interrelated ways. First, the negative, destructive, aggressive drives that previously led man to sin are now transformed into powerful positive drives that lead him to righteousness. Sin gives free rein to negative drives to wreak havoc. But, at the same time, in so doing it uncovers and brings to the surface powerful reserves of energy, albeit in negative form, of which man may have been unaware. Through repentance, man rather than repressing these mighty, if chaotic, forces, rather than driving them back into the depths of the psyche, instead tames 102 This citation is a composite, fashioned by my weaving together passages from “Sacred and Profane,” pp. 23–26; “Peleitat Sofreihem” [= “A Eulogy for R. Hayyim Heller Z”L”], Be-Sod ha-Yahid ve-ha-Yahad, pp. 261–64 (translated into English by Shalom Carmy in Shiur'ei Ha-Rav, ed. Joseph Epstein (Heboken, N.J.: Ktau, 1994), pp. 48–49; “A Eulogy for the Talner Rebbe,” Shiurei Ha Rav, p. 73; and “The Extirpation or Sublimation of Evil,” pp. 177–83.

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them and channels them into constructive paths. Through the transforming act of repentance, then, out of the sin itself a new powerful spiritual personality is born.103 But second, the reverse takes place.104 Man, after he has sinned, after he experiences the shipwreck of his existence, through a mighty act of free will creates himself anew. Indeed, for R. Soloveitchik, this act of self-creation is the act of will par excellence. Man can be the architect of his own personality, may fashion his own internal spiritual dynamic. He may thereby “determine for himself the causal pattern according to which all of his natural reactions will take place.”105 But once this happens, all his desires and drives that had previously led him to sin now appear in a totally new causal framework, in a new person. Those desires that in the past had lured him into enslavement to external physical beauty have been redeemed and now appear in his new personality in a new form in which they lure him to devote himself to supernal spiritual beauty. . . . He is still “lovesick.” But the fires of passion that in his old personality had lured him to sin now lead him in an entirely different direction.106

It is this type of repentance that R. Soloveitchik terms repentance of redemption and it is the true and ultimate form of repentance out of love. Here, we see the reverse side of transformation. It is not that the sublimation and transformation of powerful, sinful drives lead to the creation of a new religious personality. Rather, the powerful act of will involved in creating a new religious personality gives rise to a new, internal, personal causal nexus wherein these formerly negative drives will, of themselves, take on new positive meanings as they become integrated into their new and radically different spiritual surroundings. In light of my analysis of R. Soloveitchik’s understanding of the dynamics of repentance out of love, I would like to return once

103 See “Sacred and Profane,” p. 27; “The Extirpation or Sublimation of Evil,” pp. 183–84. A similar approach may be found in R. Kook, Orot ha-Kodesh 9:7, 11:6, 12:5, and 14:6; and Jakob J. Petuchowski, “The Concept of Teshuvah in the Bible and the Talmud,” Judaism 17 (1968), pp. 183–84. 104 This discussion is based on Halakhic Man, pp. 114–17, and, in particular, upon “The Relationship between Repentance and Free Will,” pp. 235–36 and 241–44. 105 Ibid., p. 243. 106 Ibid., p. 243.

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again to my original question. Why can’t Cohen affirm that in repenting out of love an individual can transform deliberate sins into meritorious deeds? First, Cohen, I would suggest, could not accept R. Soloveitchik’s view regarding the transforming force of repentance out of love from the standpoint of its relationship to the category of time. Reinier Munk argues that “there is a similarity between Soloveitchik and Cohen in their interpretation of the category of anticipation as characteristic of the category of time.”107 But this similarity, I would contend, masks a deeper dissimilarity. True, for both R. Soloveitchik and Cohen, the individual in repenting out of love turns to the future. But for R. Soloveitchik, as we have seen, the individual who repents out of love after turning to the future turns to the past, and, in light of the future, transforms the meaning of the past, rectifying and elevating it. For Cohen, however, since self-transformation is an infinite task, directed to the future, an infinite task of moral ascent, there is no place for turning from the future to the past. One’s eyes must be firmly directed to the future and to it alone. To be sure, remorse, for Cohen, is an important preliminary step in the process of repentance. But it is only a “preliminary step . . . a negative precondition for the abandonment of the old way of life.”108 Note carefully: The old way is abandoned, consigned to a forgotten past, not, as in R. Soloveitchik’s concept of repentance out of love, transformed. There may also be another reason why Cohen could not accept any turn from the future to the past. For such a turn would lead to the merging together of past, present, and future, which, in turn (pun intended!), would give rise to that substantial self whose very existence Cohen denies. Precisely here, we see that Cohen’s approach to repentance is still within the bounds of his critical idealism, as opposed to R. Soloveitchik, who, for all the influence of Cohen on his approach to repentance, breaks with Cohen’s critical idealism and moves in the direction of existential phenomenology. In this respect, the difference between R. Soloveitchik and Cohen concerning relationship of repentance and the dimensions of time is the reverse mirror image of the difference between him and the Musar school on this issue. If the Musar approach to repentance,

107 108

Reinier Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man, p. 94. RR, p. 203.

