Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism (Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy)

, HERMANN COHEN S CRITICAL IDEALISM

Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought

Editor: Reinier Munk, University of Leiden and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Editorial Board: Arthur Hyman, Yeshiva University, New York, U.S.A. David Novak, University of Toronto, Canada Howard Kreisel, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel Resianne Fontaine, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Albert van der Heide, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Robert Gibbs, University of Toronto, Canada Warren Zev Harvey, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Kenneth Seeskin, Northwestern University, Evanston, U.S.A.

VOLUME 10 The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

, HERMANN COHEN S CRITICAL IDEALISM Edited by

Reinier Munk University of Leiden and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Abbreviations

vii ix

INTRODUCTION HELMUT HOLZHEY: Cohen and the Marburg School in Context

3

LOGIK WERNER FLACH: Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken REINER WIEHL: Identity and Correlation in Hermann Cohen’s System of Philosophy GIANNA GIGLIOTTI: Beweis and Aufweis: Transcendental a priori and Metaphysical a priori in Cohen’s Neo-Kantianism PIERFRANCESCO FIORATO: Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen’s Anti-Eschatological Messianism ASTRID DEUBER-MANKOWSKY: Hanging over the Abyss: On the Relation between Knowledge and Experience in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin

41 67 97 133 161

ETHIK ROBERT GIBBS: Jurisprudence is the Organon of Ethics: Kant and Cohen on Ethics, Law, and Religion PETER A. SCHMID: Hermann Cohen’s Theory of Virtue DAVID NOVAK: Hermann Cohen on State and Nation: A Contemporary Review

193 231 259

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ÄSTHETIK ANDREA POMA: The Portrait in Hermann Cohen’s Aesthetics MARC DE LAUNAY: The Statute of Music in Hermann Cohen’s Ästhetik URSULA RENZ: Critical Idealism and the Concept of Culture: Philosophy of Culture in Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer

283 307 327

RELIGION ARTHUR HYMAN: Maimonidean Elements in Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion IRENE KAJON: Critical Idealism in Hermann Cohen’s Writings on Judaism NORMAN SOLOMON: Cohen on Atonement, Purification and Repentance ANDREA POMA: Suffering and Non-Eschatological Messianism in Hermann Cohen

Contributors Index

357 371

395 413 429 431

PREFACE Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) is generally considered to be the leading systematic thinker and the outspoken representative of the Marburg School of Critical Idealism. The Marburg School was a leading school in German academic philosophy and in German Jewish philosophy for a period of more than thirty years preceding the First World War. Initially standing at the front of the ‘Return to Kant’ movement in nineteenth-century German philosophy, Cohen subsequently went beyond Kant in developing a system of critical idealism in which he offered a critique of and alternative to absolute idealism, positivism, and materialism. As a critical idealist in heart and soul Cohen is also recognized as a man who embodied German Jewish culture. Over the past decades we have witnessed a growing interest in the thought of Hermann Cohen. The increasing number of publications on Cohen by scholars in the field of modern philosophy and modern Jewish philosophy can be characterized in rather general terms as aiming at a historical and systematic analysis of this classic author in modern philosophy and as an attempt to continue the legacy of critical idealism in philosophy and the philosophical articulation of Judaism. The growing interest in Cohen’s work is also exemplified by recent translations of his writings into Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as by the publication of his Werke in seventeen volumes. The collected writings are edited under the direction of the Hermann Cohen Archives and its director, Helmut Holzhey, and are published by Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Germany. Publications on Cohen in the English language are rather small in number. The present volume aims at partially filling this gap. The book offers an analysis of Cohen’s System of Philosophy — the three-volume classic on logic, ethics, and aesthetics — and his writings on Judaism and religion. The book aims at highlighting Cohen’s contributions in these fields, including his discussions with, among others, Maimonides, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel. It will also demonstrate the congeniality of Cohen’s critical idealism as expounded in the System and his writings on Ju-

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PREFACE

daism. The articles included here offer an overview of contemporary Cohen research. They are all original and written for the present collection by scholars from Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, France, Canada, and the United States. Thanks and gratitude are due to my graduate student Erik Kreiter, who served as a most reliable acting editor of this volume, and to the Adolf Aussenberg Foundation for its generous support in the preparation of this volume for publication.

The editor

ABBREVIATIONS

Works of Hermann Cohen Werke Werke, herausgegeben vom Hermann-Cohen-Archiv am Philosophischen Seminar Zürich unter der Leitung von Helmut Holzhey, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1977ff. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Berlin, 1871, 18852, 19183. Reprint of the third edition: Werke, volume 1/I-III. Kants Begründung der Ethik Kants Begründung der Ethik, Berlin, 1877, 19102. Reprint of the second edition: Werke, volume 2. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, Berlin, 1889. Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte. Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Erkenntnisskritik, Berlin, 1883. Reprint: Schriften, volume 2, 1-170, Frankfurt am Main, 1968, and Werke, volume 5/I. Einleitung Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag zu F. A. Langes Geschichte des Materialismus, Leipzig, 1896, 19022, 19143. Reprint of the third edition: Schriften, volume 2, 171-302 and Werke, volume 5/II.

x

ABBREVIATIONS

Logik Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. System der Philosophie. Erster Teil, Berlin, 1902, 19142. Reprint of the second edition: Werke, volume 6. Ethik Ethik des reinen Willens. System der Philosophie. Zweiter Teil, Berlin, 1904, 19072. Reprint of the second edition: Werke, volume 7. Ästhetik Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls. System der Philosophie. Dritter Teil, 2 Bände, Berlin, 1912. Reprint: Werke, volumes 8 and 9. Der Begriff der Religion Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie, Gießen, 1915. Reprint: Werke, volume 10. Religion der Vernunft Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, herausgegeben von Benzion Kellermann, Leipzig, 1919, Frankfurt am Main, 19292. Schriften Hermann Cohens Schriften zur Philosophie und Zeitgeschichte, 2 Bände, herausgegeben von Albert Görland und Ernst Cassirer, Berlin, 1928. Jüdische Schriften Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, 3 Bände, herausgegeben von Bruno Strauß, mit einer Einleitung von Franz Rosenzweig, Berlin, 1924.

ABBREVIATIONS

xi

Briefe Briefe, ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Bertha und Bruno Strauß, Berlin, 1939.

Works of Immanuel Kant Kritik der reinen Vernunft Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Riga, 1781 (A), 17872(B). Akademie Ausgabe Other works of Immanuel Kant will be cited according to: Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1910ff.

INTRODUCTION

COHEN AND THE MARBURG SCHOOL IN CONTEXT HELMUT HOLZHEY, ZÜRICH

1. Neo-Kantianism in Germany: The Historical Background In 1871 Friedrich Ueberweg observed in his résumé of ‘the present state of philosophy in Germany’ that while during the past several decades the Hegelian and Herbartian schools had dominated the philosophical scene, ‘recently a return in part to Aristotle and in part to Kant’ had gained more adherents than the post-Kantian doctrines of German Idealism. He further referred to philosophers who had taken up the teachings of Schopenhauer and Beneke as well as to a number of proponents of materialism (Karl Vogt, Jakob Moleschott, Ludwig Büchner), adding that Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Rudolph Hermann Lotze, Eduard von Hartmann and others had gone new ways.1 By 1870 the Hegelian school was indeed past its peak and neo-Kantianism began to unfold, initially in parallel to positivism and always differentiated from the philosophies of Schopenhauer, Herbart, and the materialists.2 The motivation to ‘return to Kant’ was considerably increased by Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-1875) who, in the widely read second edition of his Geschichte des Materialismus (1875) spoke of ‘a young school of Kantians in a narrower and wider sense of the word’. Among these he counted Otto Liebmann, Jürgen Bona Meyer, and Hermann Cohen. Lange admitted that Cohen’s book Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1871) had inspired him to revise his presentation of the Kantian system.3

Translated from the German by Vilem Mudroch 1 F. Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit (Berlin, 18723), 329. 2 The expression ‘neo-Kantianism’ as a label for a philosophical movement appeared around 1875. Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus’, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 6 (Basel, 1984), columns 747-754.

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In Germany Kant’s thought exercised some influence during all of the nineteenth century. It became especially prominent in the ideological debates after the failed revolution of 1848, when, during the post-revolutionary stage of repression, a ‘critical’, ideologically neutral position arose that was sceptical towards metaphysics and that instead resorted to epistemology.4 Kant was present outside of Germany as well. However, while the reception of Kant in England, which promoted the critique of empiricism, hardly assumed the form of genuine neo-Kantianism, and while in France (Charles Renouvier) and in Italy (Carlo Cantoni and others) some notable neo-Kantian tendencies did appear, it was only in Germany that a full blown Kantian movement emerged. Around the time of the founding of the German Empire in 1871 a philosophical new beginning based on Kant was made. The philosophical revitalization effected by neoKantianism coincided with the scientific and technological progress of the Wilhelmian era. Later, this movement split up into divergent directions and was partially institutionalized in different schools. The beginning was made by individual, young philosophers, who in 1871 had just turned thirty years of age or were even younger; the most important ones were Otto Liebmann (18401912), Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), Alois Riehl (1844-1924), and Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915). Their publications do not represent a unified position. This was caused mainly by the fact that the young Kantians owed their philosophical training to different traditions. Liebmann and Windelband were students of Kuno Fischer in Jena, whose understanding of Kant was marked by idealistic tendencies. Riehl and Cohen had been schooled in contemporary psychology and were both strongly interested in science. In spite of these differences a common direction can be identified. The authors argued anti-naturalistically and anti3

F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Vorrede und Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag von Hermann Cohen, 2. Buch: Geschichte des Materialismus seit Kant (Leipzig, 18965), vol. 2, 115. 4 Cf. K. C. Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus. Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), esp. 175ff.

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materialistically, thus declining the all too obvious option of capitalizing on the great general respect for science. In the so-called Kulturkampf between the Prussian government and the Catholic Church they maintained an anti-clerical position, criticising the tutelage of the Church. Faced with the rampant adherence to Schopenhauer they assumed an anti-pessimistic stance. As a consequence they justified and defended the ideal of civil liberty.5 Along with other factors the divergent backgrounds determined the nature of the separation of neo-Kantianism into the different schools. Cohen, who from early on was motivated by an interest in the ‘idealism in science’, developed a ‘critical idealism’ for epistemology and ethics, an approach that eventually furnished the ‘Marburg School’ with its leading pattern of thought. For this purpose, he especially embraced Friedrich Albert Lange’s criticism of materialism as it was presented in the latter’s Geschichte des Materialismus. However, while Lange, when confronted with the need for ethical orientation, advocated a ‘standpoint of ideal’, to be arrived at by a process of ‘free conceptual poetic composition’,6 Cohen championed, instead of the poetic approach to the ideas of reason, a logical one and thus sought a strictly ‘epistemological foundation of ethics’.7 Of some importance for this conception was a reconstruction of Plato’s ideas as pure foundations (hypotheses) of knowledge. Ideas were conceived as the instruments of knowledge of a particular kind, but not as independently existing entities. This non-metaphysical employment of Plato’s philosophy was made possible by the distinction between, on the one hand, the being of things, the occurrence of events, and the existence of relations and, on the other hand, the validity of propositions. Hermann Lotze (18171881), who developed this distinction, fundamental for the whole of neo-Kantianism, in 1874, identified the alleged ‘being’ of Platonic ideas with the ‘validity of truths’.8 Wilhelm Windel5

Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus, 321. F.A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, ed. A. Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), 981ff. 7 Kants Begründung der Ethik, vi. 8 Cohen, ‘Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik’ (1878), Schriften I, 336366. Cf. H. Lotze, Logik. Drei Bücher vom Denken, vom Untersuchen und Erkennen, ed. G. Misch (Leipzig, 1912), 505ff. 6

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band’s writings were influenced directly by Lotze, and it was the latter’s conception of validity that became the foundation of the understanding of logic and philosophy in ‘Southwest German neo-Kantianism’. The decisive impulse for this direction of neoKantianism, however, was provided by Kuno Fischer’s Fichtean understanding of Kant.9 Although the Marburg and the Southwest schools were separated by virtue of the fact that they had different founders, they did share a common critical idealism that distinguished them from a critical realism as it was propounded for instance by Alois Riehl. This third large scale attempt to re-appropriate Kant’s critical philosophy in a contemporary form was marked by an appreciation of tradition and of empiricism.10 Not only were the empirical sciences analyzed here in order to identify their rational a priori elements, but the ‘real’ elements representing the given were acknowledged as well. In general, the early neoKantianism of the 1870s was characterized by a multitude of ties to positivism. Since the 1920s it has been generally accepted that neoKantianism had been composed of only two schools. Riehl’s realistic interpretation of Kant seems to have led to Oswald Külpe’s ‘critical realism’ and thus no longer counted as neo-Kantianism. While the Marburg School, represented by Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and the early Ernst Cassirer, explicitly claimed to be Kant’s true heir, in spite of integrating, after the turn of the century, the philosophy of Leibniz, the theory of value oriented criticism of the Southwestern School with its main representatives Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, and Emil Lask participated in the Hegel-Renaissance;11 its representative organ was the journal Logos (1910-1933). Born as the only son of Friederike (maiden name Salomon) and Gerson Cohen on July 4, 1842 in Coswig (Anhalt), young Hermann was instructed in Hebrew and literature since the age of 9

K. Fischer, Immanuel Kant. Entwickelungsgeschichte und System der kritischen Philosophie, 2 vols. (Mannheim, 1860). 10 A. Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus und seine Bedeutung für die positive Wissenschaft, vols. 1, 2.1, 2.2, (1876-1887). 11 Cf. H. Levy, Die Hegel-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Neukantianismus (Charlottenburg, 1927), 58ff.

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three by his father, who was the cantor at the local synagogue and a teacher at the Jewish school in Coswig. In 1853 Hermann went to the high school (Gymnasium) at Dessau and in October 1857 to the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau. He quit the school three years later without graduating, but registered in 1861 at the Philosophical Faculty of the Breslau university. Some weeks after having earned his high school diploma, he switched in the autumn of 1864 to the university in Berlin, where he visited lectures by Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg and August Boeckh and attended courses in mathematics, science, and medicine, namely those by Emil du Bois Reymond. His first articles, among them ‘Die platonische Ideenlehre psychologisch entwickelt’, appeared in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, a journal edited by H. Steinthal and Moritz Lazarus. Steinthal’s work on the theory of language had a significant influence on Cohen’s philosophical development. In 1864/65 Cohen submitted a prize essay in Berlin, which failed to win the prize, but did receive praise from Trendelenburg,12 and which presumably served as basis for a Latin dissertation on the teachings of Greek philosophers on the antinomy of necessity and accident. This was submitted in 1865 in Halle, where it was accepted. Having shared numerous tenets of Herbart’s psychology for a number of years, Cohen found his way to Kant with a contribution to the discussion between Kuno Fischer and Adolf Trendelenburg concerning the proper understanding of Kant’s theory of time and space. In 1871 Cohen published his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, a work of fundamental importance for neo-Kantianism, both in philological and philosophical regard. In 1873 Cohen obtained his Habilitation in Marburg; in 1876 he became a professor of philosophy there, succeeding his deceased promoter Friedrich Albert Lange. Setting it as his goal to renew Kantian idealism, Cohen published his Kants Begründung der Ethik (1877, 19102) and his Kants Begündung der Ästhetik (1889). These works, together with a significantly re-worked and expanded second edition of his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1885) and along with his study Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode (1883) constituted the foundations for the teachings of the 12

H. Cohen, Briefe, 19.

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Marburg School. The goal of surmounting the methodological dualism of intuition and thought led Cohen to formulate his doctrine of the ‘origin’ of knowledge in pure thought in his Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (1902, 19142), the first part of his System der Philosophie. In his second major systemic work, the Ethik des reinen Willens (1904, 19072), he presented a doctrine of the ‘ethical person’, which, in accordance with Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, he subdivided into a doctrine of law and a doctrine of virtue. Here he justified his theory of ethical socialism and claimed that the teachings of religion were accommodated in ethics. In his Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls (1912) he grounded the validity of artistic work and judgement in ‘pure feeling’, understood as a third direction of consciousness, connecting the theoretical and practical production of objects.

2. Hermann Cohen: Life and Writings In 1912 Cohen became a professor emeritus and moved to Berlin. There he taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. He had published on philosophical-religious issues and had taken position in regard to religious, cultural, and political questions concerning Judaism already while in Marburg. Since his ‘Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage’ (1880), his contribution to the ‘Berliner Antisemitismusstreit’13 that had been originated by Heinrich von Treitschke, and his expert opinion ‘Die Nächstenliebe im Talmud’ for the Marburg process of 1888, Cohen fought against the rampant antisemitism. Although he represented a liberal Judaism, he nevertheless vehemently insisted on the right to and the duty towards one’s own religion. In May of 1914 Cohen visited a number of Jewish communities in Russia. His patriotism, at the outset of the First World War still undiminished, soon turned into bitterness and skepticism owing to the fresh outbreak of anti-Jewish sentiment. Prominent among the numerous works of his last years, some of them dealing with the relationship between the spirit of German culture 13

Cf. W. Boehlich (Hrsg.), Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, (Frankfurt am Main, 1965).

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and the spirit of Jewish culture, are his study Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (1915) and the posthumously published Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (1919). The former leads on the basis of an esteem for the peculiarity of religious consciousness to a new concept of the individual, the latter connects Jewish religiosity with philosophical reason. In June of 1917 he proposed to commence on the fourth part of his system, the ‘Psychology’,14 in which the unity of cultural consciousness was to be developed in a definitive form. This proposal, however, was not materialized. Cohen died on April 4, 1918 in Berlin while correcting the proofs of his Religion der Vernunft.

3. Cohen’s Early Psychological Studies and his First Interpretation of Kant In the 1860s Cohen’s writings were based on Herbart’s psychology. Although he did distinguish between, on the one hand, ‘deductive critique’, whose task it was to prove the ‘metaphysical competence’ of a concept as well as its inner non-contradictoriness, and, on the other hand, psychological analysis, he was chiefly interested in the latter, i.e. in the explanation of the origin of all cultural phenomena in terms of human consciousness. He viewed Plato’s theory of ideas as the beginning of the true, namely psychological philosophy, and interpreted idea as the ‘living thought-act of seeing’,15 in which the essence of things is grasped. Cohen also sought to provide a psychological explanation of the genesis of the Indo-European mythical ideas of God and of the soul (birth and death), i.e. a description of the ‘psychological mechanism’, which it was hoped would account for (the in itself already poetic) myth and especially for later poets’ resort to myth;16 according to Cohen’s insight the recogni-

14 Letter to Paul Natorp of June 10, 1917, in: H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, vol. 2: Der Marburger Neukantianismus in Quellen (Basel, 1986), 480. 15 Schriften I, 61. 16 H. Cohen, ‘Die dichterische Phantasie und der Mechanismus des Bewusstseins’, Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 6 (1869), 173-263, reprinted in: Schriften I, 141-228.

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tion that the connection of ideas in the mythical consciousness was inadequate would lead to poetic comparison. Poetry continues to maintain itself under the dominion of the scientific consciousness for two reasons. First, the poet acquires in his childhood ‘mythical apperceptions’, which as an adult he cannot fully discard as they render his world more comprehensible than would scientific thought. Secondly, as an individual, the poet is motivated to imitate traditional art and is supported in this endeavour, from an anthropological point of view, by the constancy of the objective spirit. Cohen’s psychological method was guided by the following theoretical conceptions: the hypothesis of the unity of consciousness; the goal of an analysis of mental processes into their elementary forms; a mechanical theory of association and apperception (following Herbart and Lazarus). In 1869 Cohen participated for the first time in the contemporary attempts to gain a historically adequate and a topically fruitful understanding of Kant’s philosophy by contributing a statement to the controversy between Adolf Trendelenburg and Kuno Fischer.17 The former claimed to have discovered a gap in Kant’s proofs of the complete subjectivity of space and time; he claimed that the admittedly purely subjective forms of intuition were also objective, since he thought that they could have arisen from an original activity that was valid both for knowledge and for real things. Cohen addressed Trendelenburg’s doubts on the basis of a strict adherence to the ‘certified writings of Kant’,18 whose basic ideas he wished to work out and to defend against the most important attacks. The question what Kant taught on space and time was for Cohen not just a historical one, since he deemed that it concerned ‘the intersecting point of all profound contemporary directions of research […] Does the nature of things depend on the conditions of our mind? Or must and can the law of nature prove our thought?’19 In order to distinguish between the old and the new the historian of philosophy wishing

17

H. Cohen, ‘Zur Controverse zwischen Trendelenburg und Kuno Fischer’, Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 7 (1871), 249-296, reprinted in: Schriften I, 229-275. 18 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, iv. 19 Schriften I, 229.

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‘to present the continuous connection of philosophical problems in all of human culture’ must begin by considering every thought as the ‘result of a mental process’,20 a thought he must then both analyse as to its conditioning by historical facts and evaluate philosophically. Always with a view to dealing with Kant, Cohen met the methodological difficulty of proving the originality of an idea in its historical context by suggesting that the historian turns philosopher and voices his philosophical opinion. Aware that this would somewhat diminish the objective status of the writing of history, Cohen claimed that the loss would be compensated by the fact that topical participation and indeed intervention by the philosopher would complement purely historical research in a beneficial manner. This would be the case especially when philosophical problems, such as those of Kant, were still ‘in motion’ for the interpreter. Although in regard to discussions in which different participants appealed to Kant or marked their differences from him Cohen favoured ‘fidelity’ towards the original texts, he linked such faithfulness to the condition that the interpreter views himself as a ‘criticist’ who holds up his own as well as foreign ideas against the standard of what he himself considers to be Kantian.21 Cohen’s return to Kant’s theoretical philosophy was driven by two aims: first, to deprive the contemporary attacks on Kant of their textual basis by resorting to ‘simple quotations’,22 secondly, to restore ‘Kantian authority’ in the interest of the topical approach to philosophy.23 Specifically, Cohen was concerned with a new justification of Kant’s notion of the a priori. With this goal in mind Cohen provided a commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic in the first edition of his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung. He closely linked his clarification and justification of Kant’s a priori to the proof of his assertion that Kant ‘discovered a new concept of experience’, thus having delivered in the Kritik 20

Schriften I, 271. Schriften I, 272-273. 22 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, iv. The criticism of Kant which Cohen especially dealt with is that by Schopenhauer, Herbart, Trendelenburg, Fischer, Lange, and Ueberweg. He was mainly in agreement, albeit in a critical way, with J. Bona Meyer, Kants Psychologie (Berlin, 1870). 23 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, vi. 21

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der reinen Vernunft a ‘critique of experience’24 which elucidates the possibility of experience in a transcendental investigation. Cohen took up Kant’s question, how synthetic judgements a priori are possible, by pointing out that experience is constituted or constructed in an a priori and formal manner by ‘space, time, and the synthetic unity’25 and that it is given ‘in mathematics and pure science with the character of necessity and generality’.26 In his analysis of the a priori of space Cohen distinguished three stages or degrees in Kant’s a priori: the latter signifies 1) metaphysical originality, 2) form, 3) the formal condition of the possibility of experience. While the first two stages may still support the misconception that the a priori is identical with the innate, the third degree, the transcendental knowledge of the a priori, compels us to definitely discard the pre-critical disjunction between innate and acquired.27 In regard to the categories Cohen deviated from Kant by attributing a genuinely a priori character only to the category as the ‘synthetic unity in the connection of the manifold’, while claiming that the categories of the Kantian table are a priori merely in a secondary manner.28 Based on the conception that the a priority of space, time, and the synthetic unity constitute the formal conditions of experience, Cohen then had to maintain that the concept of experience can be constructed out of these a priori elements.29 Experience provides the criterion for ascertaining that a concept is meaningful. However, although Cohen here adhered to Kant literally, his recourse to experience for the purposes of such a conceptual test concerned not experience’s material component (sensation), but its characteristic as the a priori form of sensibility. Cohen thus advocated a transcendental idealism that is critical as far as the method is concerned, but formal as far as the content goes. Its first step is an ‘abstraction from the matter of experience’.30 All reality consists of ‘possible experience, i.e. of 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 3. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 104. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 208. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 87ff. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 101. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 104. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 243.

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constructive intuition which places the constructed image into nature and of the ‘self-thought’ concepts of the understanding’.31 Although Cohen in his discussion of Kant’s principle of actuality32 concedes that sensation, no less than the a priori, is a condition of experience, he further claims that this principle is based on the principle of the Anticipation of Perception,33 by which a step is made to extend the a priori over the sphere of the empirical.34 Referring to Kant’s statements that ‘the doctrine of sensibility is likewise the doctrine of the noumenon in the negative sense’35 and that a noumenon is merely a limiting concept,36 Cohen dealt in the last chapter of his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung with the cosmological antinomy of pure reason and its solution in order to round off his transcendental idealism in regard to the ideas of reason with the following summary: ‘The idea-entities of material idealism will become regulative principles whose unceasing employment is the only task of reason.’37

4. Criticism of Kant and the Development of an Independent Logic of Knowledge Cohen’s above sketched interpretation of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft had a philosophical intent which went beyond Kant and which Cohen worked out in greater detail in the second edition of his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1885) and in his Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode (1883). While Kant distinguished between, on the one hand, the question of the possibility of non-empirical principles (synthetic judgements a priori) in mathematics and in science and, on the other hand, the question of the possibility of 31

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 253, my emphasis. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 218, B 266: ‘That which is bound up with the material conditions of experience (with sensation) is actual.’ 33 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 207: ‘In all appearances, the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree.’ 34 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 214. 35 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 307. 36 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 255, B 310-1. 37 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 270. 32

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a scientific metaphysics, Cohen recognized only the question of the foundation of possibility or validity of ‘mathematical science’; metaphysics signified for him nothing but the problem of the possibility of scientific experience. But there is a second point of deviation from Kant. On Kant’s theory experience is composed of the matter of sensible impressions and of the form originating in our own faculty of knowledge;38 Cohen, however, focussed on experience solely as far as its form is concerned. This resulted from his conception that ‘experience’ is identical with ‘mathematical science’ and the latter is valid knowledge a priori. To enquire after the conditions of the validity of a priori knowledge under the heading of a transcendental theory of experience meant for Cohen from the beginning bracketing out the sensible-material component out of the concept of experience or including it in a formal determination of experience. Cohen devoted special effort to this idea of rendering experience a priori, or, more precisely, rendering sensation a priori, sensation in the sense of the sensible-material component of experience. Cohen’s point of departure was Kant’s ‘Principle of the Anticipations of Perception’, according to which ‘in all appearances, the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree’.39 In order to generate a new concept of actuality Cohen re-structured Kant’s principle into the ‘principle of intensive magnitude or of anticipations’.40 An important motivation was provided by psycho-physics, especially by the newly opened prospect of being able to measure the magnitude of sensations. The mathematical ‘infinitesimal method’ that was employed for this purpose became for Cohen a paradigm of the active role that thought played in the process of knowledge, in fact, it appeared to him to be the decisive methodological development in recent science. He sought the logical foundation of this method in the ‘principle of intensive magnitude’, which, however, merely claims that an intensive magnitude must be attributed to all real objects of perception. Cohen went beyond 38 39 40

Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 1-2. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 207 Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 14.

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this in wishing to ground the giving of the real in the attribution of magnitude, i.e. he attempted to situate reality as such in intensive magnitude. While for Kant sensation as the sensible-material component, in spite of its ability to be determined mathematically, remained indispensable if knowledge was to have reference to reality, for Cohen the sensibly given became an element of mathematical and logical thought. The giving of the real, of something in general, is the responsibility of thought, not of sensation. However, it is important to note that Cohen is speaking here of the essential condition of the validity of scientific knowledge, not of the discovery of knowledge. The validity of scientific knowledge is explained by Cohen independently of the empirically given: It is the category (determination of thought) of reality which ensures that consciousness has any reference to an X as a given, i.e. to an intuition. This connection between intuition and the category of reality is completed within the ‘principle of intensive magnitude’. The logical-epistemological reason why the object is recognized as real (i.e. with the quality real) lies in the fact that the infinitesimal unit dx, the infinitely small, produces this reality. For example, ‘the point on the tangent, which unites the different motions of a point in one direction, produces a curve in that direction’.41 The conception developed by Cohen in the 1880s became one of the leading doctrines of the Marburg School. Natorp admitted as late as 1915 his predilection for Cohen’s determination of the relation between intuition and thought as it was to be found in the Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode. Natorp’s remark must be understood with regard to the fact that Cohen ultimately abandoned the dualism of intuition and thought. The infinitesimal method became the emblem of the sovereignty of thought over being. The philosophical justification of the objective validity of knowledge without recourse to intuition, without 41

Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 34. Paul Natorp later made this more precise and in fact corrected it by claiming that it was not actually the point but the law that is the ‘origin’; one may think of the law as concentrated in the point. When Cohen spoke of a producing point, then, claimed Natorp, the point should be viewed as the bearer of the law, out of which the extensional determination of magnitude is produced by integration. Cf. Natorp, Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (Leipzig and Berlin, 1910), 220.

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reference to an X as a ‘given’, characterizes the program of Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (1902). The justification of the validity of scientific knowledge became henceforth the subject matter of a logic requiring no preliminary discourse on intuition. Just as Cohen worked out an epistemological principle, namely the production of the real qua intensive magnitude in his publication of 1883, he similarly assigned a special status to a judgement, namely the ‘judgement of the origin’ in the first, foundational part of his System der Philosophie. ‘Thought is thought of the origin’42 and remains so in all pure knowledge. That means that, borrowing from Plato’s concept of hypothesis, all thought is conceived of as a foundation. Knowledge derives the basis of its validity solely from thought and not from a ‘given’ to which thought would have to refer. The pure ground of mathematical and scientific knowledge consists of an open system of judgements (analogous to Kant’s principles of knowledge), a system of object-producing methods of pure thought. These methods (‘judgements’) are in their unifying functions not founded on the unity of pure self-consciousness, i.e. on what Kant termed ‘transcendental apperception’, but on the unity of analysis and synthesis that constitutes the judgement as such. Cohen claimed a homogeneity of the basic methods of pure thought and of scientific knowledge, so that he attributed an a priori character (‘purity’) to scientific knowledge, e.g. to the law of the conservation of energy. However, the element of the factual in ‘experience’ is maintained insofar as it is recognized that knowledge always includes its own infinite progress. This becomes plain in Cohen’s treatment of the problem of sensation. Although the given is still founded in thought and not in intuition, and is thus to be produced logically, the ‘claim of sensation’ is nevertheless assessed in a positive way. Even if sensation itself cannot satisfy this claim of securing factual knowledge, the claim is included in the modal ‘judgement of actuality’ and is redeemed ‘idealistically’. Corresponding to the extension of the problem of origin, a problem that was initially linked to the production of the finite real out of the infinitely small by means of an infinitesimal analysis, to a general logic of origin, the problem of sensation is ex42

Logik, 36.

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panded to include not only the production of the real as special object determination, but, more generally, the critical evaluation of all pure object determinations in their relation to actuality. Although this evaluation is demanded under the heading ‘sensation’, for a logic of pure knowledge it can only be realised in pure thought — defined as the thought of the origin — as it is expressed in the ‘judgement of actuality’.43 With this conception of logic Cohen developed an original version of critical idealism. He rejected the attempts on the part of speculative idealism to construct the system of rational knowledge out of a principle or out of a complex of principles, nor did he admit the notion of the self-explication of absolute knowledge. He also refused the intention of analytic theory of science to generate formal criteria for the examination of ‘given’ scientific propositions. His kind of idealism deviates from metaphysics by virtue of the fact that for him ‘the ultimate foundations of truth and science’ are conceived as ‘the laying of the foundations’, while for metaphysics they represent ‘absolute foundations’: ‘as in being so in thought, placed and given in the mind’.44 A laying of foundations that is capable of revision and that can be called to account on the one hand, rationally unprovable, fixed foundations about which no discussion is possible, i.e. foundations of an absolute kind on the other hand: that is the distinction which Cohen adduces against a fundamentalistic metaphysics, be it based on a naturalistic or a spiritualistic footing.45 Critical idealism is satisfied with the ‘most stringent’, but also provable laying of foundations;46 absolute and ultimate foundations invariably turn out to be illusory. The lay-

43

Logik, 434. Cohen’s ‘judgement of actuality’ takes in his system of pure knowledge the place of Kant’s second postulate of empirical thought, ‘That which is bound up with the material conditions of experience (with sensation) is actual’, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 218, B 265. 44 Logik, 303. 45 Cf. G. Edel, ‘Kantianismus oder Platonismus? Hypothesis als Grundbegriff der Philosophie Cohens’, Il cannocchiale / rivista di studi filosofici, 1-2 (1991), 5987, especially 73ff. I today fully concur with Edel’s non-absolutistic interpretation of Cohen’s theory of origin, unlike in my Cohen und Natorp, vol. 1, 183, 218. 46 Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 100a, 101d.

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ing of the foundations follows the transcendental method,47 in principle in all areas of philosophy, but providing guidance first as epistemology (‘critique of knowledge’, ‘logic of pure knowledge’). An examination of the conditions of the possibility or of the validity of knowledge commences, according to this methodological conception, with existing scientific knowledge, characteristically with mathematics and science. Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis is in a way a ‘repetition’ of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Just as for Kant positive and negative critiques are entwined48, so Cohen’s logic owes its contours to critique on the one hand and to a positive thesis on the other. The critique is directed at both materialism and empiricism as well as at religious metaphysics; the positive goal is to prove the idealistic constitution of science. Cohen achieves this proof by de-ontologizing the philosophical concepts of knowledge and of science on the basis of his claim that all determinations of being are the products of pure thought. In his Preface to the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis Cohen declared his personal conviction that ‘the ideology of idealism’ is buttressed by the ‘spirit of genuine philosophy’. Idealism is a key term in his philosophy, especially in regard to its cultural relevancy. At the same time, however, he was greatly concerned to emphasize that his position was critical idealism. When Cohen in his epistemology, as I have shown above, arrived at the notion of the ‘constructive character of thought’ and when he made the claim that ‘the world of things reposes on the laws of thought’,49 he moved dangerously close to a subjective or spiritualistic, in short to a dogmatic idealism that attributes a divine creative power to humans or to the human mind. To avoid this relapse into metaphysics it would seem that Cohen would be compelled to admit that sensible experience makes a constitutive contribution to knowledge. However, as was pointed out earlier, sensibility for Cohen does not delineate sufficiently between a critical and a dogmatic idealism. Only the reference to the fact of science can achieve this. What matters is not the sensibly ‘given’ as 47 48 49

Cf. H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, vol. 1, 53ff. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B xxiv-xxv. Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 125.

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the empiricist or sensationalist holds, but that which is given in science: ‘stars are not given in the sky, but in the reason of astronomy’.50 The epistemological analysis is concerned solely with science and with the kind of given that has already been critically appraised within science. The ‘fact of science’ replaces sensedata. Science is, as Kant maintained in regard to pure mathematics and pure science, ‘actually given’,51 and this factuality secures, according to Cohen, the critical character of idealism. Things are neither simply ‘produced’ out of the laws of thought, nor is the reference to actuality on the part of scientific knowledge owing to data; what is crucial is rather a critical appraisal of the knowledge that has been gained, an appraisal that occurs within science itself. Science, into which sensible experience along with things have already been incorporated, thus provides the critical support for the kind of idealism that attempts to prove that knowledge is the result of constructively producing thought.

5. The Ethical Motive of Critical Idealism Cohen’s critical epistemology, issuing in a logic of scientific knowledge, is motivated in its idealistic orientation not only by a theoretical, but to a large extent also by an ethical concern. This point is systematically developed in the Ethik des reinen Willens. Just as Cohen’s epistemology, divested of all ontological claims, refuses to have things given or shown to it and to ground productive thought in the natural human endowment, i.e. in ‘physical-psychological organisation’ (Friedrich Albert Lange), so an anti-ontological and anti-naturalistic spirit manifests itself in his ethics. In fact, the goal of securing a rationally founded ethics could be the true motive for Cohen’s radical rejection of the given, under whose mask he suspected that matter ‘continues its hauntingly frightening existence’.52 From a formal point of view his ethics is idealistic in the same sense as his epistemology, in that here too concepts are produced by an analysis of a pre-given 50 51 52

Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 127. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 20. Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 66.

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scientific fact, specifically of the pure science of jurisprudence, concepts that then serve as the foundations of moral action. However, given this idealistic frame more is at stake than just the possibility of ethical knowledge. Indeed, the idealistic nature of ethics secures, along with the possibility of ethical knowledge, the notion of the autonomy of the acting person. In distinction to the logical laying of foundations of the knowledge of nature, ethics is concerned with the laying of foundations of normative human self-knowledge; Cohen uses here the expression ‘selfconsciousness’. ‘Self-imposition of law’ is succinctly identified as the ‘principle of idealism’.53 It is only at this point that the ethical motive of critical idealism becomes fully apparent. Relying on human nature (just as relying in epistemology on given things) would necessarily lead to moral heteronomy, i.e. to a constant ‘idol-worship of nature’54 in the form of instincts, of natural behaviour resulting from evolution, of natural needs etc. Against this anthropological naturalism Cohen defends in his ethical idealism the notion of a human being who makes it his task to ‘eternally’ perfect himself, and not solely or primarily as an individual. Apparently directed against Marx’s historical materialism Cohen asserted: ‘It is simply not true that the compulsion of nature and especially of animal nature in man produced those achievements of culture which can only hypocritically be called moral culture, and should rather be labelled economic.’55

6. Ethics According to the Transcendental Method In his second Kant-book56 Cohen assumed that the theory of scientific knowledge, if only propelled all the way to heuristics, would conduct to the basic concepts of ethics such as freedom and purpose. In proceeding from epistemology to ethics he provided an interpretation, following which the thing in itself as a limiting concept regulatively determines the totality of the phe-

53 54 55 56

Ethik, 328. Ethik, 329. Ethik, 37. Kants Begründung der Ethik (1877, 19102).

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nomenal world and thus leads beyond experience and its analysis to the question of determinism, of accident and necessity etc., i.e. to the problem of freedom. Cohen, however, did not succeed in showing that the regulative idea of freedom, which is the limiting concept of the theory of experience, is the foundation of ethical freedom in the sense of ethical autonomy. His Ethik des reinen Willens can then provide the required foundation of ethics in epistemology only by pointing to the methodological connection between epistemology, now developed in a purely logical manner, and ethics. Ethics too should be founded on the transcendental method. Generally speaking, in Cohen’s mature systematic philosophy the bridge between theoretical and practical reason is no longer built on the basis of the concept of freedom, but on the footing supplied by the teleologically accentuated concept of the ought.57 In the Ethik des reinen Willens, the second part of his philosophical system, Cohen employed a relatively weak conception of system. The logic of knowledge functions merely as the foundation of the whole philosophical system, influences the other parts only as far as the method is concerned, not the substance. Methodologically pre-determining is the proof that scientific knowledge originates in pure thought. This confers on ethics the logical principles, but not the content (will, practical self-consciousness, autonomy, etc.): ‘Logic provides a foundation to ethics only in the sense that it alone can teach ethics in what man-

57

The path at first taken by Cohen and then seemingly abandoned by him was later ‘invented’ by Paul Natorp and pursued to its end. For Natorp too the regulative idea of the infinite progress of experience implied a theoretical ought, to which the practical ought must be linked. The totality of the world is never given to knowledge, it is merely problematic. Natorp applied this idea already to the knowledge of the individual object, of the individual fact: The ought is already contained in the ‘problem’ that the individual object raises for knowledge. Knowledge is subordinated to an immanent ought; a completion in the sense of definitively resolving the problem of knowledge is possible neither in regard to the totality of the world nor in regard to the individual state of things. Natorp worked out this insight of the immanent ought-determination of knowledge into a theory of ideas that as a ‘logic of the ought’ leads into ethics. Cf. Natorp, Sozialpädagogik. Theorie der Willensbildung auf der Grundlage der Gemeinschaft (Stuttgart, 1899, 19256), §§5ff.; Philosophie. Ihr Problem und ihre Probleme (Göttingen, 1911, 19182), 71ff.

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ner to search for and to construct laws. The content of these laws must, however, be discovered by ethics alone.’58 The systemic primacy of logic should guarantee the rationality of ethics.59 Such a methodological grounding of ethics prevents, on the one hand, a confusion of ethical reflection with personal morality, it is directed, on the other hand, against an ethical agnosticism and irrationalism. The integration into the system is limited by the fact that ethics is independent as far as the content is concerned. This limit is a consequence of the difference between is and ought.60 Cohen’s claim at the outset of his Ethik des reinen Willens that the subject of ethics is man needs to be elucidated. This concerns in the first place his references to ‘man’. For men are individuals, they live in communities, and together they constitute mankind. In what regard is ‘the’ man the subject of ethics? Not as an individual (or only secondarily so). Cohen did not conceive an individualistic ethics. Concentrating on the individual as the ‘core concept of man’ implied for him searching for the methodological foundation of ethics in psychology and thus resigning oneself to naturalism. Instead his ethics is concerned with ‘infusing the individual with particularity and with totality’.61 Cohen, however, did not write a social ethics based on particularity as it is represented for instance by subcultures. His ethics is primarily interested in the principle of ‘totality’. Ethics deals with man in general, with humankind understood as unity and as essence. This ‘humankind’ always remains an ideal. However, as this ideal is anticipated by the unity of the state, the founding part of Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willens consists of a theory of the state under the rule of law (Rechtsstaat). The state, not in its actual reality but as a ‘principle of ethical self-consciousness’,62 is conceived of as the proper ethical subject.

58 59 60 61 62

Logik, 607. Ethik, 29. Ethik, 21-2. Ethik, 11. Ethik, 255.

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Cohen himself pointed out that his ethics should be a theory of the concept of man.63 And this concept must be produced, like every fundamental concept, in thought. A peculiar difficulty of the project of constructing an ethics as the theory of the concept of man becomes manifest with the question, whether this concept is descriptive or normative. Cohen clearly opted for the latter, thus placing himself within the framework of Kantian ethics. Human willing is in ethics determined by an ought. Cohen’s expression ‘pure will’ makes it plain that the subordination under a normative law takes precedence over subordination under a desire or under instinctive necessity. Not resting content with this expression, Cohen further asserted that the will must be brought to action as to its ‘proper object’.64 The pure will is morally worthless. Only when the will leads to action does it realize itself. And while ethical anthropology begins with the ‘pure’ will, made determinate by an ought or by a law, it is only the action that makes man into a man, since from an ethical point of view a man becomes a man only by virtue of his ability to act.65 The ‘is’ that is specific to the ought,66 the ‘is’ of the law-governed will, is secured, just as in the case of theoretical reason, by recourse to a scientific fact. That the ‘is of the ought’ is no mere creature of the imagination is most clearly proven, among the cultural phenomena, by law or by jurisprudence. Why? History describes the factual relations between the moral ought and power and can for that very reason not supply the original fact to an ethics of pure will. Only in pure jurisprudence, i.e. jurisprudence not as a factual science nor as based on natural law (metaphysics), is a pure form of the ought given, namely in the shape of laws (insofar as they are linked to the concept of action) as a set of normative propositions, e.g. in the rule of law. But can a pure jurisprudence67 guarantee the is of the ought? In view of this sceptical question it must be pointed out that the ‘is’ of the ought does not refer to empirically given moral action nor to the 63

Ethik, 3. Ethik, 174. 65 Ethik, 168. 66 Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Sein und Sollen. Postmetaphysischer Idealismus bei Cohen und Natorp’, in: Sinn, Geltung, Wert. Neukantianische Motive in der modernen Kulturphilosophie, ed. Ch. Krijnen and E. W. Orth (Würzburg, 1998), 139-153. 64

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squalid reality of the permanent violations of moral law. The ethical ‘is’ does not concern the actual situation in which we live, but refers to the ‘is’ of a state under the rule of law. And the legal constitution is not understood here as a sociologically provable fact. Placing the ‘is’ of the ought in the constitution means rather that the constitution as the foundation of the state possesses a legitimizing function for rationally justified factual action. However, the structure of Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willens with its transition from a theory of law to a theory of virtue suggests that the ‘is’ of the ought should be looked also in lived morality. Paul Natorp underscored this point in 1912, while drawing a sketch of the transcendental method, by relating ethics to the cultural facts of morality and by describing the latter as ‘practical forms of a social order and of a life worthy of human beings’.68 Cohen recognized especially (Jewish) religiousness as a form of lived morality. Concerning religion in general he wrote that although it claims monopoly in regard to morality, it represents only the moral ‘state of nature’, whose ‘cultural maturity belongs to ethics’.69 His claim that religion resolves itself into ethics70 would on a reading dictated by his transcendental method signify: Religion too, represented for example by passages of the Hebrew Bible, forms a referential fact with which ethical reflection begins in order to produce moral principles and to prove them as such. Cohen for example regarded the prophetic state-

67

Cohen was thinking of a pure jurisprudence in the sense in which it was conceived of by Rudolf Stammler in his book Die Lehre von dem Richtigen Rechte (1902) and as it would later be developed by Hans Kelsen in his Reine Rechtslehre (1934). However, Cohen’s conception does differ significantly from the theories of these two authors. 68 P. Natorp, ‘Kant und die Marburger Schule’, Kant-Studien 17 (1912), 196-7. 69 Ethik, 586. 70 Cf. H. Cohen, ‘Religion und Sittlichkeit’ (1907), in: Jüdische Schriften III, 151: ‘Religion is absorbed by ethics. […] The absorption means […] a change to another direction’ of consciousness. In the third edition of his Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag (1914) Cohen replaced the slogan ‘absorption of religion in ethics’ by the slogan ‘accommodation of religion within ethics’, 106; in Der Begriff der Religion, 58, he explains that ‘accommodation’ signifies enlarging the area of ethics by the content of religion.