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in R. Soloveitchik’s view, places too much emphasis on contrition over the past and consequently slights the critical element of resolve for the future, Cohen, in his view (though he never states this criticism explicitly) places too much emphasis on resolve for the future and consequently slights the critical element of contrition over the past. Second, I would further suggest, Cohen could not accept R. Soloveitchik’s view regarding the transforming force of repentance out of love from the standpoint of its relationship to the sin itself. Both Cohen and R. Soloveitchik would agree that an individual in repenting out of love creates himself anew. But for R. Soloveitchik, as we have just seen, such an act of self-creation means that the individual through a powerful act of will creates for himself a new, internal, personal causal nexus wherein his formerly negative drives will, of themselves, take on new positive meanings as they become integrated into their new and radically different spiritual surroundings. Cohen, however, could not accept such an understanding of the meaning of self-creation. For the existence of a new, internal personal causal nexus, as espoused by R. Soloveitchik, would appear to presuppose the existence of a substantial self. But, as we have seen time and again, Cohen denies that the new I arising out of repentance out of love is a substantial self. In a similar vein, such a personal causal nexus would have a definite shape and form; but for Cohen, “As little as it is possible to imagine that a new heart is formed in actuality, so little is it possible for the meaning of the new I which is to be formed to have a definite shape.”109 Rather, for Cohen, as we have also seen, the new heart and the new spirit, the new I created in the act of repentance “are and remain tasks.”110 * * * * With this, I have completed my analysis of R. Soloveitchik’s understanding of the dynamics of repentance out of love. Let us now step back for a moment and ask ourselves if there is a common thread running through all the different facets of Soloveitchik’s elaborate and complex picture of repentance out of love. I believe there is, and would suggest that it is R. Soloveitchik’s claim that repentance

109 110

Ibid., p. 204. Ibid., p. 204.

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out of love is not supernatural but rather wholly psychological in character, that it is a rational, comprehensible act that takes place in the depths of the psyche. And, for R. Soloveitchik—and in this respect he reflects his Kantian background—a rational, comprehensible act means an act that takes place within a lawful, causal framework. It is for this reason that repentance out of fear, which attempts to obliterate the past, to deny its effect on the present is, for R. Soloveitchik, an essentially non-rational act and is only effective thanks to God’s transcendent, mysterious grace. For how can one affirm a cause, yet deny its effect? But in repentance out of love, as we have seen, man never denies the principle of causality, though on a personal level it operates in a different fashion than it operates in the realm of nature. The act of taharah is not supernatural but psychological. It conveys one law in mental causality; although a cause is given the effect need not equal the cause. The effect need not be predetermined. Man himself may determine the vectorial character of the effect and give it direction and destination.111

Here R. Soloveitchik clearly maintains that for an act to be considered rational and psychological in character it must conform to the principle of causality. Moreover, as we just saw, R. Soloveitchik, in speaking of redemptive repentance, emphasizes that man’s ultimate act of self-transformation is not an act whereby man abolishes a causal nexus, but rather one whereby man creates for himself a new internal causal structure that will determine from the outset, in a positive fashion, the patterns of his own behavior and responses. His acts in this sense follow a lawful pattern, but it is a pattern that has been set by man himself. If repentance out of love, then, is a rational, lawful, psychological act whose effectiveness may be understood solely in terms of its own inner personal dynamics, there is no need for mysterious, transcendent, supernatural acts of grace. Here, adopting a strictly philosophical approach, we see R. Soloveitchik’s analysis arriving at exactly the same conclusion that we had seen it arrive at earlier when looking at the matter from an halakhic viewpoint. Once again, both aspects of R. Soloveitchik’s thought, the halakhic and the philosophical, merge in a perfect unity.

111

“Sacred and Profane,” p. 25.

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C. Repentance out of Love and the Oral Torah We have attempted to piece together a complete picture of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance, both repentance out of fear and repentance out of love. And yet the final, and perhaps the most important, piece is still missing. For ultimately what is it that gives man the power to achieve this radical self-transformation, this arduous self-purification, this mighty self-creation? What is it that endows man with the ability to use the future to determine the meaning and the direction of the past? What is it that confers upon man the strength to change sin into a source of good? In a word, from what wells does man draw those resources of spirit that enable him to perform repentance out of love? God’s gift of free will? To be sure. But is not man’s free will radically impaired by sin? God’s gift of intellect, of analytic introspection penetrating to the very depths of one’s being? Again, to be sure. But is not man’s reason corrupted by sin? And here we come to the most profound answer of all. It is the oral Torah, the living Torah, given to Moses but nurtured and developed by the sages and community of Israel, that is the ultimate wellspring of spirit deep in the soul of man, or at least the Jew, from whence he may draw the “waters of salvation,” the might, the power, the force, the strength to perform repentance out of love. In an as yet unpublished discourse on repentance that he delivered in 1968,112 R. Soloveitchik, basing himself on certain midrashic texts, distinguishes between two types of repentance, one type of repentance where God’s atonement flows from His attribute of mercy and one type of repentance where God’s forgiveness flows from His attribute of justice, and links the former with the written Torah and the latter with the oral Torah. On Shavuot, then, when God revealed to Moses the written Torah, simultaneously with it He revealed to him the repentance of mercy. But on the Day of Atonement, when, according to the Rabbis, God revealed to Moses the oral Torah,113

112 I have prepared an edited transcript of this discourse, which I hope to publish in the near future. One section of this discourse was apparently recycled and is to be found the discourse, “Zemanei Teshuvah ve-Yihhudam,” in Yemei Zikkaron, pp. 245–51. As we shall see, however, in the latter discourse, delivered in the 1975, R. Soloveitchik draws a radically different conclusion from that drawn in the 1968 discourse. 113 R. Soloveitchik bases himself primarily on Responsa of the Beth Ha-Levi, Derush

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simultaneously with it He revealed to him a new type of repentance, the repentance of justice. R. Soloveitchik explains the nature of the links as follows. Every sin may be viewed as constituting an act of me'ilah, of trespass. In a strict halakhic sense, a person commits act of me'ilah whenever he uses a sacred object for profane purposes. But in a broader aggadic or theological sense, everything in the world is potentially holy, is capable of being sanctified. Therefore, if a person, instead of using his possessions for noble, holy tasks uses them for his own ignoble, profane ends he commits thereby an act of me'ilah, of trespass, of profanation, of desecration. If a man instead of uplifting himself, of sanctifying himself, of using his own abilities and talents for elevated purposes, degrades and profanes himself, utilizes his abilities and talents for base ends, then, again, he commits an act of me'ilah. But, from the standpoint of halakhah, what is the effect of an act of me'ilah? If a person takes a sacred object and uses it for profane purposes what happens to the status of that sacred object? Here the halakhah declares that the effect of me'ilah depends upon the nature of the sanctity of the object which is being profaned. The halakhah distinguishes between two types of kedushah, holiness: kedushat damim, monetary holiness, or kedushat bedek ha-bayyit, the holiness of objects that are the property of the sanctuary, and kedushat ha-guf, intrinsic holiness. If one sets aside an animal for an offering, that animal

18, written by his great-grandfather and namesake, R. Joseph Ber Soloveitchik of Brisk. For R. Soloveitchik’s presentation of the various rabbinic texts pointing in this direction, see “Zemanei Teshuvah ve-Yihhudam,” pp. 247; “The Avodah Recitation and the Conclusion of Yom Kippur,” Before Hashem You Shall be Purified, pp. 146–47, 162; “Keri"at ha-Torah be-Shabbat, be-Sheni, u-ve-Hamishi,” Shi'urim leZekher Abba Mari, Z”L, Vol. 1 ( Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1983), pp. 176–77; and “A Discourse on the Sacrificial Order of the Day of Atonement,” Nora"ot haRav, Vol. 6, edited by B. David Schreiber (New York, 1997), p. 217. I should note that the contention of the Beth Ha-Levi, based upon the Yalkut Shimoni (Ki Tissa 393), that on the first tablets both the written Torah and what was later to be the oral Torah were written down, while on the second tablets only the written Torah was written down, the oral Torah being reserved solely for oral transmission, would appear to be directly contradicted by the view, expressed in Shemot Rabbah 46:1, that the first tablets contained only the ten commandments, while the second tablets contained “Halakhot, Midrash, and Aggadot.” (See, however the comments of Eytz Yosef, ad. loc.) On the other hand, note Shemot Rabbah 47:12, which explicitly states that the “Halakhot, Midrash, and Aggadot” were not written down on the second tablets, but were revealed only orally.

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acquires kedushat ha-guf, the animal itself becomes sacred, it acquires intrinsic holiness. However, if one sets aside some object for the temple treasury, the object does not acquire kedushat ha-guf, intrinsic holiness, but only kedushat damim, monetary holiness. The object is not holy per se. Only its value is holy. Or to put it another way, the object belongs to the realm of holiness. To phrase the matter loosely, it is meshubad, it is bound, linked, to a domain of holiness that is external to it. The difference, then, between kedushat ha-guf and kedushat damim should be understood as follows: In the case of the former, holiness is internalized within the object; in the case of the latter, holiness is external to the object. How, then, does this distinction between the two types of kedushah, kedushat damim and kedushat ha-guf, impact upon the halakhic effect of me'ilah? The halakhah states that if one commits an act of trespass, of desecration, with respect to an object that possesses kedushat damim, the object loses its sanctity, it becomes wholly profane. For since the source of holiness in the instance of kedushat damim is external to the object, through the act of me'ilah, through the wrongful misuse of the object, the individual cuts the link connecting the object with that external source. The object therefore has no source of holiness upon which to draw and becomes profane. However, if one commits an act of trespass, of desecration, with respect to an object possessed of kedushat ha-guf, that object can be tarnished, blackened, but it can never lose its sanctity, can never become wholly profane. For since the holiness in kedushat ha-guf is internal to the object, is embedded in its very grain, no act in the world can deprive the object of that holiness. The holiness may be tarnished, may be coarsened, but it can never be completely eradicated, nor can it be driven out. If an object possesses kedushat ha-guf, then no matter what happens it remains holy forever. One of the fundamental principles of Judaism is the concept of kedushat Yisrael, the affirmation that each and every Jew is holy. But, R. Soloveitchik asks, what type of holiness does he possess: kedushat damim or kedushat ha-guf ? And the import of the answer to this question should now be obvious. For if the holiness of the Jew is akin to kedushat damim, then every sin, insofar as it is an act of trespass, renders the Jew wholly profane, deprives him entirely of his holiness. However, if the holiness of the Jew is akin to kedushat ha-guf, then sin, despite the fact that it is an act of me'ilah, can only tarnish or coarsen that holiness; the Jew, however, cannot be deprived of