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ment, ‘He has showed you, O man, what is good’,71 as an ethical laying of foundations by interpreting humanity (the general concept for man) as what is good for man.

7. State and Society Joseph Klein advanced the thesis that Cohen as an assimilated Jew transformed the demand of his people for equal civil rights into the constitutionally-legalistic orientation of his ethical idealism,72 briefly: that he sought to found the rights of Jews in his ethics. In my opinion, this interpretation does justice neither to the experiences of the Jew Cohen nor, and especially, to his ethics. Instead of rendering absolute Cohen’s concentration on constitutional jurisprudence, it appears more compelling — also in view of his biography — to focus on his conception of ethical socialism, in whose unfolding the Jewish tradition does really play an essential role. Franz Rosenzweig expressed this point in a nearly irresistible way: ‘There is a Jewish content which, in an amazingly parallel fashion, reached […] its globally-historical maturity only under the sun of the nineteenth century within German Jewry: socialism, specifically messianic socialism as a complex result of the precept to love thy neighbour and of the demand for justice […] became effective as a secret impulse in Lassalle, and, as far as a recipient of the graceful gift of inconsistency, even in Marx.’73 Aside from this Jewish source, the practised socialism of Friedrich Albert Lange would have served as a motivation for Cohen’s socialist attitude. Cohen wrote as early as 1877 that the problem of theodicy had been superseded ‘in our century […] by the problem of socialism’.74 In regard to the political socialism of his time he distanced himself from historical and dialectical materialism. In spite of his appreciation of the criticism of Lange directed against a rhetorical and hypocritical

71

Mic. 6:8. J. Klein, Die Grundlegung der Ethik in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens und Paul Natorps — eine Kritik des Neukantianismus (Göttingen, 1976), 99, 106, 134. 73 F. Rosenzweig, ‘Einleitung’ to Cohen, Jüdische Schriften I, xxiii. 74 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 327. 72

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idealism, Cohen diagnosed for the time around the turn of the century dangerous effects of the ‘false slogan’: When the social democratic party and its press swear by materialism, then they stand under the threat of ‘the greatest impairment that can threaten a party of the future’, namely the threat ‘to lose its own principles and to disappear hopelessly’.75 For Cohen, socialism derives its spiritual foundation from Kantian ethics. He based his thesis above all on the affinity between the socialist social criticism and the version of the categorical imperative, which demands that you ‘act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.’76 His interpretation of this version of the categorical imperative emphasized that the worker must not be treated as a commodity, ‘not even for the purposes of alleged national wealth’.77 Cohen found the ethical foundation of state and society in Kant’s conception of the ‘systematic union of different rational beings through common laws’ in a ‘realm of ends’.78 This ‘realm’ is exemplary both for the ideal state and for the ethically reformed society.79 State and society coincide on the basis of this model in a co-operatively constituted state. Cohen contrasted his idea of a state built out of co-operatives not only with the existing situation, but also with the materialistic Marxist interpretation. For this purpose he made a distinction within the concept of society.80 ‘Society’ signifies first the ‘concrete reality’ or ‘equally the living material condition’ for the abstraction of the state under the rule of law; an example of a society in this sense is the economy.81 The relationship between state and society is thus here described in terms of the categories ‘abstract/con75

Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 112. I. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 4, 429 (in the translation of Lewis White Beck, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Indianapolis, 1959). 77 Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 113. 78 Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 433. 79 Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 116. 80 Cf. E. Winter, Ethik und Rechtswissenschaft. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zur Ethik-Konzeption des Marburger Neukantianismus im Werke Hermann Cohens (Berlin, 1980), 342ff. 81 Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 116-7. 76

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crete’. In a second, namely an ethical sense, ‘society’ is understood as an ‘ethical idea of the reform of law and state’. That means that ‘society’ functions as a critical corrective vis-à-vis a corrupt legal system, in which law is degraded to a ‘domestic of the economy’,82 and vis-à-vis a ‘state of corporations and of the ruling classes’.83 In this usage of the concept of society what is at stake is not the difference between the abstract and the concrete, but the normatively-critical function of the ideal as opposed to the factual. As Cohen distinguished between the actually existing state and state in the sense of the ethical model, the question arises whether there is any difference in meaning between the normative idea of state and the normative idea of society.84 This is in fact the case, insofar as Cohen attributed to society a mediating role between the state and the individual. Such mediation occurs both within the empirical concept, where society as economic activity is distinguished from the sphere of the governing power, as well as within its idea as an ethical demand for material justice. Cohen also viewed the relationship between society and individual from a dual perspective: from the point of view of economic reality and from the point of view of the moral idea of society. He was here concerned with the true, i.e. the ethical concept of socialism. In the end it becomes plain that the presumed two meanings of ‘society’ are merely an expression of the contradiction between the materialistic and the idealistic conception of history: ‘According to the one meaning of society the individual is judged and appraised not so much as a social, but rather as an economic being. According to the other meaning the person in a moral sense as a social being is made into a problem. From the one meaning arises social physics, from the other social ethics.’85

82

Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 118-9. Ethik, 615. 84 Cf. Winter, Ethik und Rechtswissenschaft, 343: ‘the social concept of socialism as a concealed concept of state’. 85 Ethik, 313. 83

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What is interesting is how Cohen conducted his dispute with historical materialism. He commenced with a sociological analysis of the modern ‘work-based society’ (Arbeitsgesellschaft). ‘The individual […] in all of his work, which in a merciless expansion fills his whole being, is now ruled and determined from the outside. This dependence of his being expresses itself in the correlation which accompanies his work: it does not suffice that he is a worker; for he cannot himself initiate work; he becomes an employee by virtue of the fact that there is an employer.’86 The sociological analysis operates on the basis of ‘moral statistics’ with the category of causality. Cohen admitted that the causal factor is not only epistemologically relevant, but that insights into causal processes ‘improve the lot of the worker’. But he denied that this will help people in a sufficient, humane manner. ‘With the question of the belly one may begin’; but to regard man in his struggle for the improvement of his lot merely as a ‘product of economic conditions’ implies a contradiction. In this context Cohen appraised ‘Marx’s socialism’ and, in a certain way, turned it upside down. For the ‘moral spirit’ which he tracked down in Marx’s materialistic theory of history speaks for an idealistic view of history, a view built on the idea (hypothesis) of freedom. But Cohen was not content to make freedom in the sense of a principle for the consideration of history into a basic notion; freedom must likewise guarantee the future realization of humanity. At this point we come into contact with Cohen’s — messianic conception of history. He knew no end of history: neither in a ‘realm of liberty’, nor — in modern terms — in a ‘new world order’ of the victorious liberal democratic system of the free market economy. ‘Not the end of the world nor of mankind should the peace mean that the ‘days of the messiah’ will deliver’.87 The philosophical significance of messianism consists rather in directing politics: not to the present nor to ‘the glorious national past’, but to the future in the sense of an ‘eternal’ continuation of the effort to realize morality.88

86 87

Ethik, 310. Ethik, 406.

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8. Philosophy as System and Cohen’s Theory of Culture As our overview (section 2) of Cohen’s work suggests his system is composed of three, possibly of four parts. The triadic conception of his system, containing the fields of logic, ethics, and aesthetics, follows Kant, whom Cohen praised for having created a system of philosophy and for having recognized it as ‘the connection of the modes of production of consciousness, each of which begets its own special content’.89 Seen from a historical point of view, Kant re-integrated art, which in the eighteenth century had become a self-sufficient product of a specific type of consciousness, into the systematic ‘connection of general consciousness’.90 But how could Cohen justify characterizing art as the contents of a specific mode of production of consciousness? The motivation was likely provided by culture, which, however, had to be transposed into the theory of consciousness. For it is imperative that the theory of culture remains distinguished from the theory of consciousness when a systematically-philosophical justification of aesthetics is attempted. I will first deal with the last question, namely how Cohen introduced an autonomous aesthetic consciousness. In view of the possibility of a psychological interpretation, the argumentation based on a theory of consciousness indeed stands in need of a justification. Cohen wished to prevent the category of consciousness91 from being appropriated by empirical psychology by stressing, inter alia, that the difference between the modes of production depends on the directions of consciousness: instead of being determined by some subjective psychological property, consciousness is determined by its reference to a content.92 Cohen likewise arrived at his argument for

88

Ethik, 410. ‘Eternity’ signifies for Cohen solely ‘the viewpoint of the restless, endless striving forwards of the pure will […] only the eternal effort’ (410). Cf. P. Fiorato, Geschichtliche Ewigkeit. Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Würzburg, 1993). 89 Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 94f. 90 Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 93. 91 In his Logik Cohen introduced within the ‘judgement of possibility’ consciousness as a heuristic category and distinguished it emphatically from a genetic concept of consciousness, 420ff. 92 Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 97.

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the assumption of an autonomous third direction of consciousness by taking into consideration its contents: art is independent vis-à-vis nature and morality, it ‘is its own world that becomes absorbed neither in nature nor in morality’,93 consisting rather of its own creations. Consciousness produces in its third direction the beautiful as a new content. However, this is not so much a new type of object, but is rather based on the ‘objects’ of nature and of freedom (morality), which henceforth function as matter or as building blocks.94 Cohen thus selected out of the realm of culture a special area, namely art, and he subsequently had to provide a justification of its nomological constitution within aesthetic consciousness. No criterion is offered for espousing art rather than religion or technology, but, referring to Kant, Cohen did insist that with aesthetic consciousness ‘the system of the types of consciousness, the system of philosophy, is completed’.95 The new type or direction of consciousness,96 labelled feeling, has its own content insofar as it provides a link between nature and morality, a link which is the sole content of this new direction.97 The situation in Cohen’s topical Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls is similar: Aesthetics is to be founded as a systematic discipline of philosophy on the basis of art as a factual component of general culture.98 Cohen also addressed the problem of the ‘aesthetic laying of foundations’ by taking the object and its production as his point of departure. He explicitly admitted that at first sight it may indeed appear mysterious ‘how next to knowledge and morality another equal and pure mode of production can exist, especially since the work of art, for which this third mode is sought, remains conditioned by those first two modes of production’.99 A possible solution consists of seeking the new mode of production in the relation of consciousness to itself rather than in the relation to an object. In answer to the question whether it can be 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 99. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 100. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 101. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 151. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 225-6. Ästhetik I, xi. Ästhetik I, 84.

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demonstrated that this subjective relation or comportment is the laying of foundations of a new object or of a realm of objects, Cohen offered the thesis that the content of the laying of foundations in regard to art can only be ‘the nomology of the aesthetic consciousness’.100 He labelled this consciousness, which does not depart from itself ‘in order to gain an object outside of its own activity as its contents’,101 ‘pure feeling’. What becomes plain only with the justification of aesthetics as the third part of the system provides a general characterization of Cohen’s determinations of the philosophical concept of system, insofar as these determinations bring the system into a relationship with culture and its unity. With the expression ‘cultural consciousness’ Cohen joined two aspects of the problem of system: the level of the theory of culture and the level of the theory of consciousness. According to him the isolated ‘facts’ of culture (science, morality, art) as such and as participants in a unified culture can be understood only on the basis of the context of their modes of production, a context that is identical with the system of philosophy. This unity was going to be secured in the fourth part of the system, psychology, which, however, was never written. Unlike Natorp,102 Cohen remained convinced of the conceptually constructive nature of psychology. The unity is a ‘methodological’ one (of the laying of the foundations) so that the differences between the various directions of consciousness of the cultural consciousness can be maintained. Although Cohen’s specific theory of the subject hardly becomes developed within his conception of psychology, it is nevertheless possible to interpret his rejection of Natorp’s theory of existential experience as part of his critique of metaphysics. In this critique he hoped that systematic psychology would supersede the ‘antiquated metaphysics’ of the philosophy of identity.103

100 101 102 103

Ästhetik I, 89f. Ästhetik I, 97. Cf. his Allgemeine Psychologie (1912). Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 38.

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9. Ethical Taming of Religiosity Historically speaking, Cohen’s theory of socialism stands in contrast not only to the historical materialism of the Marxist type, but also to the attempt of religion and church to determine the will of the ethical subject. With Kant’s concept of autonomy ethics had liberated itself from religion and theology and Cohen accordingly resorted to ethical interpretation in order to integrate central religious concepts (e.g. God, eternity, peace) into rational philosophy. Historical piety, felt especially acutely by the Jew because of the presumed religious origin of morality, finds itself limited by the enlightened duty towards the universal interest of mankind, an interest that Cohen never tired of tracking in Biblical passages, especially the prophetic ones. Cohen, at the age of thirty-seven, saw himself compelled to take up this topic against his will; up to that point his relationship with the religion of his forebears tended to be of a rather sentimental nature. However, in 1879 his religious heritage was provoked by the debate following the appearance of an article in the Preussische Jahrbücher by the Berlin historian Heinrich von Treitschke. In his ‘Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage’ Cohen criticised Treitschke’s characterization of Judaism as ‘the national religion of a tribe that was originally foreign to us’ as well as the contrast the latter had drawn between this depiction and a ‘purer form of Christianity’.104 Cohen based his attack against anti-Semitism not so much on the racist motive (which, owing to his understanding of Judaism, he seemed to overlook) as on the religious zeal of Christians against Jews. Against a Biblical exegesis which claimed that the precept ‘love thy neighbour’ was restricted to Israelite tribesmen Cohen insisted that the precept included strangers and that in fact the love of a stranger provided ‘a creative element in the development of the concept of man as a neighbour’.105 Cohen exposed

104

Jüdische Schriften II, 73f. H. Cohen, ‘Die Nächstenliebe im Talmud. Ein Gutachten, dem Königl. Landgerichte zu Marburg erstattet’ (Marburg, 1888), reprinted in Jüdische Schriften I, 145-74.

105

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anti-Semitism as a moral disqualification of Judaism, a disqualification that was based on a partisan reading of religious texts. The struggle against anti-Semitism was part of the philosophical effort, namely of the critical examination of religion by the standards of reason. In general, Cohen’s ethical interpretation of both testaments was directed against every kind of religious particularism, against the separation into dogmatic denominations marked by their absolute claims, and against the subsequent practical and theoretical intolerance. The ‘Zionism dispute’ with Martin Buber in 1916 proceeded along similar lines. Cohen attacked the Zionist concept of the ‘Jewish nation’, for which there was to be created a legally safeguarded domicile in Palestine. Against this Cohen emphasized the proclamation of the prophet Micah: ‘Then the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like dew from the Lord’.106 It was precisely in the dispersal that Cohen recognized the reality and, along with it, the historical mission of modern Judaism. The Jewish religion can be maintained only within a ‘universally humane Judaism’.107 However, in his desire to be a good German, Cohen was blind to the particularistic nationalist facet of the very spirit of German culture to which he was almost religiously devoted. As late as in the beginning of 1915 he wrote to Natorp: ‘Humanity will not become extinct, but the new in its development will consist of the fact, and on this I insist: that it can achieve true progress only thanks to a profound insight into the essence of the spirit of German culture’.108 The disappointment was not long in coming. Religion presents for the proponent of a philosophical system an even greater challenge than does art with its problematic objectivity. For the system seems to be closed. It displays no deficit when religion is not considered as an independent direction of consciousness. In addition, there is no room for the religious consciousness next to the established directions of consciousness and their ‘products’. Why then at all inquire after the place of

106

Mic. 5:7. H. Cohen, ‘Antwort auf das offene Schreiben des Herrn Dr. Martin Buber an Hermann Cohen’ (1916), in: Werke, vol. 17, 252-255. 108 H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, vol. 2, 440-1. 107

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religion in the system of philosophy? This question arises on the basis of the recognition that religion is a ‘cultural fact’. No matter what one’s own attitude toward religion is, religion does constitute an important cultural factor. And when philosophy is assigned the task of grounding the unity of culture, then it must take up the challenge that religion poses. The challenge has a dual complexion: Systematic philosophy must account for the cultural factor of religion, but philosophy must also, given its critical concept of culture, place constraints on the religious consciousness, since this consciousness can, and in fact repeatedly does, endanger the unity of culture. Cohen attempted to solve this problem by attributing no independence to religion, only a ‘peculiarity’. The negative consequence of this conception is that next to a scientific, moral, and aesthetic consciousness there will be no independent religious consciousness, nor will there be a realm of religious objects within culture comparable to the realms of scientific, moral, and artistic objects.109 However, it is difficult to discern what exactly the positive connotation of ‘peculiarity’ in regard to the system is. Cohen’s work on religion of 1915 deals not only with the relation of religion to ethics, but also with its relation to all parts of the system. Religious consciousness possesses ‘peculiarity’ insofar as it functions as a critical supplement vis-à-vis logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Religion has a critical significance for epistemology, i.e. for theoretical philosophy, by virtue of the fact that it elevates the monotheistic proposition that God is the only being to the standard of all validity of being, thus rejecting all speculative ‘positing’. By raising the problem of the individual, religion helps ethics to alleviate the deficit the latter has in regard to its concept of man, a deficit that only now becomes apparent. In regard to aesthetics religion, in a certain sense, assumes a critical stance for its own sake. For thanks to the comparison between aesthetic and religious consciousness it becomes clear that only aesthetics, but not religion, is based on feeling. Religion does not,

109

Natorp’s solution, which attributed to religion ‘an independent basic form of consciousness’, but no ‘own realm of objects’, renders, on Cohen’s premisses, aesthetic and religious consciousness indistinguishable, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität (Tübingen, 19082), 44.

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according to Cohen, repose on the feeling of ‘absolute dependence’ as Schleiermacher had claimed. A corresponding criticism is directed against Natorp’s conception of religion. When Natorp took the totality of religious experience as his point of departure and when he identified the peculiarity of religious consciousness as a ‘limitless and formless surging and weaving of the soul’ that was akin to feeling, Cohen objected that the transcendence of God, the central point of his own concept of religion, was endangered. The posthumous work Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums also offers an ethical interpretation of religion, just as the enlightened attitude is not simply abandoned. However, Cohen was here concerned less with a critical examination of religion, an examination based on a standard of reason, than with a detailed interpretation of the contents of religious belief and of a religious life style within the limits of reason. And just as in the earlier writings Cohen invariably meant by ‘religion’ implicitly or explicitly the Jewish one, so in the Religion it is the ‘sources of Judaism’ on the basis of which philosophical reason carries out its work. However, these sources do not simply provide an intelligible fact, rather religion is now presented as an admixture of stories, rituals, specific forms of life, and philosophical thoughts. Moreover, the philosopher Cohen is challenged by the fact that religion is a historically generated entity. In this way, however, the philosophical attempt to establish a concept of religion leads to a dilemma. One may either produce a concept that is genuinely worthy of being labelled a concept, namely a purely philosophical one; for Cohen this would mean producing an ethical concept of religion out of which all irrational and purely historically content is eliminated. Or one may produce a concept with a religious and thus irrational component, but one whose possibility could be questioned. Cohen took up and radicalized Kant’s insight that human reason is destined to have to raise metaphysical questions without being able to answer them satisfactorily in accordance with the standards of human cognition. He wished to work out a concept of reason which would leave uncontested reason’s competence to think generality and necessity, thus overcoming the chasm that divides people because of their God. At the same time this concept of

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reason was not meant to rely on the metaphysical thought of the absolute, but was intended to connect theology to the basic methodological notion of the correlation between man and God. Although religion in Cohen’s late work does gain a share of reason, and though this does occur by means of a historical concentration on religious Judaism, religion is nevertheless marked by a permanent link to universal ethical reason, which then stands under its auspices. But Cohen at this point also came to appreciate the fact that the systematic and especially the ethical use of human reason fails when faced with the truly difficult problems of human existence. This was in part the result of a historical experience made by Cohen unwillingly and subconsciously during the First World War when he encountered unexpectedly intensifying antisemitic tendencies. If earlier he had known experience only as a concept, then now he was personally affected. And yet, as one affected in this fashion, he continued to work within a conception of the world, a conception which, however, was shaped by the sources of Judaism.

10. The Philosopher It is symptomatic of Cohen’s systematic thought that the person of the philosopher is characterized neither by wonder or amazement, nor by doubt in which certainty is sought. Rather the philosopher appears in his confession of messianic conviction: I am confident, it is my belief. Does this ‘I’ have — beyond a merely biographical relevance — a philosophical significance? Cohen was no existentialist philosopher and there is no sense in providing an explanation along these lines. His philosophical person is rather located in ethical knowledge, i.e. in the knowledge of what one ought to do. What is at stake is not ‘the assurance and the ardent elevation of moral belief’, ‘moving the heart so powerfully and stimulating and brightening the mind’;110 rather it is the knowledge of the basic ethical concepts and principles, the ability to provide a justification by way of an argumentative discourse. Why then is a personal engagement 110

Ethik, 512.