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holiness. The Jew can never become wholly profane; his holiness has been blackened but he, himself, remains holy. R. Soloveitchik is now in a position to answer his original question: How is the written Torah linked with repentance of mercy and the oral Torah with repentance of justice? He replies: If the Israelites had received the written Torah alone, then the holiness accruing to them as a result of their possession of that Torah would have been akin to kedushat damim. The individual Jew would have been linked, would have been bound to a source of holiness external to him. Consequently, if a Jew would have sinned in such circumstances and committed thereby an act of me'ilah, he would have broken the link, snapped the bond connecting him to the external source. He would have thereby become wholly profane. He would have been left bereft, devoid of any sanctity. Therefore, even if he would have repented, even if he would have returned to God, he would have been only able to reacquire his lost holiness through an act of mercy on God’s part. The repentant sinner would have had no claim on God. Rather God would have restored to him the holiness that he lost as a result of sin as an undeserved gift, as a sheer act of grace. However, once the people of Israel received the oral Torah on the Day of Atonement, holiness was no longer contained just in a text, in an external source to which they were linked, but it became internalized within them. Torah was no longer simply a book, but a living tradition embodied within a living people. The oral Torah is an integral part of the people. It is not so much a deposit of tradition, but rather a living institution: originally the Great Court, the representative of all Israel, and after the dissolution of that court the people of Israel as a whole. Torah is to be found not only in a book, but also in each and every Jew who is a link in the ongoing tradition. In a word, for R. Soloveitchik, it was through the revelation of the oral Torah that holiness became internalized in each and every Jew and the holiness of Israel became transformed thereby from kedushat damim to kedushat ha-guf. It follows that once Israel possesses the oral Torah, once kedushat Yisrael is akin to kedushat ha-guf, if a Jew sins he can no longer be wholly profaned, for his holiness is an integral part of him; it lives within him. To be sure, his sin effaces his holiness, but it never eradicates it. He is both defiled and holy at the same time, or to put it another way, his holiness is encrusted with a layer of defilement. Therefore, if through an act of repentance the Jew cleanses himself,

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if he purifies himself from his defilement, then his holiness re-emerges, as of itself, in all its beauty and splendor. The repentant sinner then need not ask God to restore his holiness to him as an act of grace; he never lost it. Rather the repentant sinner having, through his own efforts, raised his inalienable holiness to its previous exalted state, may now rightfully demand from God, as an act of justice, forgiveness. The linkage drawn in the above discourse on repentance between repentance of mercy and the written Torah, and repentance of justice and the oral Torah is brilliant homiletics, indeed one of the most brilliant pieces of homiletics I have ever had the privilege of hearing from Rabbi Soloveitchik. Nevertheless, as I said above, I believe that it is necessary to place this linkage within the framework I have established. We have seen earlier that, for Rabbi Soloveitchik, repentance of justice is essentially repentance out of love, while repentance of mercy is essentially repentance out of fear. The primary link then is between repentance out of fear and the written Torah and repentance out of love and the oral Torah.114 This link between repentance out of love and the oral Torah enables us understand Rabbi Soloveitchik’s insistence throughout his writings that the Day of Atonement is the day set aside for repentance out of love.115 For it was on the Day of Atonement that the oral Torah was revealed. Consequently, on the Day of Atonement we are all called upon not simply to obtain Kapparah, atonement, through external sacrificial rites, but to engage in an act of Taharah, of self-purification, before God—“Before God you shall purify yourselves” (Lev. 16:30).116

114 See, as well, “Keri"at ha-Torah be-Shabbat, be-Sheni, u-ve-Hamishi,” p. 177, where the oral Torah is linked with repentance. While this discourse does not explicitly refer to repentance out of love, R. Soloveitchik’s description of repentance there as a “renewal of the personality” clearly indicates he has repentance out of love in mind. Similarly, in “Zemanei Teshuvah ve-Yihhudam,” p. 250, the oral Torah is again linked with repentance. And while, again, this discourse too does not explicitly refer to repentance out of love, R. Soloveitchik’s reference there to cleaving to God and the necessity for Taharah, for self-purification, once again clearly indicates that he has repentance out of love in mind. 115 See “Kapparah ve-Taharah,” pp. 19–20; “Bi' ur ha-Ra o Ha'alato,” pp. 185–87. 116 Note that R. Soloveitchik follows the view of Rabbenu Yonah, and interprets the phrase, “Lifnei A-donai titharu” (Lev. 16:30) as a command, understanding it to mean, “Before God you shall purify yourselves,” as opposed to a promise, in

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We may therefore return to our earlier question. What is it that gives man the power to radically transform himself, to create a new personality, to use the future to determine the past, to change sin into a source of good—in a word, to repent out of love? A powerful will? A penetrating intellect? The voice of God that calls from within even after the sin? To be sure, all these, but yet more. It is ultimately the oral Torah, the living Torah which each and every Jew integrates into his very being, that enables him to interiorize that holiness that undergirds his will, that illumines his intellect, that sustains the divine voice from within. Were it not for the oral Torah, sin would paralyze man’s will, corrupt his intellect, smother the inner divine voice. If the Jew possessed the written Torah alone, he would have only had an external relationship to holiness. He would not have had an inner source of strength from which to draw, so as to engage in that arduous process of self-purification called repentance out of love. He would only have been able to repent out of fear and hope for God’s infinite mercies. Only the oral Torah which is indissolubly linked with the people of Israel, which can never truly be written down but lives on in the soul of every Jew, ensures, guarantees, that, no matter what, man will never lose that power of selftransformation which, as we have stated time and time again, is repentance out of love.117

which case it would mean, “Before God you shall be purified.” Thus, R. Soloveitchik maintains that when the high priest recites this phrase during the sacrificial service of the day, he is urging the people not to be satisfied with the Kapparah provided by the sacrificial service, but to engage in the act of Taharah, an act that can be performed only by each individual on his own. See “Kapparah ve-Taharah, p. 19; and “Bi'ur ha-Ra o Ha'alato,” pp.186–187. For Rabbenu Yonah’s view, see Sha'arei Teshuvah, Second Gate, Fifth Path. Note that Rabbi Hutner, in Pahad Yitzhak:Yom ha-Kippurim, Essay 1, also links the character of the Day of Atonement as a day of revelation with the requirement that the repentance that one performs on that day be a repentance of Taharah, though he understands this connection differently than does R. Soloveitchik. I hope to return to this matter on another occasion. 117 In Halakhic Man, p. 114, R. Soloveitchik writes that “Spinoza and Nietzsche did well—from this perspective [i.e. repentance from the perspective of Kapparah]— to deride the idea of repentance.” To elaborate briefly on this point in light of our analysis, we may say that had the Jewish people received only the written Torah they would have been able to engage only in repentance out of fear and thereby would have only obtained Kapparah. But such a form of repentance would indeed be vulnerable to the critiques leveled against repentance by Spinoza and Nietzsche. More broadly, we may say that R. Soloveitchik is tacitly suggesting that the entire modern critique of Judaism from Spinoza via Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche regarding Judaism as a slavish religion based on obedience would be in place were Judaism

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We return for the final time to our original question as to why Cohen is unable to affirm, as do the rabbis and as does R. Soloveitchik in their wake, that in repentance out of love deliberate sins are accounted to the repentant sinner as meritorious deeds. We had suggested earlier that to say that the individual via repentance out of love can transform deliberate sins into meritorious deeds is to say that via repentance out of love that individual, if only for a brief moment, is able to bridge the gap between himself and the moral ideal. But it is precisely the possibility of bridging this gap that, we observed, Cohen must deny. In light of our discussion in this section, we may supplement our previous answer as follows. Cohen, we may say, conceives of the relationship between the individual and the moral ideal on the model of the relationship that exists between the Jew and the written Torah. In both instances, the individual is linked to a source of holiness that is external to him. For R. Soloveitchik, by contrast, thanks to the oral Torah holiness need not be, as it is for Cohen, an infinite asymptotic ideal that may only be approached but never attained. Rather, the oral Torah, which stands at the very heart of Judaism, enables the Jew to bridge the gap between himself and the moral ideal and to interiorize holiness within him. This ties in with another point we had made earlier. We had contrasted R. Soloveitchik’s view that repentance out of love leads to devekut, to cleaving to God, to being a dwelling place for the Shekhinah, with that of Cohen who asserts the gap between God and man can never be entirely overcome, that since God is the infinite moral ideal, one may only approach Him, never cleave to Him. Here again our earlier discussion takes on a new dimension in the light of our present discussion in this section. I would suggest that we take very seriously R. Soloveitchik’s reference to the Shekhinah, to the indwelling presence of God. For the Kabbalah identifies the Shekhinah, the last and most immanent of the ten Sefirot, both with Knesset Israel, the mystical collectivity of the Jewish people, and with the oral Torah.

only a religion of the written Torah. It is thanks to the fact that Judaism is primarily based on the oral Torah that these critiques, in R. Soloveitchik’s view, are so misguided. For it is the oral Torah that both leads the individual to the love of God and makes it possible for him or her to repent out of love. I elaborate upon this important issue in my article on R. Soloveitchik in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy (forthcoming).

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From R. Soloveitchik’s standpoint, I would suggest that we should view the Kabbalah’s identification of the oral Torah with the Shekhinah as stemming from the prior identification of the oral Torah with Knesset Israel. As we saw, in a very real sense the oral Torah, for R. Soloveitchik, is the creation of the Jewish people. Thus, R. Soloveitchik states in Halakhic Man that Halakhic man received the Torah from Sinai not as a simple recipient but as a creator of worlds, as a partner with the Almighty in the act of creation. The power of creative interpretation (hiddush) is the very foundation of the received tradition.118

And, similarly, he states in But from Thence Ye Shall Seek that “God gave the Torah to Israel and commanded us to engage in creative interpretation.”119 What does he mean by such statements if not that the Sage by an act of creative interpretation manifested in the study and development of the oral Torah becomes “a creator of worlds, . . . a partner with the Almighty in the act of creation.” If, as Gershom Scholem and others have contended, one of the key innovations in the Kabbalah was to identify the Shekhinah with Knesset Israel,120 it follows that the oral Torah, which is the creation of Knesset Israel, should similarly be identified with the Shekhinah. The oral Torah, thus, represents the indwelling presence of God in the world. Therefore, the person who performs repentance out of love as a result of having interiorized the oral Torah within him has indeed become a dwelling place for the Shekhinah. To reverse this last point, we may say that the person who has interiorized the oral Torah within him, precisely because he thereby becomes “a partner with the Almighty in the act of creation,” overcomes, via this joint partnership in the creation of Torah, the distance separating him from God and becomes a dwelling place for the Shekhinah. He may thereby truly experience God as “Father, Companion and Intimate Counselor,” may truly come to love God, and consequently be able to reach the heights of engaging in repentance out of love.121

118

Halakhic Man, p. 81. But from Thence Ye Shall Seek, p. 207. 120 Gershom Scholem, “Shekhinah: The Feminine Element in the Divinity,” On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken, 1991), pp. 160–61. 121 See, in this connection, my remarks in note 117. 119