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still required, especially since this is not to be understood in the sense of a rhetorically affective accompaniment of rational discourse? Cohen connected the deficit that required a personal involvement with the distinction between knowledge and certainty. As long as in answering the ethical question of what ought to be done I must content myself with foundations (hypotheseis) instead of absolute foundations, I will reach only hypothetical certainty, i.e. knowledge, but not absolute knowledge. In order to endure a virtue is required, namely the virtue of truthfulness. Cohen implicitly charged that every attempt at knowledge was endangered by a relapse into fundamentalistic metaphysics. The search for knowledge or truth tends to transpose itself into the search for the possession of truth. Truthfulness is the corrective of this metaphysical need. The philosopher must not only say the truth, i.e. that which appears to him to be true, he must also accept the fact that the search is as far as he will get. To understand this and to be able to endure it a knowledge of the self is needed, a knowledge that can only be achieved in a personal process of learning which eludes a totally rational description, in short: a virtue is required. The subjects of philosophy must possess the virtue of truthfulness.111 At the end of his farewell speech at Marburg Cohen said that ‘virtue is related to universality’, but that ‘it is attached to man, to the living man’. The melancholy in which his academic career ended suggests how difficult it is to be a genuine philosopher, eternally waiting for the messiah.

111

Ethik, 510.

LOGIK

COHEN’S URSPRUNGSDENKEN WERNER FLACH, LICHTENAU

Since the understanding of the genuine task of philosophy, to treat the topic of validity and validity qualification to its widest extent, is gaining more and more weight, the work of Cohen is receiving increasing attention. Cohen’s work ultimately concentrates on a single theme: the doctrine of the principles of validity. For Cohen philosophy is the science of that which is relevant for validity. And to him this stands first and foremost for a theory of qualification towards validity determination. As cannot be expected otherwise in this regard, the foundation of each and every validity determination in their function of establishing foundation is at issue, the subject thus being no less and essentially that of foundation as a function. How the foundation of validity is possible at all i.e., how it must be thought, how it operates, are the consequences that follow, are the points around which Cohen’s reflections revolve, beginning with the stage of development at which they have reached the level of their systematic independency. This level is reached with Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte. But Cohen was only able to bring this level fully into focus with the systematic main work Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. This work presents Cohen’s elaborated doctrine of the principles of validity. It is not new and by no means original to mention that the title of this work already addresses the systematics which the author had in full view and that Cohen sees their point in the logic of a theory of principles. The logic qua logic of pure knowledge is ‘thinking of the origin’ (Ursprungsdenken), which as thinking of the origin is precisely the origin of each and every validity determination and thus the rationale of all validity theory, of all philosophy.

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With this we have come to the topic of the present essay.1 An attempt is made to outline the characteristics and the progress of the argument of Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken. This attempt is by no means superfluous. In spite of the increasing attention paid to Cohen’s work, and as such also to the central doctrine of Ursprungsdenken in this work, the situation is such that Cohen’s theory of Ursprungsdenken is not being debated comprehensively. Although it is clear that Cohen develops a theory of principles, primarily a theory of principles of thinking, it has not been established without doubt, why Cohen formed this theory of principles as he did. It is nevertheless indispensable to determine the argumentative directions that dominate the course of Cohen’s reflections. As yet, it has not been fully understood which inevitabilities compel the Ursprungsdenken to unfold in exactly the four classes of judgement in which it unfolds according to Cohen, in the four classes of the judgement of the laws of thinking, the judgements of mathematics, the judgements of the mathematical natural sciences, the judgements of methods. In particular we need to settle the question of which logical order and distribution of the functions of principles are presented in this construction. The general accordance that the functions of principles relate altogether to determination of the subject-matter, or to the subject-matter of knowledge, is misleading in this regard. To tackle this task, we obviously need to begin with the term of ‘origin’ (Ursprung). Its content is to be ascertained and precisely specified. Cohen renders this task easy for us, in so far as in the course of the exposition of the programmatic of his logic he elaborates extensively on the problem, the principle and the logicality of the origin.2 The problem of the origin is that of an unrestricted sovereignty of thinking. This means that Cohen is convinced that the thought is nothing but thinking and that thinking must accordingly meet the requirements of certification including verification of itself. It must relate to this certifica1 The present essay forms a unit with the essay on Hermann Cohen’s concept of logic with regard to the principle of validation of knowledge, which gives more prominence to the situation of the discussion. See E.W. Orth and W. Marx (Hrsg.) Hermann Cohen und die Erkenntnistheorie (Würzburg, 2001), 99109. 2 Logik, 35ff.

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tion including verification in its entire scope. None of its elements, whether determined as structure/form or content, and no connection of these elements, again whether formally or with regard to its content, can be excluded from this operation. Above all, this operation must include itself. This can only mean that thinking is identical to the competence to procure the prerogative of the determination. It goes without saying that first of all this competence concerns the determination of itself. Only thereafter, and so much less problematically, does it relate to the determination of that which distinguishes thinking from itself, that which it objectifies. Cohen expresses all this by referring to the creation of the logical sense, and by taking this to mean that nothing but creating or the creation itself is the product.3 In full accordance with this view of the problem, Cohen approaches the determination of the principle of origin. He makes it quite clear that in the reciprocal linkage of the statements with regard to the character of the principles and to the character of origin, it is a matter of the ‘foundation in literal exactness’ (Grundlegung in buchstäblicher Genauigkeit).4 A literally accurate foundation indicates that the competence to procure the prerogative of the determination has the character of a non-surpassable condition. It is thus unconditioned in the sense that it qualifies the conditional as that which it is. It is precisely in the inseparable relatedness towards the conditional that it is that which qualifies. This means that thinking characterizes itself to be what it is and it qualifies that which it objectivates. According to its character of principle, or better still, in its character of principle, it is the function of the determination, and due to the determination of itself i.e. the determination to be the function of the determination, it is the determination of something, determination of something as something. If it is the one as well as the other, then reference to the principle of the origin also contains the qualification involved as such, in its priority and in its generality. The latter motivated Cohen to characterize the principle of the origin likewise as the principle of continuity (of the determination). The former compelled Cohen to conceive determination 3 4

Logik, 29. Logik, 36.

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generally as a judgemental formation. The functionality as such, has herein the character of principle. Formation gives Cohen the chance to differentiate principles. In accordance with this, judgement for him is the ‘fundamental form of thinking’ (Grundform des Denkens)5, that is to say, of determination. Accordingly, he sees the different kinds of judgement as differing principles. This insight makes the logicality of the origin obvious. Logic ‘has to determine that the nature of thinking is making judgements’.6 The ‘viewpoint of judgement’7 is its dominating point of view. Accordingly it has to bring the ‘characterization of thinking […] to a more accurate determination’.8 Cohen accepts no limitation in this regard. He is interested in a complete characterization of thinking. This imposes an immense task on logic. Cohen clearly apprehends this. Time and again he emphasizes that the logic qua logic of the origin must be formed into a logic of pure knowledge. For pure knowledge allows the ‘creative power of thinking’ (Schöpferkraft des Denkens) to be brought to ‘manifestation’ (Offenbarung), the ‘peculiarity’ (Eigenart) and ‘intrinsic value’ (Eigenwert) of thinking, its pureness, to be discovered.9 This, however, is not the final step of the reflections. The inevitable formation of the logic of origin towards a logic of pure knowledge, according to Cohen, just as inevitably brings about correlations between logic and science. Science is the domain of pure knowledge. In so far logic must refer to science. It must bring about a more precise (discerning) determination of the reasons of the principle of scientific determination under the one aspect of judgement. This has consequences for logic as well as science. Science is directed to logic, logic is directed to science. The foundation of science is demonstrated and certified within logic. To this extent science is the fact which persists without any reflections on the reasons of its validity, it is the fact

5 6 7 8 9

Logik, 47. Logik, 58. Logik, 59. Logik, 59. Logik, 23.

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affiliated to the disposition of the actual problem of the theory of validity, of logic. Such a fact challenges the certification. It has to be demonstrated unavoidably that the disposition of science is legitimate determination. The legitimation lies in this, that it turns out to be the specifying differentiation of the principle of origin. Correspondingly, science is for logic the demonstration of the creative power of pure thinking. For the specifying differentiation of the Ursprungsdenken is anything but deduction. It is analysis, analysis of determination problems from the point of view of the kinds of judgements. There can be no dispensation from this analysis, as it organizes the elaboration of the logic of origin towards a logic of pure knowledge. This elaboration is analytics. Together and along with the analytics of the determination problems which define science, the logic of thinking must therefore be considered with the problems of determination in itself. This is the reason why Cohen refers to such problems throughout. In a distinct understanding the thinking of logic refers to the thinking of science. It is interwoven with science. This again has a very noteworthy consequence. In spite of being thinking of the origin, the thinking of logic is thinking that must reflect the determination problems of defining science as well as the treatment of these problems. It includes the dynamics of the scientific determination in the analysis. In this way it partakes, in a very distinct understanding, in the dynamics of science. Dogmatism is something foreign to it. The dispositions defining science which are demonstrated and certified are said to be anything but dogmatic dispositions. They are open to the process of determination. To characterize them as such is essentially a part of its certification. In the same manner, part of this certification is that the analysis of the determination process in question is simultaneously progress in determination and that the progress of foundation is inscribed into this progress in determination. Problem content, principle content and logical content of the term of origin stipulate the theory of thinking, which leads the subject of validity qualification of the term of origin to be theory of judgement. Judgement is the ‘fundamental form of thinking’

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(Die Grundform des Denkens).10 The determination sovereignty of thinking thus depends on the latter. Subsequently, therefore, once the term of ‘origin’ has been elucidated according to its problem content, principle content and logical content, the only concern is to propagate this determination sovereignty in its allembracingness. As the all-embracingness now mentioned is on the one hand the exposition of the ‘determination itself of thinking’, on the other hand the objection of each single thing (the particular), logic takes the form of a theory of principles that we find adopted in the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. I start by discussing the topic of theory of principle of the determination at itself of thinking. This is the topic which has priority for logic. Accordingly Cohen deals with a first class of judgements, the judgements of the laws of thinking together with the first judgement of origin and the further judgements of identity and contradiction. This arrangement already shows quite clearly what points are emphasized by Cohen. Clearly distancing himself from the ‘the stereotype of traditional logic’ (Schablone der traditionellen Logik)11 he elaborates what is, or what has to be, the primary understanding of every logic that does not misjudge itself,12 i.e. the understanding that judgement as a function of determination is the specific functional structure of unity and that the synthesis of unity exhibits the moments of separation, of unification, and of preservation. These are Cohen’s terms for what in an other respect are looked upon as ‘moments’ (Stücke) of predication. Predication is the structure by the power of which determination functions. It is essential for Cohen that this is generally so. That is why he regards predication as the ‘beginning’ (Ausgang) of the constitution of determination. Each determination has its final reason in the determination of thinking itself, in the functional structure of predication.13 It consequently also ‘rules’ (durchwaltet) the determination qua objection, i.e. knowledge, 10

Logik, 47. Logik, 72. 12 Cohen again and again feels obliged to point out that his theory of the laws of thinking promotes, so to speak, formal logic to the self-evidence of its theory of principles. See, e.g. Logik, 76, 77, 83. 13 Logik, 36, 134. 11

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and in thus includes it in regard to its foundation in the pureness of thinking. Cohen never tires of emphasizing this thought of foundation. He accentuates it in ever new variations: founded by the determination of thinking and by the determination which functions as predication, knowledge is pure knowledge. Logic of thinking which is logic of origin is ‘in itself logic of pure knowledge’ (an sich selbst die Logik der reinen Erkenntnis).14 By identifying logic of (pure) thinking and logic of pure knowledge, in a foundation-theoretical regard, Cohen accomplishes the most important step with regard to the course of the argument of his origin of thinking. As a result, Cohen himself explains,15 logic not only maintains a new foundation and a new form, but he also insists that this new foundation ‘has been in acknowledged use in the new science’. ‘In the logic used hitherto’ it is only ‘not acknowledged as foundation’. By linking up with the acknowledged use, Cohen says, it can thus be shown in detail that the logic of pure thinking is logic of pure knowledge. According to Cohen, it is not difficult to find the lever for this progress of the argument. The leverage lies in the fact that predication establishes unity. The establishment of unity ‘renders judgement the basic means of knowledge’.16 Not altogether felicitously, Cohen formulates: ‘Knowlege is unity of knowledge […] The methodic value of knowledge depends on its unity’.17 Adding the correction that unity of knowledge is unity of determination, we have the exact presentation of the argumentative step that leads to the term of object. For the unity of determination is not only a ‘formaler Zusammenhang’ (formal connection) for Cohen. It always has a ‘sachliche Bedeutung’ (objective meaning) as well.18 The object is founded upon this objective meaning. The object is nothing but the determinable in the unity of determination and the determined. Precisely that is intended by the term of object. That is why, according to Cohen’s argument, it is the judgement ‘according to and in 14

Logik, 38. Logik, 37. 16 Logik, 66f. 17 ‘Die Erkenntnis ist Einheit der Erkenntnis […] Der methodische Wert der Erkenntnis ist bedingt durch die Einheit derselben’, Logik, 67. 18 Logik, 67. 15

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which’ (nach und in welchem) the discovery of the object takes place.19 The constitutive context is that of unity of judgement, unity of knowledge, unity of object. Cohen formulates: There is no other way to discover the object than that offered by the unity of knowledge. It represents the unity of the object. And unity of knowledge is formed in the unity of judgement. That is how we acquire this determination of judgement: the unity of judgement is the formation of the unity of the object in the unity of knowledge.20

The object is discovered as the determinable. Cohen is convinced that thinking hereby accomplishes its ‘first demand’ (erstes Anliegen): it places ‘the origin of each and every content that it is able to create into thinking itself’.21 For in his view the disposition of the determinable means to establish creation as an object relationship. Determination turns into a statement of being. Pure knowledge constitutes a meaning for being. It does this by virtue of the constitutiveness of pure thinking. The formulas that thinking, and only thinking, creates that which may be considered being,22 or ‘that thinking has to discover being in the origin’ (daß das Denken im Ursprung das Sein zu entdecken hat),23 that only thinking opens up the approach to being, express this in a highly profusely figurative, but nevertheless very exact way. Being owes its meaning to the functionality of the determination of judgement. This meaning stands for a determinable something. In pure knowledge this something is accommodated in its determinability ‘to bring the respective something in question to determination in its origin, and only through this truly to creation and determination’.24

19

Logik, 67. ‘Es gibt keine andere Möglichkeit, den Gegenstand zu entdecken, als welche die Einheit der Erkenntnis bietet. Sie vertritt die Einheit des Gegenstandes. Und die Einheit der Erkenntnis wird erzeugt in der Einheit des Urteils. So gewinnen wir diese Bestimmung des Urteils: Die Einheit des Urteils ist die Erzeugung der Einheit des Gegenstandes in der Einheit der Erkenntnis.’, Logik, 68. 21 Logik, 82. 22 Logik, 81. 23 Logik, 36. 24 Logik, 89. 20

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Continuing the line of argument with absolute consistency, Cohen, following this understanding, comprehends the ‘question’ as the ‘foundation-stone of the foundation’ (Grundstein zur Grundlage),25 which is the judgement, and he maintains that within the infinite judgement the ‘origin of that term is defined that forms the problem’ (Ursprung desjenigen Begriffs zur Definition gebracht ist, der das Problem bildet).26 In other words, the determinable something is as the determinable, always the determined as well. The following point of Cohens argument is the determination of the determinable something. It is the point of the constitutiveness of limitation. For the determinative which is suitable for the determinable something, is that of limitation. In the first instance this something cannot be anything but limitedly determined. The underlying reason is that the initial constitutive function of determination or judgement — Cohen speaks of ‘means of operation’ (Operationsmittel)27 — can only be ‘nothingness’. By way of ‘nothingness’ determination is founded through pure logical operation, i.e. limitation, which is associated with the ‘question’ and without which the ‘question’ could not demand an answer at all. This, in other words, secures the treatability for the problem. Treatability of the problem requires that determination and determination are connected with each other. In this way, from a purely functional judgement point of view, determination establishes continuity. Cohen calls the function of judgement which founds the establishment of continuity the principle of continuity. ‘Continuity is a law of thinking’ (Die Kontinuität ist ein Denkgesetz).28 It is ‘the law of thinking of that connection which renders possible the creation of the unity of knowledge and consequently the unity of the object and is responsible for their un-

25 26 27 28

Logik, 84. Logik, 89. Logik, 89. Logik, 91.

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interrupted implementation’.29 ‘Due to continuity all elements of knowledge, as far as they can be accepted as elements of knowledge, are created out of the origin’.30 Consequently, continuity must be conceived as ‘the law of thinking in knowledge’ (das Denkgesetz der Erkenntnis).31 According to this law of thinking the determination of the determinable is a condition of the ‘affinity’ (natürliche Angrenzung) of the ‘infinite set’ (unendliche Gruppe) of the possible determining terms by the term of the determinable32 and establishes precisely herein a ‘proximity’ (Nachbarschaft) between the determinable and that which determines. On these grounds the determinable has at its disposal, as Cohen puts it, an ‘accomodation rich in orientation’.33 Speaking less figuratively, this means that it functions as the beginning of a determination series. But by functioning as the beginning of a determination series, the determinable is more than simply something determinable. It is something determinable that is determined. Linked to this constitutive factual situation is the further aspect of the constitution of the specific founding function of the determinable. According to its notion the determinable amounts to its own individual foundation. This foundation relates knowledge to each objective being. Cohen is thinking about several things in this relation. Firstly Cohen reflects a progress in constitution by this function. He is thinking about the progress of the Ursprungsdenken towards the constitution of reality.34 In the function of foundation, which is characteristic of the determination of the determinable, being is defined as reality. In this way the determination advances towards the formation of ‘differentials of the sense of being’. And this progress leads to the term of ‘beingness’. The term ‘beingness’ is gained from the term of being. In this respect the term is solidly based. In this way it can be thought in definiteness. For Cohen to think beingness in definiteness and differentiation is necessarily the same. 29 30 31 32 33 34

Logik, 92. Logik, 92. Logik, 93. Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte, 36. Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte, 91. Logik, 134.

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This point represents a separate constitutional aspect. It is the aspect of categorical constitution. As distinguished from the ‘meaning of being’ founded in the first instance, i.e. by the constitution through rules of thinking, the categorical ‘meaning of being’ is therefore differential, is meaning of the determination of beingness. Unmistakably Cohen’s argumentation has now reached the level of constitution in which objectivation is organised thematically. The categories can therefore similarly be looked upon as the functions of thematic organisation of objectivation. With them objectivation becomes intelligible in its constitutive moments. Across the correlation of these moments objectivation creates its value. This is what has to be remarked in the second place. Thirdly, it has to be mentioned that the founding of the objective meaning as ‘meaning of being’, and as differentiation of the ‘meaning of being’, also integrates the founding of the methods of knowledge. The methods of knowledge represent the principles by virtue of which the objectivation value finally becomes concrete. They mould the objectivation value into concrete value. Individually, as well as in their association, they submit being to the respective something as ‘single something’ (the particular) — better still, as the ‘isolated single something’. According to its determination, independent of its singularity, it is situated in a mediated relation to the particulars and the universals — i.e. the determination. The ‘isolated single something’ is the object which has been conceived in concrete, methodologically organised statements. Consequently, the constitutiveness of the continuity principle extends into the statements of this object. Not the only reason why the constitutiveness of the continuity principle extends to the statements, in which the term of the ‘isolated single something’ is formed, is that continuity has to be appraised as ‘law of thinking of knowledge’.35 Just as continuity is the ‘springboard’36 with which Cohen thinks possible a leap into determinability and determination, so continuity is responsible for how far it is possible to jump. The leap ends with a concrete determination of being qua ‘isolated single something’. Its con35 36

Logik, 93. Logik, 93.

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crete determination, i.e. the founding of the term of the ‘single something’, was regarded by Cohen to be the ‘the hardest problem of logic’.37 He saw mastering this problem as the aim of foundation. For him logic, which brings thinking ‘from the point of view of judgement to a more exact determination’,38 is complete when this aim has been attained. Logic of judgement in this completeness is ‘judgement of syllogism, as that of necessity’.39 In this way, the theory of syllogism is also wholly integrated into the concept of logic with regard to the principles of validation of knowledge. The theory of syllogism makes an effort to certify the operations of syllogism as the theoretical justification of the concrete determination of the ‘single something’. According to Cohen, the certification consists in this that the concrete determination of the ‘single something’ mediates, in view of the systematic connection which is inherent to it, between the ‘single something’ and the particular and the universal, and thus accommodates it under the term of regular determination. Knowledge can be organised as deduction. This guarantees its scientificness.40 This look at the integration of the methods of science into the Ursprungsdenken, concludes the description of the characteristics and the line of argument of Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken. The question is what have we learned from the review of the arguments. The answer to this question cannot be plain and simple. Above all, it cannot be an answer without some reservations. Cohen’s concept of logic with regard to the principles of validation of knowledge, his theory of Ursprungsdenken, has its strengths and its weaknesses. Both have to be assessed adequately. Only in this way can Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken receive the appreciation consequent on its reliable incorporation into the history of philosophy and into the systematic classification.

37 38 39 40

Logik, 594. Logik, 59. Logik, 594. Logik, 59.