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D. An Unexpected Development There is a surprise ending to this paper. I have analyzed R. Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance as it emerges from his essays and discourses written and presented from the 1940s to the late 1960s. However, in a discourse on repentance that he delivered in 1975 R. Soloveitchik introduced a major modification into his conception of repentance—some might go so far as to term it a major reversal.122 In this discourse R. Soloveitchik once again returns to R. Akiva’s famous watchword: “Happy are you O Israel. Before Whom do you purify yourselves? and Who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven.” But this time R. Soloveitchik does not maintain that “the act of purification is something each man must perform by himself, each man in his own heart.” Rather, emphasizing the conclusion of R. Akiva, “Who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven,” R. Soloveitchik asserts that on the Day of Atonement God does not leave purification to man, but rather “God Himself effects purification, Taharah, as He effects expiation, Kapparah.”123 How should we, from a normative point of view, evaluate this startling change?124 122 See “Zemanei Teshuvah ve-Yihhudam,” pp. 242–43; and “Rabbi Akiva’s Homily on Teshuvah,” Before Hashem You Shall be Purified, pp. 98–100. For the date of this discourse, see Ibid., Table of Contents, p. iv, s.v. “Yom Kippur—God in Search of Man.” 123 It should be noted that R. Soloveitchik limits his point to the purification attained on the Day of Atonement. Regarding the rest of the year, he continues to maintain his contention that “the act of purification is something each man must perform by himself, each man in his own heart.” It is precisely because “God so desires His people’s closeness on the Day of Atonement that ultimately God Himself [on that day] effects purification, Taharah, as well [as expiation, Kapparah].” But this qualification does not, in my view, alter the radical nature of his change of view. 124 I presented an earlier version of this paper as a lecture at the University of Toronto in 2001. An auditor queried whether I should have been so startled by this change of heart on the part of R. Soloveitchik. After all, she observed, R. Soloveitchik was well known for often changing his mind and offering differing and at times diametrically opposed opinions and rulings regarding a wide variety of issues. The query is well taken, but I would make two points in reply. First, the issues concerning which R. Soloveitchik would often change or appear to change his mind were generally issues of public policy or complex halakhic questions where slight, almost indiscernible, changes in the circumstances surrounding the particular question posed to him could affect the way in which he ruled, not matters of fundamental theological import. Second, what is striking concerning R. Soloveitchik’s views on repentance is that, as I have sought to show, these views, as they are set forth in his essays and discourses written and presented from the 1940s to the late 1960s, a period of some 30 years, form, despite minor variations and inconsistencies, a coherent and relatively unchanging whole. For him, then, to suddenly introduce a major modification into these views, to, as it were, shift gears after this long period, constitutes, I would maintain, an unexpected and startling development.

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Should we see it, as Cohen no doubt would, as a failure of nerve, as a descent from the bracing heights of the religion of reason down to the miasmal swamps of metaphysics and myth? Should we see it, as Maimonides no doubt would, as a fall from the rigorous naturalism of the true philosophical and scientific understanding of Judaism into the supernaturalism of popular religion for which Maimonides has only condescension and disdain? Or, to the contrary, should we see it, as Rabbenu Yonah no doubt would, as a salutary and long overdue departure from the shoals of philosophic rationalism and naturalism to the safe shores of sound rabbinic doctrine? Obviously, this is a question of the highest importance, and this essay is not the place to resolve it. But in light of my analysis, I do believe I can say two things. First, as we have seen, R. Soloveitchik’s conception of repentance as it emerges from his essays and discourses written and presented from the 1940s to the late 1960s is, despite minor variations and inconsistencies, very closely knit and forms a coherent whole. One cannot therefore simply modify one element in this conception without bringing the entire edifice crashing down. Since R. Soloveitchik never developed his new, more traditionalist conception of repentance, I would suggest that we should ignore it, and focus, as I have done in this essay, on the conception of repentance he so carefully and powerfully worked out and presented over the course of most of his career. And last. The very fact that late in his life R. Soloveitchik repudiated the view that he had so steadfastly maintained before, namely, that it is man who performs purification, that all purification is selfpurification, serves, in a negative way, as striking testimony to the major role that this key Cohenian concept played in R. Soloveitchik’s thinking about repentance. It was only toward the end of his career that R. Soloveitchik freed himself, for better or for worse, from the influence of Cohen concerning this critical issue. Perhaps we may say that at long last R. Soloveitchik’s natural, almost childlike piety triumphed over his commitment to the Maimonidean and Cohenian position that the highest form of repentance, namely, repentance out of love, is not supernatural but rather wholly psychological in character, that it is a rational, comprehensible act that takes place in the depths of the psyche. If so, it was a triumph that one can view only with the most ambiguous of feelings.

INDEX

Action 54, 94 Actuality (Wiklichkeit) 75–76 Adelmann, Dieter 73 n. 41, 83, 191–192 Adorno, Theodor 127, 139 Aestheticism 132 Affect 92–94 Akiba 160, 229–230, 257 Al-Farabi, Abu Nasr Muhammad 209 Allegoric Interpretation (Midrash) 4–5 Altmann, Alexander 164 n. 41, 170 Ancients and the moderns 210 n. 47 Annihilation 201–204, 211 Anticipation 71–72 Antinomian 181 Areopagita, Dionysius 117 Aristotle 9–10, 151, 116, 166, 172, 187, 201, 206–207 Attitude 54 Authentic Eigentlich 37, 76–77 Avicena, Abu Ali al-Husain 209 Batnitzky, Leora 120 n. 23, 170 Baudelaire, Charles 130 Being (Sein) 68, 124; Ought to be (Sollen) 61, 68, 108 Bellah, Robert 183 n. 70 Benjamin, George vi, 59, 62, 127–35 Berdyczevsky, Micha 143 Bergson, Henri 130 Bernstein-Nahar, Avi 99 n. 54 Biology 85 Blasser, R. Isaac 241 Blau, Yitzhak 221 n. 40 Boeckh, August 192 Borowitz, Eugene 153 n. 10 Boyarin, Daniel 183 Brandom, Robert 184 Breuer, Isaac 150–151 Bruckstein, Almuth 188–190 Buber, Martin 36, 143, 153 n. 10, 154, 170, 175 Causality 60 Charity (Nächstenliebe) 35 Christianity 12, 49, 56, 122, 160 (See also Protestantism)

Circularity 166 Cleaving to God (Devekut) 234 Coercion 59 Cohen, Gerson 183 Cohen, Hermann, life 15, 49; Ethics of Maimonides 115–116; Kant’s Foundation of Ethics 87; Kant’s Theory of Experience 140–141, 197; Religion of Reason 40, 192 Cohen, Steven 148, 183 n. 70 Cohn, Jula 132–133 Command to love one’s neighbor 14, 23 Commentary 115, 123 Confession 215 Consciousness 7, 21, 89 Contract 45, 55 Critical idealism 128, 135 246 Culture 5, 15 Darwin, Charles 10, 12–14 Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) 160, 227, 249, 253 De Cusa, Nicholas 168 De Martino, Ernesto 69 n. 23 Delf, Hanna 143 n. 33 Derrida, Jacques vi, 41, 117–118, 122–23 Descartes, René 171 Dialogic 179 Dionysius 117 Eckhart, Meister 117 Edel, Geert 155 n. 17, 157 n. 21, 157 n. 22, 158, 159 n. 26 Education 151, 162, 167 Ehrenberg, Hans 38 Eisen, Arnold 183 n. 70 Emotion (Affect) 34–35 Enlightenment 175 Esoteric/Exoteric 199–200 Eternity 71–74, 80 Ethics 11–12, 33, 43, 65, 181 207–209 Eunkenstein, Amos 177 n. 59 Existence 65 Experience 197

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Fackenheim, Emil 153 n. 10 Faithfulness 101–102 Fascism 130 Fichte, Johann 4, 6–7, 9, 34, 46, 51 Finkielkraut, Alain 175 Fiorato, Pierfrancesco 70 n. 24, 141 Frankel, Zecharias 153 Freud, Sigmund 41, 237 Funkenstein, Amos 183 Future 29–30, 69–71, 138, 236, 239, 241–242, 246 Gaon of Vilna, Eliyahu ben Shlomo 241 George, Stefan 128, 131 Gerondi, Rabbeinu Yonah 219, 233, 253 n. 116, 258 Gibbs, Robert, 135 n. 28 Gigliotti, Gianna 79 Givenness 67, 158 God 12–13, 30–32, 105–14, 161, 173, 231 Goldman, Eliezer 221 n. 40 Good 120, 207 Graetz, Heinrich 153–154 Greenberg, Irving 148 Grene, Marjorie 240 n. 93 Guilt 236–237, 243 n. 101 Guttmann, Julius 120, 208 Ha"am, Ahad 175 Halakha iv Halevi, Judah 243 Hartman, David 175 Hartmann, Nicolai 166 Hayyim of Brisk 241 Hayyim of Volozhin 241 Heart 100 Hegel, Georg W. F. 171, 201, 204, 204 n. 37, 207, 254 n. 117 Heidegger, Martin iii, 19, 117, 140–41, 170, 172, 239–41 Helmholtz, Hermann von 90 Herder, Johann G. von 53 Hermeneutics 114, 160–161, 169, 188, 210 Herz, Henriette 176 Hirsh, Samson Raphael 153, 175 Historians 139, 169, 172, 185 Historicism 150, 171, 179, 182, 185, 188 Historiography 183 History 110–112, 129, 137, 178, 188–89, 198, 211

Hölderlin, Friedrich 128 Holiness 251 Holocaust (Shoa) 120 Holzhey, Helmut iii, 80 n. 72, 83 n. 90, 91 n. 32, 140 Hope 69 Horkheimer, Max 139, 145 Horwitz, Rivka 234 n. 66 Humanity 15, 22, 113 Humanness (Aequitas) 81–83 Humboldt, Alexander von 192 Husserl, Edmund 19 Hutner, Rabbi 254 I 46, 156, 216, 232, 247; and Thou 54–55, 117 Ibn Ezra, Abraham 102 Idealism 25–26, 180, 211 Idolatry 142 Imperative 60 Imputation 95 Individual person (Der einzelne) 77, 82, 167, 193, 215 Inner form 192, 195, 205 Internalization 190, 196 Isaiah 58:7 165 Ives, Charles 38 Ivry, Alfred 169 n. 51 Jerusalem 123 Jewish Studies 149–50, 163 Judaism 11–12, 56, 113, 116, 135, 203 Judaism and modernism 139–140, 147–148, 163 Jünger, Ernst 130 Jurisprudence (Rechtswissenchaft ) 8–9, 27, 44, 46, 78, 93, 111, 155–156, 178 Kant 3, 6–8, 18, 53, 58, 66–69, 87, 102, 108, 121, 136–37 141, 151, 153, 160, 164, 166–167, 171, 192, 197, 201, 207, 248, 254 n. 117 Kantorowicz, Hermann 42–43, 46, 57 Kelsen, Hans 47, 58 Knowledge 192, 197 Kook, Abraham Isaac 175, 245 n. 103 Krochmalnik, Daniel 143 n. 52, 144 n. 57 Lagarde, Paul de 49–54, 56–57 Landauer, Gustav 143 n. 53