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Undoubtedly, Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken can be classified systematically under the topic of the doctrine of the principles of validity. As was mentioned in the introduction, Cohen sees this thematic alignment as the point which isolates philosophy. This isolation has its necessity. It consists in the demand which thinking has to meet and that amounts to its qualification. It is the claim for validity. It is a matter of the qualification of thinking as validity determination, and it is a matter of the qualification being applied to thinking itself. Only thinking itself has the character which in the twofold understanding of the word proves to be validity. Cohen is precisely aware of this situation. He marked it precisely by characterizing his doctrine of principles as logic of origin. As the manner of Cohen’s treatment of the thought of origin shows, it is difficult to deny that he succeeded well. Only few attempts to establish foundation have been carried out with such a clear perception of the requirements and with such stringency as those of the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. With rare clear-sightedness Cohen observes that and how much the question of founding calls for the point of view of judgement, as he expresses it. With rare clear-sightedness he develops his analysis from his point of view and obtains this point of view as a key to his reflections, up to the final considerations. In these many regards Cohen’s complete logic is a logic of judgement. One could substitute the title of Ursprungsdenken with that of ‘Urteilsdenken’. As surely as the logic with regard to the principles of validity of knowledge has to secure ‘the determination itself of thinking’, and this before anything else, just as surely and correctly Cohen does not keep the logic of principles restricted to the task of securing. Cohen is absolutely right, when he teaches that the utilization of ‘the determination itself of thinking’ also reveals this determination as a knowledge relation. By reflecting the determination of itself, thinking also reflects the possibility of knowledge. Thus Ursprungsdenken proves to be a logic of pure thinking, in which is inscribed a programme of a logic of pure knowledge. In this Cohen saw the nub of his foundational understanding. The outline of his argumentation demonstrates that he has made it quite clear to himself what systematic burden he has

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thus put on logic. Logic of pure thinking must be formed into the logic of pure knowledge. This implies that logic can in no way be satisfied with foundation in the meaning of ‘based upon’. It must be generalized foundation. It must comprehend the functionality of the principle as generalized functionality, and that means that it must certify this functionality in each and every constitutive relationship. It must, as Cohen says, demonstrate all functions of principle as variations of the principle of origin. It is not only this ‘wideness’ of the Ursprungsdenken which serves as evidence for its character of principle. But this wideness is not without order. Especially according to Cohen’s view of it as the nub of foundational understanding, it must come forth with an order. At least the differentiation, which reflects the difference of self-determination of thinking to the thinking of founded objective determination, due to its own determination, must be included in the functionality of the principle. Cohen complies with these conditions by means of his distinction of classes of judgement. This distinction is in the first place a distinction of judgements of the laws of thinking on the one hand, and of the judgement of categories,41 and of the judgement of methods on the other hand. In the second place, a further distinction is made between the judgements of categories and the judgements of methods. The judgements of the laws of thinking embrace the principles to which we owe the self-determination of thinking. The judgements of categories and those of methods embrace the principles to which we owe the determination of the object, the constitution of knowledge. The twofold classification of the judgements of categories and of the judgements of methods bears witness to a difference within the principles of knowledge. Cohen expresses it, not very fortunately, by the words naiv and kritisch. It is nevertheless clear which difference is meant. It is the difference between constitution of knowledge and regulation of knowledge. The naive categories are the principles of the constitution of knowledge, the critical categories are the principles of regulation of knowledge. In the constitutiveness of the former the object of knowledge is founded in the manner of determination of being and the determination of 41

Cohen does not use this term. But he characterizes the matter as such.

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beingness according to fundamental law. Qua knowledge thinking determines what may apply to it as being or as beingness. The regulativity of the regulative principle of knowledge is erected on this constitution. Rather, it functions via this constitution of validity. Indeed, it functions in such a way that it regulates the determination of beingness to concrete determination. It is thus only able to function via constitution. It is indeed also that in which the principle-based moments of determination of the object complete themselves in the first place. Hence for Cohen the logically highly significant point follows that the logic of pure knowledge need not capitulate even to the problem of determination of the ‘single something’ (the isolated, i.e. particularized single something). It declares this problem to be a problem of systematic determination of the respective something. Conventionally this is a problem of the syllogism, and Cohen goes on to make this connection. Considering the logic of pure knowledge, he makes use of the realisation that syllogism, too, experiences its principle-based logical legitimation in it. The judgement of the (concrete) term is judgement of the systematic context, of the open ‘determination series’. As in this connection there is always also a mediation between the concrete term and the particulars and the universals, this series is equally a ‘mediating series’. The most diverse references are established. In these correlations, knowledge qua determination of the individual case has its dynamics. It is research. This research unites the syllogism, especially as that of necessity, the deduction, the approval, and the openness of the concrete determination of the object. In this way Cohen can even integrate the idea of expansion of the category inventory into his logic concept. The innovation of categories does not contradict the foundational function of the categories. In the connection of both, Cohen even observes the reason for scientific progress. In his opinion this is primarily a systematic affair. The historically documented progress only reflects the sytematic constellation. In the same manner the situation of deficiency and relapses uncovered by history only reflect the systematic deficiency.

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It has already been suggested that the information given in the course of Cohen’s argumentation consists not only of the systematically sound and beneficial. There is also the systematic uncertainty, there is that which is doubtful. This also needs elaboration. Even more than for the presentation of that which is systematically beneficial, we are here obliged to consider the initial thoughts from which Cohen’s complete argumentation is developed. Due to the rigour with which Cohen’s argumentation is constructed, the weaknesses in the argumentation are revealed even more prominently than the strengths, which underlie them. Both have the same roots. Both, for that matter, are also responsible for the corresponding philosophical historical classification. Presenting the argumentation of Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken, I said that the founding theoretical ‘interplacement’ of logic of pure thinking and logic of pure knowledge is its most important step. Now, precisely this step cannot be accepted as systematically indisputable. Doubt has to be cast on the very connection from which it draws its importance. It draws its importance from the association between pure thinking, pure knowledge and science (of nature), which is presented as an internal founding association, and thus is taken as the new organisation of logic according to the logic of origin with regard to the indisputable, i.e. unproblematic analysis of principles of that which the acknowledged practice of science is or is supposed to be. In this respect the thesis of foundation cannot be doubted. But the congruency that is established between analysis and the acknowledged practice is not systematically guaranteed. It only causes contamination. This contamination can be found again and again in Cohen’s work. He emphatically insists on the sovereignty of thinking. He empathically insists that logic as the selfascertaining element of thinking accurately defines itself in the term of pure knowledge. Emphatically Cohen also insists that the relationship to science is established within this. But just as emphatically same emphasis he teaches that ‘this relation to science […] determines the method of logic and forms the interweaving foundation for its systematic extension’.42 And he thinks 42

Logik, x.

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of the sciences, even of the particular sciences of mathematics and the mathematical natural sciences, in their factual practice. The contamination of the sovereign reflection of principles, and according to the fact of accomplished analysis, cannot fail to appear. The thinking of logic must eo ipso be thinking of science.43 And ‘the thinking of knowledge can only be described, determined, discovered, measured and chiselled out with the help of the problems of scientific knowledge’.44 Statements such as these could pass for methodological statements. But for Cohen they are statements of logic. This signifies that Cohen’s doctrine of principles is at the same time a doctrine of principle of thinking and doctrine of the objective foundations of the sciences. It must continuously obscure the difference between these various and distinct viewpoints of the doctrine. This is the case in a clear majority of Cohen’s texts. Fortunately, the texts concerning the judgements of the laws of thinking are excluded. These make available a part of the genuine doctrine of principles. But even in this part of the genuine doctrine of principles, the orientation of Cohen’s logic towards the analysis of the foundations of the sciences is noticeable. It is noticeable in the imperfect version of the term of determination. Cohen’s version of the term of determination is characterized by the formation of this term in the sense of the functions of judgement. That is its great advantage. But in spite of this great advantage it exhibits the disadvantage that it omits integral moments of the determination. By basing his analysis of the determination in the sense of the functions of judgement upon that which is determinable, and however determined, in the unity of the determination, Cohen does not consider the aspects of determination of that which is to be determined and the undetermined. But like determinability and determinedness (Bestimmtheit), these are moments of the determination. Not to take them into consideration must have serious consequences. This is in fact the case. By ignoring these moments with regard to the argumentation of determination in the sense of the theory of principles, i.e. by placing the constitution of determina43 44

Logik, 19. Logik, 57.

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tion in the functionality of judgement, the demand for explanation is reduced to the problem of how determination of the determinable is created. Cohen solves this problem in the only way that it can be solved. Determination comes to the determinable only via ‘nothingness’, via contradiction to each and every determined. Its creation is accordingly an infinite relation. It is limitation. Cohen thus insists on the constitutiveness of the infinite judgement. But then he fails to observe completely that with the aid of the constitutiveness of the infinite judgement, he only encompasses the constitution of the unity of the determinable and of the determined, and with this the determination of the determinable. He fails to observe that he does not encompass the determination of that which is to be determined. This does not form a constitutive problem for Cohen. Consequently, for him there is not and there cannot be a logical problem of contingency of the determination. To be sure, the determination is sufficient up to the determination of the ‘isolated, i.e. particularized single something’, but this determination is without any inclusion of contingency. Because contingency is excluded, the determination of the object, and especially that of the ‘particularized’ object, comes into question only as a differential. Determination of the object is differentiation. This is Cohen’s statement with regard to the theories of principle and judgement. In its contamination it turns out to be a statement of the infinitesimal principle as the fundamental principle of knowledge. With this principle at hand, Cohen can regard his logic as an assertion of the purity concept in logic. There is no determination that can be a determination of something given. In other words, that which is given by objectification is the infinitesimal.45 The systematic weakness which the most important step of Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken is liable to be accused of, continues in the argumentative steps that follow. This is not surprising, as the course once adopted is consistently pursued. The consistent continuation of the argumentation leads to the argumentative situation that the specific foundation, which is present in the de45

Logik, 136.

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termination of the determinable and which allows the terms of being and beingness to be thought in the thinking of determination and the determinable, is indeed understood as a specific constitutive aspect, but as a constitutive aspect of indiscriminate apriority. Like the judgements of the laws of thinking, the judgements of categories are subject only to the conditions of the origin. This is evident in so far as, unaltered, they are creation. But is it also evident with regard to the creation being an objectification, i.e. a constitution of objects according to a priori principles? The constitution of the objects consists in the constitution of categories — Cohen makes this clear by accentuating the ‘objectivity of logic’ (Sachlichkeit der Logik)46 in the context of the categorical constitution, and by equating this objectivity with the methodological organisation of science (the sciences). Kant attached a label to the a priority of this constitution by the integration of specific conditions for the application (of categories) — only in this way do a priori rules of objectification follow synthetic principles a priori. Cohen must particularly avoid such a label with regard to his concept of a priority. In his endeavour to avoid them, he exposes his argumentation to the dilemma of distinguishing principles of thinking and principles of knowledge according to their foundational rank, but at the same time of ignoring or abolishing these differences again. This means that in Cohens doctrine of principles there exists no difference between the judgements of the laws of thinking and the judgements of the categories which can be secured to the foundational function itself. The ranking of the kinds of judgements is in a certain way subject to chance, and yet again in another way it is not. It mirrors the climax of the sciences which is present in Cohen’s thinking, i.e. fact. Thus at this point, too, contamination can be detected. Differences are made, and again the distinctions are immediately obliterated. The obliteration of the distinction serves to enforce the thought of unbroken pureness. Irrespective of the different aspects of constitution which have to be secured, thinking and knowledge are strictly pure. The thought that the origin in and out of itself is essential to all thinking, i.e. to thinking as objecti46

Logik, 588.

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vation no less than to the thinking as self-determination, demands this conception of pureness. Because he does not want to see this strictness affected in any way, the clear conception becomes unclear in itself. The unclearness in the appraisal of the apriority continues in the relation of the second and the third class of judgements to the fourth. Cohen also distinguishes and obliterates the constitutive a priority of the judgements of categories and the regulative a priority of the methods. First of all the distinction is given by the difference of the classes. For good reasons Cohen discriminates the judgements of methods from those of the categories. The judgements of the categories meet the demands of the structure of principles, by virtue of which the determination of the determinable is formed towards the determination of being and its ‘transformation patterns’ (Verwandlungsformen).47 The result is mathematical formulas and mathematically formulatable and formulated laws with regard to objects. They amount to the objective foundation of knowledge (science). Their certification is given in the context of constitution, in which ‘the creation of unity of knowledge and thereby the unity of the object [… is brought] to continuous execution’.48 They are knowledge of constitutive foundation. — Criticism is out of the question — says Cohen.49 He argues that criticism exists entirely where the entire pure thinking is submitted to instances and to a supervision which is no longer executed within itself, where finally the judgements are not only constructed in their categories within the systematic design, but where they are reviewed in respect to what they are useful for on the whole, and especially in detail.50

Criticism is thus aimed at the particular (the single something). At issue is ‘to master the particular (the single something) and to determine it’.51 This can only be accomplished, if concrete research is involved by taking notice of the ‘objective foundation, 47 48 49 50 51

Logik, 72. Logik, 92. Logik, 402. Logik, 403. Logik, 592.

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as a prerequisite of science’.52 But this, qua foundation, is something other than constitution of knowledge. This is regulation of knowledge. It is founded by all means on specific principles. They are principles that are united in complementarity with the constitutive principles. But they are other principles. For Cohen research is regulation of knowledge, and yet again it is not. The different tracks followed by Cohen’s argumentation in this point, which is a result of the missing clearness in the assessment of the apriority, is documented in all texts on the subject. On the one hand Cohen speaks of the ‘new instances’, to which ‘the entire pure thinking’, including pure knowledge, is submitted, he speaks of the ‘supervision’ which no longer ‘is executed’ within pure thinking, again including pure knowledge. On the other hand he speaks of the ‘category of the particular (the single something)’53 and of the ‘critical categories’ as distinguished from the naïve, i.e. constitutive categories, and about the determination by virtue of the critical categories, which amounts to ‘an opening up towards a new connection’,54 precisely because the critical category is ‘not a creating category’, but one which is complementary to this category — complementary because it ‘leads to’ pure thinking. And then Cohen, in complete contradiction to all this, speaks of the opening up as a ‘syllogistic deduction’ and that this new connection represents ‘the power of creation of judgement in its keennes and abundance’.55 The different tracks can only be regarded as a predicament. Cohen observes that the constitutive and the regulative a priority are indeed of two kinds, that the constitutive as well as the regulative foundation are immanent in determination, and this in a complementary union with each other. But on the other hand he can only accept foundation in a single sense, and so a priority in a single sense. The concept of creation, which is limited to determinability and determination, forces his arguments into this corner. At the same time it prevents him from admitting that his

52 53 54 55

Logik, 587. Logik, 592. Logik, 592. Logik, 594.

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arguments are cornered. Thus he finds a way out only in the contamination of constitutive and regulative a priority. With the help of these, he can cover up the weakness of his neither dogmatic-absolute nor sceptic-relative and, in this respect, very advantageous concept of final, i.e. unconditioned all-conditioning determination (Letztbegründung). Consequently, we can ascertain the multiple contaminations in the course of the argumentation of Cohen’s logic. The lesson to be learned from this, as well as from the favourable appreciation of Cohen’s concept of logic, is that the suitable doctrine of the principles of validity can confidently be said to be conceived as that enterprise which brings the characteristics of thinking ‘to a more precise determination from the point of view of the judgement’, to repeat Cohen’s words. Indeed, this enterprise is to validate the point of view of judgement in its entire complexity, i.e. in all moments that are relevant for the definition of the doctrine of principles of judgement. Cohen’s concept of logic fails to achieve this. This narrows down the problematic of the Ursprungsdenken. The solution offered cannot be more extensive than the problem, resp. the posing of the problem to which it refers. We thus learn the lesson, that determination brings into question not only determinability and determinedness, but also the reference to the aspect of that which is to be determined and indeterminateness. All these moments of judgement are relevant to the principles of validity of knowledge. If its relevance is acknowledged and if that which follows is accommodated, then this results in a concept of logic, which is impressed by Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken. But this concept of logic is not satisfied by Cohen’s version and above all goes against its peculiar abbreviation of the concept of final, i.e. unconditioned all-conditioning determination.56 It again comes much closer to Kant’s concept of logic. This remark already implies a first statement on the classification of Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken into the history of philosophy. In conclusion this classification is shortly outlined. 56 Such a logic concept is at the center of the thoughts put forward in the authors Grundzüge der Erkenntnislehre. Erkenntniskritik, Logik, Methodologie (Würzburg, 1994).

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First, we address, as a transcendental foundational reflection, the relation of Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken to Kant’s concept of logic, which revolutionized logic. It is the most important relation that has to be ascertained. Cohen associates the understanding of philosophy which dominates his entire thinking with Kant’s doctrine of principles of the critique of reason. For Cohen validity qualification is at stake, in general and in everything that philosophy is entitled to reclaim as its topic. In particular Ursprungsdenken is thematically established in this manner. But this in no way forces Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken to follow entirely the course of Kant’s argumentation. There is enough that steers Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken in individual directions. To say it briefly and to the point, Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken distances itself exactly from that which would bring it quite close to Kant’s course of thinking. It is the distance in regard to pureness of knowledge. The central factual situation of pureness of knowledge in Kant’s epistemology is picked up by Cohen in its consequence for to the principles of validation of knowledge, and as Cohen believes, purified from the shortcomings which it has in in the Kantian version. This purification indeed turns out to be a new conception. Cohen in this respect handles Kant’s arguments very selectively. He highlights all the arguments that speak in favour of the foundation of validity with regard to the principles of validation of knowledge, which are orientated towards the ‘single sense’ of Cohen’s argumentation. All the arguments which oppose this ‘single sense’ are suppressed by Cohen or are displayed as deficiencies of the Kantian conception of foundation. The reason for this lies in the other affinity which is inherent in Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken. It is the affinity with Plato’s idea of pureness. Plato’s idea of pureness offers Cohen the arguments which move away from Kant’s argumentation, and which support Cohen’s ‘single sense’ conception of foundation. These are obviously arguments which are attributed to Cohen’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of ideas, as far as these include a theory of judgement. But this hermeneutic consideration changes nothing in that Plato’s reflections are responsible for Cohen’s virulent tendency towards a ‘single sense’ in his Ursprungsdenken. Meanwhile the factual situation is well researched. We can say with certainty that Cohen’s emphatic resistance against taking contin-

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gency serious as a logical problem is motivated by his reception of Plato. From Plato he took the argumentative tendency to vindicate pureness in the sense of diminution of contingency in general and in everything with regard to his validity qualification. It is no surprise that with this tendency of argumentation Cohen occupies a position that sets the line of direction within the philosophy of the 19th century which, looking back on Kant’s philosophy, emphasizes constructing the doctrine of knowledge as logic and as epistemology. The direction is set upon transcendental idealism. Cohen here understands transcendental idealism strictly objectivistically, i.e. whatever might be judged not pure with regard to knowledge is admitted by Cohen as only alienated from true logical relations. In order to acquire its truth it must be transformed into these logical relations. We know from history to which line of development Cohen’s directional positioning led the theory of knowledge. It led the theory of knowledge to the line of extreme scientism. It already takes up much room within the ‘Marburger Schule’. P. Natorp is the decisive figure within this development. He extended Cohen’s theory of pureness to his well known pan-methodism. In it ‘single sense’ with regard to the principles of validation of knowledge is perfectly accomplished. I have already pointed out in another publication57 that it is only one step from pan-methodism to the concept of epistemology as logical (re)construction. Only reflection with regard to the principles of validation of knowledge must be suppressed. Questions of method that are not questions of principle are questions of the logical reconstruction of knowledge. If, besides, the term of knowledge is overturned linguistically, only the reconstruction of scientific language is at issue. Analytic Philosophy has occupied this position. Thus Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken is to be classified in the history of philosophy as a stage on the way from Kantian transcendental philosophy to the Analytical Philosophy of the present time. Its 57 ‘Die Bedeutung des Neukantianismus für die Wissenschaftstheorie’, in: E.W. Orth und H. Holzhey (Hrsg.), Neukantianismus. Perspektiven und Probleme (Würzburg, 1994), 174-184.

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role in this connection is very divided. On the one hand it cannot be denied that it represents a certain renaissance and further development of Kant’s critical philosophy. Cohen himself and neo-Kantianism in general placed a high value on this estimation. On the other hand, and this has been overlooked for a long period, Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken prepares to a certain degree for its own supersession. It prepares for this supersession by the lines of direction mentioned. Through its scientism the strictly objectivistic idealism prepares the way for the transformation of epistemology into the epigonal operational modelling of the scientific knowledge. It only requires the destruction of the self-discrimination of philosophy with regard to validity, so that the new paradigm can triumph over the old one. For this, considerable other influences can be made responsible which cannot be ascribed to epistemology. With regard to these influences and their consequences, Cohen’s Ursprungsdenken can be classified under the phase of neo-Kantian philosophy, during which the genuine epistemological development of questions worked out by Kant was cherished. The decline of this brain-work begins after this.