index Laramore, Charles 184 Law 60, 91, 181–182, 209 Lazarus, Moritz 175, 192 Leiber, Theodor 86 Leibniz, Gottfried 91 Levinas, Emmanuel 36, 41, 55, 118, 120, 175, 207 Lieben, Fritz 86, 97 n. 49 Liebig, Justus von 97 n. 49 Lila, Mark 152 Literary sources 169 Logic 46 Lotze, Rudolf H. 88, 90 Love 36, 86 Ludwig, Carl 97 n. 49 Luther, Martin 121 MacIntyre, Alasdair 184 Maimon, Salomon 176 Maimonides, Moses vi, 4, 13 117, 151, 167–68, 187–188, 200–211, 218–220, 226–27, 233, 234, Marxism 154 Mathematics 44, 46, 111 McDowell, John 166, 184 Mendelssohn, Moses 151, 156 n. 19 Mensching, Gustav 41 Messianism 30, 72–73, 110, 122 Metaphysics 208 Method 38, 78, 108 Milgrom, Jacob 230 n. 58 Minority 12 Mono-logical 176 Morality 52–54, 160 Moses 113 Motion 91 Motzkin, Gabriel 86 Mt. Scopus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 117, 123–124 Mulhall, Stephen 177 n. 60 Müller, Johannes 88–90, 92 Munk, Reiner 213, 246 Musar 243, 246 Myers, David 150–152, 154 n. 15, 179–85 Narration 173, 176–177 Nationalism 134, 143 Natorp, Paul 28, 158 Nietzche, Frederich 114, 254 n. 117–118 Nihilism 182 Novak, David 78 Nussbaum, Martha 184

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Optimism 212 Oral Torah 249, 252, 254, 256 Origin 90, 107, 110, 204 Paquda’s, Bachya ibn 100–101, 121 Past 139, 226, 236, 239, 241, 246 Perception 111 Petuchowski, Jacob J. 245 n. 103 Phenomenology 246 Philo 151 Philosophy 14, 141, 189, 194, 209 Physiology 86, 93 Plato 65, 116–17, 119, 151, 166, 172, 187, 201, 203, 205–206, 211 Poma, Andrea 155 n. 17, 159 n. 27, 191 n. 8, 198, 218, 220–21 Poverty 131 Practical Reason 172, 208 Preservation of energy 97 Progress 30, 73, 137–138, 233 Prophecy 166 Protestantism 40, 118, 120, 122, 160; and Judaism 179–180 Psychology 96, 129, 192, 196–97, 248 Punishment 57 Purity 106, 109, 210 R. Weinberg’s Musar 243 Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Ben Yitzchaki) 165 Rawidowics, Simon 183 Reiner, Wiehl 101 n. 64 Religion 109 Remembrance 237 Repentance (Teshuvah) 160, 214, 226, 232; out of fear 222, 224–225, 228, 237–38; out of love 214, 222, 225–228, 245, 247–248, 254 Respect 8 Revelation 119, 189, 199, 209 Reymond, Emil Du-Bois 88 Rorty, Richard 158 Rosenzweig, Franz 1, 37–38, 49, 59, 61–63, 100, 150–52, 164 Rothschuh, Karl Eduard 86 Sacrifice 41, 234 Schäffer, Peter 183 Scheler, Max 214, 235–242 Schmid, Peter 73 n. 39, 79 n. 68, 87 Schmitt, Carl 120 Scholem, Gershom 59, 129, 135, 140, 144–145, 256

262

index

Schopenhauer, Arthur 26 Schwarzschild, Steven iii, 1, 14, 83, 154 n. 14, 170 n. 52, 189, 196, 213 Schweid, Eliezer 166 n. 43 Science 2–3, 5, 96, 103, 112 Self-purification (Taharah) 96, 228, 230 Self-sanctification (Kedushah) 217 Sellars, Wilfred 158 Sensation 66, 88–91, 198 Sexual reproduction 100 Shame 101 Sin 216, 220, 225, 244 Smith, Nicholas 171 Social scientists 172 Socialism 24, 79, 99 Socrates 58, 205 Soloveitchick, Joseph vii, 213, 219–258 Speech 19, 55 Spinoza, Baruch 3–4, 91 n. 32, 121–22, 136, 151, 167–68, 170–171, 176, 193–196, 254 n. 117 State 24, 45, 80, 121, 156 Steinthal, Heymann 191–192, 196, 208 Stout, Jeffrey 183 n. 70 Strauss, Leo vi–vii, 118, 119–121, 150–151 System 128, 136 Talmud, Babylonian 56; Yoma 85B 160, 217; Yoma 86b 213, 222 Taylor, Charles vi, 152, 153, 170–178, 183 n. 70, 184

Theological unity 107 Thou 54–55, 117 Time 70–74, 205 Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava 149, 185 Tishby, Isaiah 234 n. 67 Tönnies, Ferdinand 43, 47–48, 57 Transcendental Method 156, 164, 173, 198 Trauerspiel 62 Treitschke, Heinrich 153–154 Trigano, Shmuel 118 Troeltsch, Ernst 154 Truth 21, 62, 86, 106, 136, 188, 211 Tschernichovsky, Saul 143 Unground 138 Utopia 69 Values 172 Varnhagen, Rahel 176 Verification (Bewährung) 49 Virtues 34, 36, 98 n. 98, 155, 168 Weber, Max 38–42, 59 Weinberg, Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov 242, 243 n. 101 Wellhausen, Julius 154 White, Steven K. 176 Wiedebach, Hartwig 121, 136 Winter, Eggert 78–79 n. 68 Wohlgemuth, R. Joseph 243 Wyneken, Gustav 133, 135 Zank, Michael 196 Zionism 143, 154