IDENTITY AND CORRELATION IN HERMANN COHEN’S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY REINER WIEHL, HEIDELBERG

1 The conceptual word ‘correlation’ is one of the most important philosophical expressions in the vocabulary of Hermann Cohen’s system of thought. However, any attempt to determine and describe more precisely its meaning runs up against difficulties, owing to its complex manifestation in a variety of contexts. On the one hand, no single, even provisional characterization of the expression’s meaning can be found. On the other hand, the term is used so often and with a self-evidently presupposed specificity that a correspondingly specific function of thought and knowledge can hardly be doubted. Often the expression is underlined in the text and thus explicitly designated as a technical term. Almost always it is the vehicle of a particularly important idea, which gives the impression of constituting a fundamental statement, as it were an implicit principle expressing the distinctive character of Cohen’s philosophy. Thus, for instance, in the asserted ‘correlation’ of judgement and category, of division and unification, of preservation and transformation of thought in the movement of thinking; thus, for instance, in the ‘correlation’ between the judgement of possibility and the category of consciousness or in the ‘correlation’ of the human I and the human Thou under the condition of thought and knowledge governed by the judgements of plurality and allness. In all these uses of the conceptual term this much is above all clear: the correlation is not just a simple, arbitrary interrelationship between two entities. Rather the fundamental character in its terminological use shows it forth precisely as a conceptual representative of Cohen’s philosophical idealism, this specific idealism, which, in terms of method, deliberately goes beyond Kant’s transcendental idealism and back beyond Plato’s objective idealism, to present itself

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as a new and modern form of scientific idealism. This idealism defines itself as pure idealism. Purity here has the sense of a basic word and a fundamental methodological concept. It was Franz Rosenzweig who played a pre-eminent role in the discovery of the concept in question from the perspective of philosophy of religion. He immediately connected this discovery of correlation with an independent interpretation of Cohen’s late philosophy. In this interpretation the concept of correlation gained its striking significance in the context of Cohen’s late philosophy of religion. In his Introduction to the Hermann Cohen’s Jüdische Schriften Rosenzweig firmly anchored the concept in Cohen’s philosophy of religion. In this interpretation by Rosenzweig the appropriation of admired ideas and the projection of his own conceptions are mixed to form a natural correspondence between the neo-Kantian concept of correlation and his own new root word ‘And’, expressing his own thinking about language and experience. Rosenzweig’s Introduction developed this new meaning of the concept of correlation by distinguishing between basic concept and methodological concept. Correlation gained its new, specifically religious-philosophical meaning as a basic concept. In this way the methodological and system-productive function was referred back to the context of the system as a whole. There Cohen had distinguished three or four systematic parts linking up with Kant’s three critiques: the logic of pure knowledge, the ethics of pure will, and the aesthetics of pure feeling, which he believed could be completed by a further systematic part, a psychology of pure cultural consciousness, thus forming an entire system. The crucial point here is that this systematic arrangement did not envisage an independent systematic part for philosophy of religion. Rather, indeed, a corresponding systematic autonomy was explicitly ruled out, because this would endanger the autonomy of logic, ethics, and aesthetics and so the methodological principle of a philosophical science of foundation. However, the refusal to assign an independent systematic character and thus the autonomy of philosophical knowledge to philosophy of religion inevitably gave rise to a problem. The problem was due to the fact that the relationship between God and man played an important role in logic

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and ethics, but also in aesthetics: so to speak as the fundamental law of truth, as the guarantee of morality, as the theme of artistic creation. The introduction of the basic concept of correlation into Cohen’s late work on philosophy of religion can be determined more exactly from this point of view. The problem mentioned above is dealt with in Cohen’s Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie. For it becomes clear that, precisely because philosophy of religion is denied the status of an autonomous systematic component of the system as a whole, justice is not necessarily done to the conceptual use of the relationship between God and man in the system of the distinctive nature of religion. This function, then, is to be performed by the new basic concept of correlation: if the relationship between God and man is now conceived of as a correlation, justice will be done to the distinctive nature of religion without prejudicing the autonomy of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Franz Rosenzweig had a special feeling for the formal peculiarity of Cohen’s systematics. He explicitly set it against Kant’s ‘transcendental theory of method’ by denying it an architectural character. For him Cohen’s system of philosophy, no matter how it sought to obtain scientific validity through its systematic form, was anything but a closed building. Its internal boundaries did not form rigid, impervious walls. They did not partition one systematic space from another in such a way that a movement of thought between these two spaces and a corresponding shift in meaning was rendered impossible. On the contrary, the system aimed at promoting its internal mobility. For all the concern with conceptual determination, there were, in the system as a whole, many connections between the single parts, which like the threads of a net were designed to sustain internal mobility, while at the same time the net was constantly being made anew. Rosenzweig was not afraid to characterize Cohen’s thought as experimental; as a way of thinking which is not content to hold on to and lay down its thoughts, but which rather forms and transforms its thoughts in an experimental intercourse with these thoughts. In fact, this kind of thinking proved to be a true thinking based on experience, regardless of its claim to ideal, super-empirical validity. This distinctive nature of systematic thought corresponded in

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the late work on philosophy of religion with the representation of the distinctive nature of religion on the basis of the basic concept of the correlation between God and man. Rosenzweig found the development of this form of representation in Cohen’s admired posthumous work Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums. The fundamental law of truth, on which human knowledge and action are based, was now matched by the meaning-structure of creation and revelation. On the basis of the correlation of God and man, moral law has become the correlativity of the Holy Spirit. Here moral action has become the correlative sanctification of God’s name by the individual human being and the self-sanctification of his soul before God. The legal correlation between the human I and Thou, which results from the contract, also changes under the condition of the founding correlation between God and man. Legal obligations of a legal act are changed by the distinctive nature of religion and its foundations. Here lies the source of man’s active compassion with the other. In the other human being the fellow human being is discovered. Only in this discovery does man truly become I. In his interpretation of Cohen’s late philosophy of religion Rosenzweig did not merely establish a connection between this philosophy and a new fundamental conception of the correlative function. Going further, he discovered a characteristic retroactive effect of this philosophy of religion on Cohen’s system as a whole and drew far-reaching consequences from this discovery. The first consequence was that religion, despite its distinctive nature, was denied the status of an independent systematic part, that it did not have a fixed, well-determined place anywhere in the system. This placelessness, however, necessarily implied its ubiquity in the system. As a result, the pre-religious concepts took on a religious hue, expressing the distinctive nature of religion. In this way one sensed the spirit of piety of the individual Hermann Cohen, a piety which sprang from the sources of Judaism. For Franz Rosenzweig, a philosophical system of thought was the concrete place of a living human being. In his ‘violent’ interpretation of correlation as a basic concept, he not only established a correspondence between Cohen’s idea of system and

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his own; he not only wished to voice the spirit versus the letter of thought. For him, correlation was more than just the vehicle for giving an account of the distinctive nature of religion in the system as a whole. Beyond all this Rosenzweig found a fundamental turn in Cohen’s thinking connected with this basic concept, a turn away from scientific idealism into a new direction. To demonstrate this, he referred to a supposed contradiction between Cohen’s concepts of production and correlation in terms of their structure. The concept of production forms in fact the basic methodological determination of Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. In its turn, it bears the characteristic of original pure thought, from which pure insights arise, which must be verified against the fact of science. Purity here is the basic methodological determination of a philosophical thinking which produces its pure insights from itself without presupposed data. Production — this principle of pure thought — belongs inseparably and uniquely together with its product. As in Hegel’s speculative logic of knowledge, in Cohen here the result of the movement of thought is nothing without the movement. The thought is embedded in thinking, not the other way round. Thus thought in its movement is original and primary, while the thought, its product, is secondary in comparison. This unique belonging together of production and its products has its structural correspondence in the particular character of Cohen’s systematics described above. How very different, according to Rosenzweig, the structural character of correlation as it particularly comes to the fore in its fundamental use as a concept in philosophy of religion, as a correlation of God and man. What it primarily has in common with the belonging together of production and product is the uniqueness of this belonging together. God and man belong uniquely and inseparably together. The unicity of God, as Jewish monotheism understands it, corresponds to the unicity of each individual human being in the correlation. However, quite differently from the connection of production and product, neither of the two correlates here is subsumed in the correlation. God and man are originally different precisely in their unique belonging together. Thus there is also an essential difference between God’s being

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for man and man’s being before God. Being for... and being before... in this correlation cannot by any means be reduced to each other. The correlation is therefore far from being a simple reciprocal relationship, neither between arbitrary nor between unique relates. Rather it is a relationship between constantly two different relationships, of which each refers back to the original correlation: precisely to the correlation of God and man. It is not a physical real connection, not a causal event of a substantial nature, not a third term, which, with a more or less independent own being, comes in addition to the two primary correlates. Nor in this regard is the correlation a meta-relationship beyond a structure of relationships. Above all, however, it is not a dialectical principle of mediation, owing to which a deficit, a lack in either correlate is removed, a common basis between the two is established, and comparable properties are produced. The correlation of God and man is the establishment of the original and non-interchangeable belonging together of these and only these correlates in their alterity; and it is the preservation of this alterity in its original non-interchangeability in this unique belonging together. What belongs together here are the one, the Unique-God and the respectively unique man; and the correlation is this belonging together. Cohen defined it as the Holy Spirit. The said characteristics of the correlation apply to him. He is the correlation of two acts of law which belong inseparably together: on the one hand that of the sanctification of God’s name, on the other the self-sanctification of man in the request for forgiveness. There is no doubt that the correlation of God and man has a crucial significance in Cohen’s later philosophy of religion. Religious-philosophical theorems, which in their pre-religious formulation are scattered across the entire work of the system, take on their specific religious colouring with particular reference to the sources of Judaism through the corresponding fundamental conceptual function. Thus the three positions which Cohen had refuted earlier and not only in his posthumous work are shown to be untenable in the light of this fundamental concept: anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, in which God becomes an idol, a representation of man; pantheism, in which man loses his

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individual uniqueness by being subsumed in the supra-personal omni-unity of nature; and finally Christian theology and speculative philosophy, which posits a third independent being beyond God and man, the Son as the mediator and fundamental principle of mediation. To this extend the basic concept of the correlation of God and man corresponds to the basic idea of Jewish monotheism, for which God is not ‘a’ God or even an eminent God, but the one and only. But the correlation of God and man only gains its function as a basic concept for the distinctive nature of religion in a further mental step: the correlation of God and man brings forth another, second correlation, the correlation of man and fellow man, of the individual human I and Thou. This second correlation is not the correlation of man and the other man, of the I and Thou which also occur in the spheres of law and art, but which are certainly not subject to the fundamental conceptual correlation of God and man. Here, where the distinctive nature of a religion of reason is involved, we are dealing with two correlations that belong inseparably together, so to speak with a correlation of two correlations, if these belong inseparably and uniquely together: God and man and man and fellow man. The Holy Spirit — the designation not only of the first correlation, but of the correlative structure described — proves to be the place of change in Cohen’s representation in his Religion der Vernunft. The correlation of man and the other man, as obtaining in the sphere of law, changes into the correlation of man and the fellow man. In this change the being of man changes and in this change his mode of knowledge, action and feeling also changes. While in the sphere of law man as I is placed from the outset under the condition of an allness, for which a jointly concluded contract is binding, in a religion of reason the human I stands in non-interchangeable and unique individuality before God; and while in the sphere of law the contract regulates the reciprocal rights and duties between I and Thou, the human I is capable of becoming receptive to the suffering of the fellow man in the sanctification of God’s name, and, in the consciousness of the misery and exclusion of the Thou, of arousing an active compassion in himself. The correlation of the correlations of God and man and of I and Thou is a means by which man first achieves consciousness of himself as

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this non-interchangeable I. By this means humanity and messianism and ethics and religion find their unique belonging together. This belonging together, the correlation of ethics and religion, forms the basic idea of Hermann Cohen’s Religion der Vernunft.

2 Franz Rosenzweig believed that Cohen’s use of correlation as a fundamental concept in philosophy of religion involved a turn in the overall position of the teacher he admired, resulting from the changed function of this concept. But an even more important sign of such a turn, which had to lead away from critical, scientific idealism, was the idea that Cohen’s late work on philosophy of religion had to break with a basic characteristic of his method when he set out to do justice to the distinctive nature of religion in accordance with the fundamental concept of correlation. We are dealing here with an essential methodological element in Cohen’s critical idealism, which, in the context of his own socalled ‘New Thinking’, he termed the ‘verification theory of truth’. But for all that Rosenzweig’s interpretation of Cohen’s late work has become very influential, it raises more questions than it answers — not only questions about his own philosophical presuppositions and their interpretation. Above all it remains unclear how we are to read the distinction between a methodological and a fundamental conceptual function of correlation. Another problem is the alternative explanation which comes to the fore in his own verification theory of truth, according to which it is a matter for the individual non-interchangeable sole human being to establish the truth of a religion from the sources of Judaism. In Hermann Cohen everything comes down to the philosophical method. The method contains the key to the system of philosophy. The method and system of philosophy belong together. In this respect the philosophical method is in the first place a systematic method. In its turn, the system bases its internal order on this method. The method — according to Cohen — is in the first place a method of founding, in which the foundations of philosophical knowledge are laid down. Philo-

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sophy is far from being a science without presuppositions. Hence it is necessary to distinguish between a science of foundations and a founding science. The determination of the philosophical method as systematic and as founding implies the rejection of the idea of knowledge without presuppositions and science without presuppositions. The first and most important methodological concept for Cohen is the hypothesis: the hypothesis of the idea in the sense of Plato’s Phaedo is the basic operation of philosophical founding. On closer consideration Cohen’s concept of method proves peculiarly multiform and in this multiformity hard to grasp. Indeed, his many statements on philosophical method appear partly contradictory. In this regard the form of the method corresponds to the form of the system as sketched above. What is involved is not so much a pluralism of methods as the peculiar internal mobility of thought in the production of its ideas. This multiformity reveals itself in the connections between the concepts of production and correlation in the characterization of the hypothesis as the hypothesis of the fact of science on the one hand and of the fact of the idea on the other. Above all it reveals itself in the mixture of appropriation and metacriticism of Kant’s critical idealism. Kant’s transcendental method is adopted in the sense of a philosophical founding of science, which is critical idealism in the form that the claim to validity of its certainty is tested. From Kant’s three Critiques Cohen derives the tripartition of the system of philosophy, with a far-reaching modification in regard to the critique of the power of judgement and with a systematic supplementation by religion or by philosophy of religion. The ambiguity of the connection between criticism and metaphysics, too, is inherited in Cohen’s method, though it is being felt at completely different points — an important example is the ‘verification theory of truth’ mentioned above. Here we are not concerned with the question of how far Cohen’s appropriation of Kant’s transcendental method can be seen to anticipate his metacriticism. We are concerned with this metacriticism itself and with its development of a new independent method of systematic philosophizing. For this metacriticism and its methodological principle Cohen demanded a return to and a

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revitalization of Plato. The perspective of such a return directly reveals the dogmatic premises which had slipped into Kant’s rational criticism, so to speak residues of a philosophical tradition which Kant himself had not been able to detect. In this respect Cohen’s metacriticism itself can be seen as a combination of historical and systematical criticism. In a systematic respect it involves the rejection of any untested datum of philosophical knowledge. This was matched by the first and constantly emphasized methodological characteristic of purity, for the determination of which he referred to Plato, not to Kant. The method of purity meant: in a logic of pure knowledge there can be no presupposition, no datum which had not been or should not be critically tested for its validity. Thus, in Cohen’s view, his method of purity corresponded essentially to the Socratic-Platonic method of justification. It is true that Kant’s rational criticism is full of untested presuppositions, which are partly taken over from the philosophical tradition, partly introduced as theoretical solutions, without their soundness being adequately tested. From Cohen’s point of view, the most important of these untried presuppositions are the most questionable. They include the presupposition of a given multiplicity of sensory perceptions and the presupposition of a given multiplicity of judgements, as well as the connected dogmatic division of sensation and mind, of perception and thought. These presuppositions were so unacceptable to him that at the very beginning of his Logik der reinen Erkenntnis — so to speak as a warning signal — he proposed to replace the categorical term ‘multitude’ by plurality. But equally dubious for him was the presupposed datum of the distinction of judgement and category and of category and principle. However, among all these presupposed data it was, finally, the distinction between intellect and reason, between concept and idea which for him, as for Kant, was methodologically speaking the most important. For this was the whole basis for rational criticism in its critical activity. The method of purity, of pure thinking, is the method of the hypothesis of the idea, as Cohen never became tired of repeating. It is the method of systematic founding. As such it is not comparable with the method of purification, as conceptually de-

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termined by Plato in the Sophistes. At most the method of pure thought has such a technique of purification alongside or behind itself. But it is not subject to and dependent on unpurified, untested presuppositions or a prior testing of these presuppositions. Rather Cohen’s metacriticism of Kant’s rational criticism allows the method of pure thought to unfold freely and independently. This metacriticism criticizes not only untested presupposed data but also the theoretical problems and attempted solutions of problems which result from these presuppositions. It includes the metaphysical and the transcendental deduction of intuitions a priori, the transcendental deduction of pure mental concepts, the proofs of the supreme a priori principles. But it also includes criticism of the main consequence of Kant’s critique of reason: the distinction of the thing in itself and its manifestation and the connection between rational criticism and the metaphysics of nature. However, in the concern to keep the method of pure thought independent of all presuppositions and to found it as the logic of origin, Cohen finds himself confronted with a corresponding problem, which seems even more insoluble than Kant’s concern to overcome the presupposed dualism of his fundamental concepts by the particular technique of induction. It is the problem of verifying pure thoughts, the products of pure thinking, as pure insights and so of using the latter as the foundation of a science. To solve this decisive problem of his pure idealism beyond a metacriticism of Kant’s rational critique, Cohen appeals not only to the principle of the hypothesis of the idea but also to the key concepts of correlation and the fact of science. These methodological concepts serve essentially to define more exactly the systematic method. Cohen based his Logik der reinen Erkenntnis on the identity of thinking and being and thus recalled Parmenides’ Eleatic position, without making any pretense to address adequately its reality in the history of philosophy. But this initial identity should emphatically not be seen as a principle of a philosophy of identity. The analogous identity of being and ‘ought’ already proves extremely questionable from the perspective of the basic distinction between logic and ethics. Characteristically, Cohen, in almost the same breath, talks about this

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identity as a correlation. This is as much as to say that the identity of the method of purity should be understood in terms of a correspondence. On the one hand there is the problem of the genesis from nothing. Pure thought is not a creatio ex nihilo of pure thoughts. But what pure thought presupposes is neither being nor an absolute nothing but a particular not: the Not of a Not-Knowing, which is given by a question and desires an answer. What is thus given in advance by pure thought is therefore neither a positive given nor a genesis from pure nothing. Rather pure thinking is occasioned by a privation, which is that of the determinate Not-Knowing — connected with the search for an answer. To this extent the privation is in its turn negated in advance, in that pure thought refuses to stop at a Not-Knowing. The logic of pure knowledge does not start with just any question, with just any Not-Knowing, but with the question instanced in the Socratic-Platonic dialogue: with the question about the concept, or as Cohen also says, with the question of the concept. And the answer to this question is not just any answer, but requires a methodological guide to be a true answer. This is given in the form of the hypothesis of the idea, as proposed by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo. When Cohen designates the identity of thinking and being as a correlation, he is unmistakably rejecting every philosophy of identity, whether Spinozistic pantheism or Schelling’s speculative idealism. As in the context of philosophy of religion described above, the correlation of thinking and being signifies an inseparable and non-interchangeable belonging together of correlates in the sense previously mentioned. Here it is the belonging together of the question of the concept and the question of the true answer under the condition of the hypothesis of the idea and under its guidance. The correlation is therefore methodologically determined, precisely by the condition to which the belonging together is subject. At the same time we can already discover here a feature of correlation owing to which it cannot be regarded in the proper sense as a — reciprocal — relationship between two relates. For the correlation of thinking and being in the form of the question of the concept with a view to the true answer is not the relationship between a question and a final answer that has been found. Such

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a relationship, if the truth of the answer had been proved, would render superfluous both the question and the conditions of its being answered. What distinguishes the correlation of thinking and being from a fundamental statement based on a philosophy of identity is its critical element, the denial of the dogmatic nature of such a fundamental statement. In the correlation of the question of concept the true answer is what is sought. In this respect the correlation is the form of the task of finding the true answer to the question about the concept. It is the form of the method. The concept of the task, which has its origin in the Kantian doctrine of antinomies and its thesis of the regulative use of reason, becomes the fundamental concept of Cohen’s logic of knowledge — indeed, the fundamental concept of his systematic philosophy in general, which is not only found in his logic but also in his ethics, his aesthetics, and in his philosophy of religion. Correlation is the form of the tasks which are dealt with in systematic philosophy. It is the form of foundations. On closer consideration this form displays a distinctive basic structure. The negation of privation, which forms the particular question about the concept and the search for a true answer by means of the hypothesis of the idea, lays a first foundation, in the form of the relationship between concept and idea, which leads the search for the truth. But a second basic moment joins the first in the form of a determination of purpose and goal, corresponding to the form of the task of knowledge, i.e. the search for truth. In this respect the logic of founding represents a teleological structure, consisting of the conceptual form and the form of the goal-determination. Thus Cohen referred to Plato not only for the hypothesis of the idea, but also directly and indirectly for the definition of correlation and of its immanent teleology. Here he found the pioneering thinker of a logic of pure knowledge which laid down pure insights as the foundation not only of mathematical physics but also of biology. It is from this point of view that we should understand his harsh criticism of Aristotle, whose criticism of Plato he confronts with his own metacriticism: that Aristotle’s science of principles in starting from biology failed to establish the foundation of a mathematical natural science by leaping over it. And Kant’s criticism of the teleological power of judgement is also subjected to a corresponding meta-

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criticism. Here, though rarely elsewhere in Kant, the claim to validity of transcendental logic is unsuccessful. And this failure is confirmed by the arbitrary introduction of a reflective power of judgement. However, the identity of thinking and being now reveals a further conceptual moment of correlation, if we follow the reading of this identity as correlation. In retrospect new light is now also shed on Rosenzweig’s interpretation of Religion der Vernunft. The great text of religion, too, takes its starting-point in an identity, namely in the identity of being and God. If we follow the designated reading, we already find a correlation here, namely the correlation of question and answer with regard to God. The preeminent function of correlation supposed by Rosenzweig as the basic concept of philosophy of religion thus urges the question whether correlation does not always have the character of a basic concept, in which the basic conceptual and the methodological function join together. At the very least it seems that for the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, too, the correlation of thinking and being as a basic question and the correlation of concept and idea as a first foundation have the status of basic concepts. But the basic conceptual function of correlation can also be taken in a logically more precise sense. As a result, a basic conceptual correlation would have to be understood in the sense that it is impossible to go behind it, that is, a correlation would therefore always be original in the sense that it cannot be derived, or deduced, from other data. This characterization applies to the correlation of God and man, so far as it is understood as a basic concept and thus as independent of any other data. But it also applies to the related correlation of man and man, provided it cannot be derived either from the first-mentioned or from any other datum. However, we can also say that, through its correlation with the former, its correlates undergo a change in comparison with its meaning in other correlations or without this basic conceptual correlation. This change is thus due to a change in the connection of the correlations. But to understand this character of change and transformation in its status in terms of logic of knowledge, we need to define it more precisely in the context of the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. On the other hand, a mere

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glance at this foundational work reveals a totally analogous problem. For we are dealing here not just with the correlation of question and answer, which corresponds to the original identity of being and thinking: the question of the concept and the search for the answer by means of the hypothesis of the idea. Rather the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, going beyond this, shows how this primary correlation is followed by successive others. This leads first of all to a conclusion: the correlation is the most original of all the ‘concepts’ of the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. It is more original than the concept and the idea, more original than the pure concept and pure knowledge: not only because the question is more original than the answer, but because the judgement is more original than the concept, and the correlation of separation and connection more original than the judgement; the correlation of judgement and category more original than any particular kind of judgement and any particular categorical modality.

3 Cohen himself made an illuminating remark on the meaning of his concept of correlation in relation to the history of philosophy. In this concept he saw the true successor of the fundamental metaphysical notion of substance, in which modes and attributes inhere. In this respect correlation is the basic concept of critical idealism in its distinct opposition to pantheism. But it can also be clearly distinguished from the other successor of substance, to which the entire new metaphysics of speculative idealism, linking up with Kant, was oriented, the concept of the subject. The concept of correlation is more original than that of substance and the inherence of its attributes and modes. More original than this relational structure is the correlation of the motions of preservation and alteration. More original than consciousness is the correlation of the judgement of possibility and the category of consciousness. But the concept of correlation is also more original than the concept of function, which Ernst Cassirer named as the successor of the concept of substance. A function has its significance only in correlation with a variable.

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But insight into the original meaning of correlation in terms of logic of knowledge raises with increasing urgency the question of how the various correlations belong together. This is complementarily related to the previous question of what makes pure thinking and its pure thoughts pure insights and thus allows them to be distinguished from fictions. Not only the hypothesis of the idea is a basic Platonic element in Cohen’s philosophy, but also the ‘community’ of correlations, which corresponds to the Platonic community of ideas, or the highest forms. The correlations correspond to the most important of the highest forms in Plato’s Sophistes, that of otherness (to heteron). The question of the belonging together of various correlations in the context of the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis will be clarified by two examples which are particularly important for the logic of knowledge and for the system of philosophy. First, the example of the correlation of judgement and category; and, second, the example of the correlation of the judgement of possibility and the category of consciousness. The assumption of a correlation of judgement and category implies first of all that the correlation is more original than each of the two correlates. Its originality is that of the correlation of the question of the concept and the hypothesis of the idea and, consequently, the correlation of plurality and unity. Pure thought is not an original synthesis as it is in Kant, not an original connection of a pre-existing multiplicity. As such a plurality, too, is a certain unity: a plurality in unity, and as such to be distinguished from a particular unity, a mode of the unification of a plurality. In this respect every judgement is always based on the correlation of separation and connection. No matter what kind of judgement is involved, the mode of judgement results in the first place from the manner of separation and connection and the correlation between the two. Cohen’s theory of judgement links up with Kant’s transcendental logic insofar as both see the judgement, or the principle, as the most important, the most original object. But Cohen insists more firmly than Kant on interpreting the judgement as a logical thought and thus on safeguarding it from any confusion with grammatical objects which seem to agree with the form of judgement. Indeed, the correlation of judgement and category has

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the very function of determining the judgement as judgement. In this regard it is the category through which the judgement obtains its truth relation. Indeed, only the correlation of judgement and category makes the judgement a particular mode of judging, i.e. for instance a judgement of plurality or a judgement of allness. The correlation of judgement and category corresponds to the basic form of correlation in the logic of pure knowledge. It sets the task of determining the mode of judgement with a view to the category. In this respect the correlation of judgement and category has the teleological structure described above: The category is the goal of the judgement and the judgement is the way of the category. This teleological structure of correlation, explicitly laid down by Cohen, not only describes its logical form as a task of thought and knowledge. It also offers a further formal feature of correlation: the correlation does not represent a single unambiguous and definite relation between the two correlates in question. This is not just to say that the correlation is not an independent tertium quid, not a mediation which definitely establishes the connection between the two correlates. If only the task of thought and knowledge and so the way and the goal are indicated, this leaves open how many steps need to be taken on the way and whether perhaps a less direct way should be followed, perhaps a roundabout way, perhaps the testing of various ways on a trial basis. This feature of correlation comes particularly to the fore in the correlation of judgement and category. What Kant in his transcendental logic saw as the shortcoming of the traditional theory of categories, namely that it randomly apprehended the categories with respect to number and species where their determinate deduction from a principle and a resulting determination of number and species were required, Cohen in his metacriticism sees precisely as the shortcoming of Kant’s critique of reason. Correlation is the principle of this metacriticism and at the same time the refutation of the opposite conception. The modes of judgement and the categorical modes spring from the correlation of judgement and category, but not in the sense of a deduction of one plurality from the other, nor in the form of a definite determination of these two pluralities. Rather in the correlation of judgement and category a plurality of modes of judgement can spring from a par-

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ticular category, just as conversely a plurality of categories can spring from a particular mode of judgement. In this way the correlation of judgement and category opens up a logical space for a process of thought and knowledge in which the judgement and the category can be modalized in some or other way. The correlation of judgement and category thus proves to be a movement of thought which is open to various steps and ways of thought. At the same time we find a first answer here to the question how various correlations belong together in a correlative structure. As we said, this belonging together does not have a status in which one correlation can be deduced from another. Just as the correlation between man and the other man cannot be deduced from the correlation of God and man, so the same is impossible in the belonging together of both correlations, that of thinking and being and that of judgement and category. However, the belonging together of various correlations does have a particular consequence and a particular basis: in the case of the correlation of judgement and category I would like to use the term ‘modalization’. One could also speak of ‘deformalization’ in a sense corresponding to meaning in Husserl’s phenomenology. In his Religion der Vernunft Hermann Cohen talks about a change from the other man to the fellow man in the correlation of God and man. The question is whether this change should be as a further additional modalization of a mode of change, and how these various modes are ordered in relation to each other; or whether in the transition from one kind of change to the other something like an ontological difference opens up, a break in the structure of the self-producing modalizations which can no longer be brought into line with Cohen’s critical idealism and which could lend plausibility to Franz Rosenzweig’s interpretation described above. Does the cancellation of the concept of substance in the concept of correlation represent an advance in the logic of pure knowledge? Only this much is clear for now: the change from other to fellow man is not just a change of man’s being as such. This change, in its turn, is different when it takes place in the correlation of a legal transaction compared with the correlation of God and man. And an entirely different kind of change again is involved in the

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transformation of mathematic equations in the context of mathematics. So for now all we can say is this: just as a particular correlation gives rise to a special way of being other, a specific mode, so a correlation of correlations gives rise to a being other of a being other, or a becoming other of a becoming other, when we take into account the character of movement proper to pure thinking. It would therefore seem that this being other and becoming other of being other forms the thread of the conceptual net spun by pure thinking which makes up the philosophical system. In the production of this conceptual net, thinking is both: it produces the net and it uses the net. The correlation of the judgement of possibility and the category of consciousness — analogous to the correlation between judgement and category as such — represents a teleological structure in which the origin, way, and goal (in the form of the task) of pure knowledge can be distinguished. The now thematic correlation represents a modalization of the previous one. Just as there the judgement is the way and the category the goal, so here the judgement of possibility is the way and the category of consciousness the goal. But a clarification of this teleological structure requires a more precise determination of the category of consciousness. Cohen most emphatically distinguished consciousness as a category from mere awareness, as an empirical fact, which is at issue in for instance the comparison between higher animals and human beings. As a category consciousness is a basic concept of pure knowledge. As such it stands alongside the other basic categorical concepts like number, time and space, law and method. All these basic concepts are interrogative concepts — concepts which by means of the hypothesis of the idea search for an answer to their ‘being-what’ and find an answer in the form of a judgement, which — in view of the task — is not necessarily final. Categories therefore form a dynamic process of ordering, a movement of thought in which thoughts are constructed and modified, moving between a first and a second concept. As we said, the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis is a founding of pure thought. As such it is the movement of pure thought, which produces its thoughts from itself, to verify them as pure knowledge. The one and the other go together in this process of

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thought: the production of pure thought — not from pre-existing data, but from itself — and the verification of this thought as pure knowledge. The first of the two correlations mentioned here — that of judgement and category — is already both in one: the production of pure thought in accordance with the method of purity and the verification of this thought as pure knowledge. But the same applies to the particular modalization of this correlation: the correlation between the judgement of possibility and the category of consciousness. Cohen’s verification theory of truth is liable to a wide range of misunderstandings. The explicit appeal to the fact of science leads to a confusion between datum and fact, which fails to recognize that production and verification belong together. But a possible confusion also results from an inadequate determination of the verificatory character of thought in thinking. Here a distinction needs to be made between the verification of something by something or from something on the one hand, and the verification of something as something and against something on the other. Cohen left no doubt how verification was to be understood in his Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, namely as a verification of something and against something: ‘The thinking of knowledge can only be described, determined, discovered, measured, and chiselled out by the problems of scientific knowledge’. Such verification differs essentially from a proof or a deduction. These presuppose certain data, which are logically ordered prior to or at least at the same time as what is proved and thus violate the criteria of a method of purity. By contrast, Cohen’s ‘verification of pure thought as pure knowledge’ is not logically dependent on the fact against which it can and should verify itself. In such a view of verification one thinks in the first place of criteria or conditions of applicability. Here we find ourselves at the heart of Cohen’s metacriticism of Kant’s critique of reason. What he objects to from the point of view described above is that this critique confuses philosophical and mathematical proof and so contradicts its own discovery that mathematical proofs are inappropriate to philosophical thought and thus are not suited to it for the demonstration of truth. From Cohen’s perspective the in-

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adequacy of Kant’s transcendental method is seen most clearly where it necessarily comes up against its own limits, namely where the connection between rational criticism and metaphysics is concerned. The necessity of the connection claimed there is shown, on closer consideration, to be spurious, not only in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, but even more in the Metaphysik der Sitten. Only in the methodological combination of pure thought in the production of pure ideas and the verification of these as pure insights lies the key to the determination that epistemological criticism and metaphysics belong together. What Cohen particularly needed here was the insight into the determination of verification as the verification of something as something against something. The logic of pure knowledge is metaphysics. It is a critique of knowledge and metaphysics on the basis of its method of purity. In the foundation of pure knowledge metaphysics assumes a new aspect. It no longer represents a self-enclosed logical space of pure a priori insights; rather it becomes an open space of ordered movements of thought, which opens itself up to many contingencies: to the contingency of new scientific problems and facts and to the contingency of corresponding changes in the system of philosophy as a whole. Moving on to the modalization of the correlation of judgement and category, in which we are particularly interested here, to the correlation between the judgement of possibility and the category of consciousness, we can say that the judgement of possibility belongs to the classes of the judgement of method. It represents the first of these classes. Here it becomes directly clear that the method of the philosophical foundation of pure knowledge is necessarily more original than the judgement of method as such and each of its modalizations, the judgement of possibility, of reality, and of necessity. For this judgement, like its modes mentioned above, is founded on the method of the foundation of pure knowledge and so on the method of purity. Here the method of foundation is confirmed in a double but connected sense. Just as the judgements of method must be verified as such, i.e. as pure insights against the problems of the sciences, so the method of the foundation of philosophy must be verified in the

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judgements of method. The method of the foundation of philosophy thus not only proves to be a way to reach a certain goal, but in this movement it is, at the same time, a step backwards in the foundation it has established. In this way more light is now also shed on the category of consciousness and on its systematic place in the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. As a category, consciousness is one of the basic scientific concepts and as such belongs essentially to the idea of science. On account of its correlation with the judgement of method the consciousness of science is nothing but this: the basic concept of the method of science. As such it has its particular systematic place in the foundation of pure knowledge; and in this foundation it finds its fundamental difference from the concept of the consciousness of moral action, which has a different, in itself autonomous foundation: that of the Ethik des reinen Willens. Among the judgements of method Cohen particularly marked out the judgement of possibility: on the one hand because the possibility is given logical precedence over the two other modalities, those of reality and necessity; on the other hand, because the category of consciousness is explicitly placed in correlation with the judgement of possibility. In this way the basic scientific concept of consciousness not only obtains its well-determined systematic place in the logic of pure knowledge. Rather this place proves the goal of the way of thought from the judgement of possibility to the judgement of necessity. Cohen not only deliberately returned to the method of the Socratic-Platonic logic of knowledge with its basic distinction between concept and idea. His methodological conception is equally oriented to modern mathematical physics. From this perspective the theory of method in the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis represents a specific connection of ancient and modern theory of science.

4 Precisely in this foundational connection between ancient and modern scientific theory of method, Cohen links up with the predecessors who were most important to him, insofar as they inseparably linked the concept of method with the concept of con-

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sciousness. These are in the first place Descartes, Kant, and Fichte. What distinguishes his connection of method and consciousness from that of Descartes and Fichte is first of all and strikingly enough the determination of the systematic place of consciousness as a method. Unlike his two predecessors, Cohen does not place the principle of consciousness or the ‘I’ at the beginning but at the end of the foundation of pure knowledge, more precisely there where the concluding foundation begins, namely in the judgement of method. This change in the determination of place expresses a change in the understanding of scientific method: the concept of method is only produced at the end of the foundation. This does not stand in contradiction to the fact that the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis is from the outset a methodological thinking and a method in the founding of pure knowledge, namely the method of producing the pure basic concepts of science. However, this method only becomes the object of a methodological knowledge in the judgement of method and in the modalization of this method into the judgements of possibility, reality, and necessity. Cohen’s theory of method gains here its additional metacritical significance in comparison with Kant’s transcendental method. The inadequacy of the latter is shown above all by the fact that the concept of transcendental or pure consciousness does not have a specific place in this method, but is unsystematically divided over various logical places, and is fragmented into distinct functions of foundation and proof. Thus in Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft this pure consciousness is placed as a subject before the beginning of philosophical criticism and before the beginning of the foundation of pure knowledge, in that the principle of a ‘Copernican turn’ in philosophy is anchored in it before anything else. Accordingly, pure consciousness is here the foundation of all conceivable objectivity of knowledge. Then, in its turn, precisely this pure consciousness — the ‘transcendental apperception’ — is placed at the centre of a highly complex interrelation in which, under the name of a ‘transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of understanding’, it needs to be proved that these concepts must be applied to the data of perception if objective knowledge is to be achieved. Finally, this pure consciousness plays a hidden but all the more important role in the context of the proofs of the high-

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est a priori principles, in which the claimed validity of the intellectual functions for objective knowledge is to be proved wellfounded. Here pure consciousness appears in a function of foundation and proof which has yet again changed. This emerges clearly in relation to the fourth group of these highest principles, which under the name ‘postulates of empirical thought’ articulate the modal status of knowledge on the basis of the Kantian critique of knowledge. Here the original idea of rational critique is proved well-founded in the sense that the modal determinations of possibility, reality, and necessity are not objective properties of objects of knowledge, but only predicates of the determination of these objects’ relation to the knowing subject. The correlation of the judgements of method and the category of consciousness is one of the focal points in Cohen’s metacriticism of Kant’s critique of reason. It is not accidental that these judgements give rise to concepts of criticism which refer back to corresponding naive concepts, originally formed in the method of pure production. But these judgements of method should not, on account of their apparent closeness to Kant’s ‘postulates of empirical thought’, blind us to the existing difference here between metacriticism and criticism: Cohen’s determination of pure consciousness is a criticism of the logical place assigned to this consciousness. Nor does it only relate to the observed lack of order in the determination of its evidential and foundational function. It is, before that, a critique of the inadequate restriction of this consciousness, a critique of the limitation of its functions to those of scientific-methodological knowledge. Correlation as form of the task of knowledge or as teleological structure always involves anticipation. Accordingly, a foundation of pure knowledge must firstly anticipate both the possibility and the validity of such knowledge and its basic concepts. But the power of its anticipation extends further. It must also direct itself to the other foundations, from which it is distinguished as a ‘logic of pure reason’, in order to safeguard their validity at the same time. In this respect the conceptual anticipations extend as far as the fields of ethics and aesthetics. They even affect religion in its distinctive nature, where the determination of the individual involves an anticipation of the idea of the Unique. To this extent

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the judgements of method in their correlation with the category of pure consciousness are anticipations of the system of philosophy as a whole. In this way, if provisionally, new ways of being of this pure consciousness come to the fore, which refer beyond the methodological-scientific consciousness of mathematical physics. In the judgements of method lies the origin of criticism, which develops in the form of critical concepts or categories. Criticism is a matter of philosophy and science. Both deal with methodological criticism as well as with its objects. But the judgements of method also form the systematic place of what, with reference to Rosenzweig, was called the verification theory of truth. In Hermann Cohen the method of criticism and the verification theory of truth go together. In his metacritical reflection on Kant’s critique of reason the latter’s theory of the categories of modality is given a fundamentally changed modality, the judgements of possibility, reality, and necessity, in which the idea of true scientific idealism is now fulfilled in the idea of scientific criticism and verification of the truth. It is the ‘judgements of method’ in Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis from which the basic principle of pure scientific idealism as a critique and as a theory of truth in the form of the ‘Copernican turn’ can be directly read. It was necessary to found these judgements as origins of the ‘critical categories’ of measure and quantity, of the particular and the general as presuppositions of criticism and of verification of the truth of these judgements, and the categories arising from them refer back to the achieved ground of foundation and beyond the achieved goal. From the judgement of possibility springs the knowledge that this possibility is more than just contradiction-free conceivability, more than just logical or real composibility. It brings to light the category of hypothesis, which finds verification in the multifarious hypotheses of science. In the judgement of possibility lies the origin of new knowledge and new objects of knowledge, the field in which scientific research works. Here, however, pure thought also anticipates new possibilities of pure consciousness, which transcend the horizon it has conquered so far, for instance in the perspective they afford on the sphere of moral action belonging to the belief in new historical possibilities. In the

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judgements of method in their correlation with the corresponding categorical modes of consciousness, Cohen brings together all the features of his philosophical method of pure idealism, both looking back and anticipating in accordance with the logical form of the task of pure knowledge. What needs to be brought together here is not just the method of criticism and the method of verifying the truth, but, concordantly, the method of purity and the method of systematic foundation. Hence the method of criticism must correspond in its complexity to the complex structure of the verification of truth, which is said to be not just the verification of something by something, not just verification of a truth by another truth, but verification of the truth against something and from something. Thus criticism in its methodology is by no means only concerned with the validity of a claimed truth as such, but also with the validity of the claimed truth of something against something. But this is not enough. It must be equally concerned with the validity of the claim of the truth to be the truth; and with the claimed right of an instance of knowledge to such a claim. From this point of view Cohen’s critique of perception or sensory feeling differs from the comparable traditional critique, which disputes that perception possesses this competence of being and truth. Instead the right of the instance of perception to a corresponding claim of validity is disputed. In an analogous manner the ‘Ethics of Pure Will’, with a view to the basic problem of action, distinguishes between the claim of rights and the claim of sue, allowing initially only the right to the latter claim. The differentiation of the various concepts of modality already involves methodological criticism in the sense of the possibility of differentiating claimed cases of validity and the corresponding claims. Beyond this, however, the judgements of methods express the philosophical and scientific possibility of criticism, in that the critical concepts arising here need also, in their turn, to be verified in the context of the verification of the truth. The connection of the method of criticism and the method of truth does not remain enclosed within the logical space of the foundation of pure knowledge. Nor is the method confined to the role of verifying pure, founding knowledge as such against the fact of

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science. Science itself is the logical space of knowledge in which truth is verified. Hence pure insights verified against the fact of science must be verified beyond this as basic scientific concepts — as categories of science — against scientific research. But research is the development of science through experience and experiment. Thus pure insights must finally and above all be verified against experience. This is valid with a view to the fact of mathematical physics and analogously with a view to the fact of jurisprudence, against which the pure insights of ethics must be verified. With a view to the verification of pure knowledge against experience — and here first of all against scientific, but next also against moral and aesthetic experience — the judgement of necessity gains its outstanding methodological-critical significance for philosophy. The judgements of method — of possibility, reality, and necessity — offer the critical standards to bring a critical assessment to claims of validity and claimed cases of validity. They give concepts of particular modes of the certainty of the knowledge to be obtained through knowledge. The judgement of necessity is pre-eminent among these various critical concepts in a further sense. The hypothesis, which, besides being the basic methodological principle of pure knowledge, is the basic concept of scientific research, marks out a framework for the ways in which natural laws are valid. The judgement of necessity is pre-eminently directed to the concept of natural law in physics and in physical research. Necessity is the mode of the claim of validity and the mode of the validity of law. But this concept of necessity, too, must be verified against experience. Thus the validity of a discovered natural law requires necessary agreement with all other natural laws regarded as necessary. But all these necessities refer back to the critical concept of necessity. They all need verification against the fact of science and of scientific research. Thus the pre-eminent methodological-critical importance of the judgement of necessity is ultimately shown there where the critical verification of pure knowledge leads to the insight that it is necessary to go beyond previous verifications, that the task of knowledge has not yet been completed.

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In the judgement of necessity as the judgement of method Cohen formed a new connection between logic and metaphysics. A decisive element in this new connection is the new basic philosophical concept of correlation. It means the abandonment, not only of the basic concept of the old, pre-critical metaphysics, the concept of substance, but together with it the concept of an absolute, totally valid necessity. As judgement of necessity the corresponding modality is subjected to the method of criticism and the method of the verification of truth. In this regard metaphysics is no longer pure a priori knowledge, prior to all experience and independent of all experience, but pure knowledge which has been verified against experience as pure a priori knowledge and must be verified against experience time and again. Its validity as pure a priori knowledge depends on the fact that not all verifications of its truth can become invalid together. In the judgements of method, the methods of purity, of criticism, and of verification of the truth coincide anticipatorily with the systematic method of philosophy. In this respect the judgements of method apply not only to the individual foundation, such as to the foundation of pure knowledge or to the ‘ethics of pure will’, but above all also to the multifarious systematic cross-connections and movements of thought between the various philosophical foundations, so between logic and ethics, between aesthetics and philosophy of religion. In this regard the methodological-critical concept of necessity in connection with the other categories of modality gains a new systematic-philosophical significance in Cohen’s critical idealism. It is not just that its methodological-critical application in the field of scientific research into verified laws creates new possibilities of knowledge; rather it creates a greater opportunity to open up new systematic connections between philosophy’s various fields of knowledge. Here the newly founded pure idealism has thrown off the shackles of the absolute metaphysical opposition of necessity and freedom. In its stead comes the original correlation of logic and ethics: ethics is the goal of logic’s task of knowledge, logic is the foundation to which ethics’ ways of knowledge lead back. What allows the correlation between the judgement of method and the category of consciousness to be known on the basis of its inherent logical properties is this: that there is not

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only the one absolutely compelling way to the goal, just as there is not the only valid way back to the origin. Pure thought retains its distinctive nature in its purity in the same way as pure will, pure feeling, and pure love. Everywhere a distinctive feature of philosophical knowledge is brought out in these methodologically founded purities. Logical allness is not ethical allness, logical particularity is not the individual particularity of the legal person. The new methodological key concept of correlation makes Hermann Cohen’s pure critical idealism a new philosophy of experience. Thanks to the logic of correlation, metaphysics has become a philosophy of experience. In their systematic web pure insights form the nodal points of a network of concepts which in its internal motion has devoted itself to the task of progress in knowledge. The correlation of logic and ethics forms the basic law of truth. In it the modes of certainty correlate with the modes of truth. Faith and knowledge form a correlation.

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References on the notion of ‘correlation’ in Hermann Cohen D. Adelmann, ‘Einheit des Bewußtseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens’, in: A. Silbermann (Hrsg.), Auslegungen. Hermann Cohen (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 269292. A. Altmann, ‘Hermann Cohens Begriff der Korrelation’, in: Silbermann (Hrsg.), op. cit., 247-268. G. Edel, ‘Die Entkräftung des Absoluten. Ursprung und Hypothesis in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens’, in: E.W. Orth und H. Holzhey (Hrsg.), Neukantianismus. Perpektiven und Probleme (Würzburg, 1994), 329-342. P. Fiorato, Geschichtliche Ewigkeit (Würzburg, 1993). H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp (Basel, 1986). A. Poma, ‘Die Korrelation in der Religionsphilosophie Cohens: Eine Methode, mehr als eine Methode’, in: Orth/Holzhey (Hrsg.), op. cit., 343-365. F. Rosenzweig, ‘Einleitung in die Akademieausgabe der Jüdischen Schriften Hermann Cohens’, in: Silbermann (Hrsg.), op. cit., 115-160.

BEWEIS AND AUFWEIS: Transcendental a priori and metaphysical a priori in Cohen’s neo-Kantianism GIANNA GIGLIOTTI, ROME

In V Logische Untersuchungen, and more precisely at the end of paragraph 13 and in paragraph 14, Husserl opens a discussion with Natorp on the meaning of the word act and the legitimacy of still making use of it when it had become clear that ‘one must, of course, no longer think of the originary meaning of the word actus’ and that ‘the idea of activity must absolutely remain excluded’. But at the same time one notes the limits of the modern theory of apperception when it comes to accounting for all the differences in the modes of apprehending that do not seem to lend themselves to anything other than the description of logical acts in the sense of intentions. The difference between an ‘arabesque’ and a ‘symbol’, for example, the difference between the simple intuition of something concrete and its apprehension as meaning, seems to Husserl to be capable of explanation only by having recourse to a modification of the characteristics of act.1 As we well know, Husserl here marshals a new concept of formalizing abstraction that has nothing whatever to do with the classical, Aristotelian concept of abstraction, — the one, to be quite clear, that attracts the critique of the Cassirer of Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff — in accordance with which one would set aside a special general note ab-

1

Translated from the Italian by Herbert Garrett. I would like to thank Hartwig Wiedebach for his suggestions after reading the manuscript. Cf. E. Husserl, Husserliana, vol. 19/1 (1984), 393-401. Husserl had already used this image in Psychologische Studien zur elementaren Logik (1894), cf. Husserliana, vol. 22, 116. In this case Husserl sought to explain the difference between Anschauung and Repräsentation, which he sees as different ‘modes of consciousness’, to a ‘completely changed psychic situation’; the different situation of consciousness becomes established according to the mode in which one’s interest or intention is moving. Husserl declares himself to be indebted to Lotze, Wundt and, above all, Lipps, as also to Stumpf, Ehrenfels, Meinong.

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stracted from what can be sensed. This new formalizing abstraction springs from a specific intentional act, that is to say — unless I am sadly mistaken — from the same conceptual place as that phenomenological evidence and intuition that after Kant do not and, indeed, could not have the meaning of a givenness for any reason independent of the cognitive function correlated with them.2 Which means that it springs, always provided I am not mistaken, from within a problem complex that in my opinion is common to the whole of neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, and in any case leads us back to their common ascendant: the problem of Herbart and Fries of how in Kant one can know the conditions of knowing, of how the metaphysical a priori and the transcendental a priori see each other. Significantly, it was recently commented that it was not illegitimate to note aspects of convergence between Husserl’s theory and the Friesian distinction between Beweis and Aufweis3 and that a pupil of Fries like Geldsetzer should speak of phenomenology as ‘the second great form of German psychologism’,4 after Herbart and Fries. This is where the commixture of gnoseology, logic and psychology sees the light of day. And it is here that there was born the common enemy, psychologism, that neoKantianism and phenomenology confront from a precise and very solid common base: the primary consideration they reserve for the static and genetic structuring of objectivity. And therefore I would like to show that the failure to pay attention to the act constitutes a thorn in the side of neocriticism at the very moment in which

2

E. Ströker puts it very well in her ‘Husserls Evidenzprinzip. Sinn und Grenzen einer methodischen Norm der Phänomenologie als Wissenschaft’, in: Phänomenologische Studien (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 1-34: ‘That the Erlebnis does not in any way have the character of ‘simple’ intention is made clear in Husserl not only by his repeated refusal of ‘feelings of evidence’ and ‘representations of evidence’. Rather, evidence becomes established only in those complexes of acts that Husserl presents as acts of synthesis’ (9). 3 See M. Rath, Der Psychologismusstreit in der deutschen Philosophie (Freiburg/München, 1994), 63. 4 Cf. L. Geldsetzer, ‘Metaphysische Tendenzen der philosophischen Entwicklung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1945’, in: W. Prinz und P. Weingart (Hrsg.), Die sogenannten Geisteswissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 437.

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Cohen had come to share with phenomenology the concern for the multiplicity of the conditions of knowledge or, better, of knowledges. Following the suggestion of this Husserlian example, I will nevertheless reverse its sequence: for neo-Kantianism, in a certain sense, it was a question of returning from the ‘symbols’ to the ‘arabesques’: or, leaving aside the metaphor, of coming to grips once more with the problem of intuition in the immediacy that had been excluded ever since Kant’s reading, though destined to repropose itself at the very moment in which the exclusive unicity of the cognitive constructivism peculiar to scientific knowledge was rejected by the neo-Kantian gnoseological approach. In short, I am putting forward the hypothesis that the resolution of the aesthetic in the analytic, of intuition in understanding, with everything that this implies, and which very rightly continues to represent the emblematic physiognomy of Cohen’s neo-Kantianism, can and, indeed, must be considered also in its obverse implication: the assumption of aesthetics — and therefore of sensibility — as a principle of itself and as such constitutive. An assumption not made right away, but to which neo-Kantianism was indirectly led precisely by the conviction that the constitutive conditions of knowledge differ in their intrinsic nature, and by the problem of whether or not it could put aside as insensate — as Cohen seems at first to do polemicizing with Fischer, whereas the opposite would be the case if, as it seemed, the problem posed by Fries was really ineludable — as I was saying, whether or not it could put aside the question of access to the conditions of knowledge, if not altogether of the a posteriori knowability of the apriori. Can the regressive-transcendental method create space for an ambit where construction gives way to description? Where — to continue our image — the arabesque will not become transformed into a symbol, but will rather be grasped for what it is? As I said, these themes did not present themselves right away; they came to the fore at the moment when for Cohen there arose the problem of interpreting the value of knowledge of ethics and then the lack of a specific kind of knowledge as the Faktum of the transcendental inquiry for his third Critique.

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In this case, once again, Husserl represents the point of arrival — and one that is particularly dense and acute on the theoretical level — of an intermingled complex of problems that became unravelled in the course of the particular German nineteenth-century philosophy that, in one way or another, confronted the Kantian gnoseological heritage with psychological thematics. NeoKantianism is a salient moment in this intermingling, and its significance of rigorously marking the conceptual ambiguity of psychologism undoubtedly remains preponderant. Nevertheless, I should here like to trace some motives that are possibly more prone to be overlooked in the systematic framework of neo-Kantianism and yet seem to me to have likewise contributed to a return, albeit in a very different way, to the need for overcoming an excessively and solely logical version of consciousness as a union of synthetic principles that had perhaps been conceived by Kant and was undoubtedly characteristic of the first and even today emblematic reading of the Critique proposed by neo-Kantianism. In other words, I should like to show the aspects of this philosophy that, generated by the deeply rooted conviction of the plurality of the forms and modes of knowledge and therefore of the modes of constitution — a conviction that matured within the confrontation with psychology, and even in polemic with it, — oblige one to step outside the markedly constructivist approach typical of its appeal to Kant and lead one towards a descriptive attitude that certainly does not have the speculative weight of the phenomenological method, but nevertheless is not devoid of interest in reconstructing the intermingling that I spoke of. The first important study dedicated to the relations between Husserl and neo-Kantianism, the one by Iso Kern published in 1964,5 concentrated on the problem of the subjective foundation. The profoundly shared conviction that, together with metaphysics, psychologism is the gravest of errors is the common starting point of Husserl and neo-Kantianism, the common logico-objectivist approach for which — as far as philosophy is concerned — knowledge is not a question of genetic formation processes, but rather a question of the validity of objectivated forms and structures, a com5 I. Kern, Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantismus (The Hague, 1964).

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mon origin that subsequently divides into the two different lines of phenomenology and critical psychology when it has to come to grips with the problem of the ‘subjective’ pole of that foundation. Kern’s approach to the confrontation remains fully valid. I would only propose to enlarge it by linking it with the problem of the plurality of the constitutive conditions of knowledge. Indeed, this link seems to me to be absolutely intrinsic and as such to extend the confrontation to, for example, Cohen and Cassirer, rather than restricting it to Natorp and Rickert as Kern had done. It should also be made clear right away that the confrontation with Natorp and Rickert is a direct confrontation that we can read in the letters and notes provided for us by Husserl’s private library. This does not mean that the problems did not have an internal articulation that it would in any case be legitimate and interesting to follow, always provided that one agrees with the principle that relations become established between ideas can be be legitimately noted even if no relations ever became established between those who held them. If I had to indicate the first salient moment in which the problem of the plurality of the foundations in neo-Kantianism came face to face — to the point of almost coinciding — with the problem of the subjective foundation, I would start, as I already suggested, from Cohen’s Kants Begründung der Ästhetik published in 1889. The arguments that Cohen develops with a view to anchoring the foundation of Kant’s ethics, too in a manifestation of culture, — (passing, at the time of the first publication of Kants Begründung der Ethik in 1877, via a direct coupling with the foundation of experience) — are undoubtedly very important. The cognitive value claimed for ethics had already broken up the superposition of truth and enunciation, be it even within a constructivist approach to the true, and in the constitutive and not merely regulative nature of Sollen he had already diversified the conditions of knowledge. Nevertheless, it is only when he comes to grips with the case of aesthetics that the themes of subjectivity, of seeing the historical and cultural fact from which one can transcendentally work back to the constitutive condition, and therefore also of the different modes of constitution, become closely interwoven and, so joined, possibly propose themselves in an even more evident manner.

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Here there also arises in a new manner another very important theme in the reflection around and then of phenomenology itself, namely the relationship between form and content of consciousness. The particular nature of the aesthetic object leads to more drastic consequences: the enlargement of the concept of experience that had become necessary when ethics had to face the problem of a content that coincided — there — with the universality of form. There is, so it seems to me, a continuous conceptual thread: in Kants Begründung der Ethik, dating to 1877, at the moment of discussing the regulative significance of transcendental ideas, Cohen cites the passage from the Kritik der reinen Vernunft in which Kant speaks of the subjectivity of the legal need expressed by ideas and then comments on it by saying that we find ourselves face to face with a principle that ‘does not express a law present in things, does not contain the foundation of their possibility’.6 Cohen adds as follows in the second edition of the work (1910): ‘This doubt has profound effects on the terminological structure of the system and leads to an enlarged concept of experience. Being concerned with a grave difficulty, we must seek to overcome it by proceeding with prudence and caution’.7 But the grave difficulty really lies in the ‘systematic’ and not purely asymptotic significance of this enlargement, so that the regulative dimension is not simply the legitimate infinitization of the constitutive one, but rather takes its place by the latter’s side as a differently constitutive transcendental condition of different but not lesser value. Moreover, the second edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1885) had not only accentuated the distance between the objectivating structure of experience and its general complexity, but also the assignment itself of several contents to this experience, which called for a more accentuated pluralization of the modes of consciousness itself. One cannot but be struck — indeed, the first to note it was Natorp himself — by the much greater attention this second edition pays to ‘psychological’ themes. And since we are certainly not concerned with an inexplicable retreat on front of the archenemy, psychologism, it will not seem strange to see it as springing from the need of posing the transcendental problem in a — so-called — ‘freer’ way with re6 7

Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 306, B 362 Kants Begründung der Ethik (18771), 64-65; (19102), 77.

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spect to the historico-cultural fact represented by science, typical of the first edition, in such a way as to confer upon it — as it were — a wider preliminary condition to serve as a foundation, which Cohen does not hesitate to identify with the metaphysical a priori. Cohen’s argument seems to me to be very significant. If it can be taken for granted, ever since Locke, that there is no point in asking oneself what consciousness (Bewusstsein) may mean metaphysically, if its taking place (Bewusstheit) is a fact that is simply to be taken as such, then, seeing that ‘every ens must be a quale, [...] it is a sign of critical maturity to assume the ultimate elements of consciousness. And, at one and the same time, it is a need of critical interest to affirm these elements’. The metaphysical exposition of space and time is in this sense ‘a necessary preliminary condition of the transcendental one’. ‘It has to be clear right from the start that without the metaphysical constatation (Feststellung), the transcendental demonstration cannot be given or, rather, cannot even be commenced’.8 It is very significant that in this connection Cohen comes once again to rely on the relationship with psychology, which thus returns to proposing ineludable needs that, since they cannot be such as to represent the confusion between psychic genesis and ideal validity, cannot but be those of an acception of ‘reason’ and ‘consciousness’ that is no longer only or even essentially logical. It should be clear that Cohen is here claiming the full objective and synthetic value of that a priori thanks to which — and only thanks to which — objects can give themselves and not just things and concepts. And yet this claim rests on a new reconsideration of the way a content gives itself to the consciousness, a new attention to transcendental aesthetics, a new confrontation with Herbart regarding the problem of space and time, all things that go in the direction of a strong ‘liberalization’ of form, undoubtedly understood primarily in the sense of giving form, though not without significant suggestions of a complexity of the configuring about which it will be as well to say a word or two. I shall limit myself to pointing out that in the treatment of transcendental aesthetics there has thus been inserted the problem of the significance of transcendental apperception. An insertion that is the result of arguing that every transcendental condition is not something that is 8

Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 103-105.

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wholly enclosed within itself, but is rather a part and member of a more complex set. The various moments of reason certainly have to be proposed in their ‘scientificity’ and this, as far as Cohen is concerned, means in their demonstrating themselves to be specific conditions of a given knowledge, but also in the globality of their various distinctions. Apperception, therefore, is not only a supreme logical condition, but is the principle of the unity of consciousness. And ‘consciousness, understood from the point of view of the transcendental, does not present itself solely as the originary formula of the law, but rather as a set of methods for producing experience in its scientific aspect (Gehalt) or, better, in all its contents (Inhalte)’.9 Between consciousness and its contents there thus opens a space that permits a freer approach than would be possible in a view that likened consciousness to the relationship between the law and its cases. Let me give just one more example of the same problem complex we have just discussed. There are some small but very significant changes between the first, second and third edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung as regards the autonomy of aesthetics and its forms, space and time. In this case, once again, I do not wish to play down the so-called reabsorption of aesthetics in analytics so greatly criticized by Heidegger. I simply want to look at it in reverse, as it were, from the point of view of the necessity that leads Cohen to attribute full value to the a priori and specific function of aesthetics. And here we have Cohen interpret the change of definition of space and time that occurs between the Dissertatio, where they are defined as laws, and the Critique, where they are defined as forms (just as the categories are forms), as a way of saying that we are concerned with ‘modes of determination of consciousness through its content’ that will certainly have to become united if they are to produce laws. And if — in the 1885 edition — Cohen comes to say that Kant would have done better had 9

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 189-190. Cohen dwells on the distinction between Gehalt and Inhalt — though admittedly not by any means in a univocal manner — in Ästhetik I, 39 and 135; but the important thing is that he wants to distinguish a notion of content as object produced by one of the forms of consciousness as constitutive legality from a notion that refers to the presence of a specific quality of feeling in its disposition for production. I repeat: the operated distinction seems undoubtedly to go in this direction, but with the use of the two terms that is sometimes inverse.

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he written his aesthetics without considering analytics, he no longer makes this affirmation in the third edition of 1918, where it is replaced by the firm point that the validity of sensibility is ‘sovereign and of the same dignity beside and before thought’.10 And therefore even the confrontation with Herbart, the great interlocutor of the first edition, assumes a different aspect that merits some attention. Cohen had already cited a long passage of the Metaphysik in which Herbart declares that one cannot explain how sensations become connected and adapted in space and time by considering only these selfsame sensations. The order of the senseobjects seems to be ‘an addition to sensation’ that, since it cannot come from outside, had to be inherent within it. Therefore, ‘sensibility had necessarily to bear within it certain particular forms of grasping (Auffassung) and any sense-object thus had to conform and dispose itself accordingly’.11 And even though there can be no doubt that Herbart makes his stand on the ground of the problems that were to culminate in Husserl’s theory of passive synthesis, 12 if there can be no doubt that Cohen cannot fully receive the idea that a form is given, nevertheless, and unlike before, he now adds that Herbart, notwithstanding the polemic against Kant, has autonomously followed ‘its psychological aspects’. And if before, at the end of the quotation, he admonished him for ‘falling back into his conception of the psychological nature of the a priori’, he now recognizes that he had been ‘right on the mark’. And to me the essential thing seems to be that Cohen is now concerned with connecting space and time with sensations, even though he does so as their condition of possibility, but in the sense of a specific a priori of sensibility quite independently of the scientific reality of geome10

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 212 and 213. Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 268; (18711), 89. Herbart’s passage is to be found in Sämtliche Werke, published by K. Kehrbach and O. Flügel (Aalen, 1989), vol.7, 55-56. The italics in Herbart’s passage are Cohen’s, only in the first edition. 12 The reference text to be used here is, inevitably, E. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation. Zur Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passiven Genesis bei E. Husserl (The Hague, 1970). Holenstein underscores perfectly that it was Herbart who brought the entire problem of apperception back to the domain of psychology and that it has therefore, even within the psychological studies, either maintained or reacquired a complex acception in which passivity and synthesis do not mutually exclude each other. 11

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try and physics. Now Cohen seems to be talking directly about the forms of consciousness, and his concern to make it quite clear that there is no worse misinterpretation of Kant than to understand them, like Herbart, as empty containers, now no longer has to look for support exclusively to the facts reported by scientific knowledge and therefore he takes the liberty of writing that psychology is extremely important inasmuch as it ‘is the language of consciousness’,13 and, above all, of claiming a ‘liberty of form’ by virtue of which it ‘designates [...] the law of the content [...] both in its production and in its configuration (Gestaltung).14. In other words, it seems to me to be important that Cohen, who in this case is discussing Kant’s reading of Helmholtz, specifies that he wants to understand liberty of form not as being devoid of content, but as a differentiation of the relationship with the content, something that — given the intranscendibility of the form-content correlationship — must necessarily be there. Only that what is there is not just the function as law, but — as we have seen — also as configuration, and this explains Cohen’s newfound insistence on the role of the manifold of intuition, and his denying the identity of the category — as a synthetic unity — with the supreme principle of the unity of consciousness, because the latter comprises also the forms of intuition. The second version of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung must therefore put us on our guard against enclosing Cohen’s form in a logicism constructed on the model of science. Certainly, Cohen underscores that Kant has re-elaborated Newton’s laws into his synthetic principles, but does not consider this to be his great conquest, not as great as having brought their articulation and structuration into line with the ‘unity of consciousness’. Cohen revises the pages dedicated to the significance of the synthesis and, bringing the heart of Kant’s theory of experience back to apperception, and the productive imagination back to understanding, he nevertheless adds that Kant’s treatment possibly contains a lacuna: it lacks an explicit statement that the manifold of intuition also forms part of transcendental apperception.15

13 14 15

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 261. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 304 and 276 (my italics). Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 399.

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If in this rapid sketch of the background we now concentrate our attention on the element of the Gefühl, it will become even more evident how attention to sensibility becomes conjugated in an altogether particular manner in an antipsychological context. The salient point is to be found in how the problem is formulated. Insistence on the systematic relationships between the various parts of philosophy responds to a very specific problem: whether the great link can no longer be neither ontologically the being nor the structuration of reason into various faculties. If, moreover, one finds oneself in situations in which there comes to lack the possibility of assuming a knowledge that — of its own accord and in it historical factuality — provides the proof of being irreducible, one may think of proceeding by looking for a way of directly observing consciousness that will imply a falling back into psychologism. It seems to me to be instructive that Cohen should hint at moving in this direction, as also — and more freely — does Cassirer, where the measure of moving in this direction is directly proportional to the difficulty of rigour in the speculative system. Neither Natorp nor Rickert wanted to do this, the two neo-Kantian thinkers who are certainly the most systematic and possibly also conceptually the most rigorous, but (possibly also for this very reason?) not the ‘richest’. Both were always and tenaciously to refuse ‘immediacy’ in description and therefore it is not by chance if their philosophical outcome, still declared to be transcendental, becomes subject to some ontologization. As if either one or the other of the following two propositions has to be true: either the following of Kant’s road — as a road that considers that it has to remain within the configuration of the modes, the conditions that are imposed sine qua non by reason within its limits and right up to these limits, — leads one to encounter the theme of an ‘evidence’ of these conditions, almost an ‘evidence’ of the transcendental, or the desire to remain at all costs on the front of objectivity and its manifestations becomes divaricated into the hermeneutics of a Lebensphilosophie or into the very different — but in this case converging — logicism of a Natorp or a Rickert. I do not think there is any danger in reading Cohen in the light of the first possibility. All said and done, the whole of the long historical introduction to Kants Begründung der Ästethik — from which the Cassirer of Freiheit und Form has undoubtedly drawn — unfolds

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as a review of the history of the relations between the various faculties of the soul in search of their physiognomy. And if the brilliant discovery of Leibniz lies in his having resumed the classical concept of proportion and applying it to the relations between the elements of subjectivity, between the ‘faculties of knowledge’, Winckelmann’s decisive part depends on the use of the notion of ideal. ‘The concept of the ideal is the Cogito of aesthetics: it signifies the derivation of art from consciousness’, because, and this is what I am now anxious to underscore, the ideal is the purity of Schauen, and ‘can be said solely and exclusively of the whole of the form (Gestalt)’.16 When producing its contents, consciousness must divide itself in various ways, though these nevertheless remain united by the fact of being its products. The typical neo-Kantian scheme of starting from what is conditioned and arriving at the condition can no longer be applied quite as readily when face to face with situations — the problem of the organisms was one of the first — in which the form no longer seems to structure or, better, organize the given content, but rather to be one with that content, situations in which a form foreshadows a given form with particular constitutive regulativity. And it is important that, in the face of such situations, Cohen himself shows a limit of constructionism and, rightly or wrongly, sees Hegel’s solution as a possible way out. It is not therefore surprising that subsequently, in the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, he should tell us that it is no longer as important to combat the theory of the faculties of the soul as it had been for Herbart.17 In actual fact, the very formulation of the problem of the Kantian foundation of aesthetics, which moves from art as the cultural ambit in which aesthetic consciousness affirms itself, thus proceeds right away to repropose the idea of a necessary metaphysical deduction that precedes the transcendental inquiry,18 with frequent 16

Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 30-31 and 39-40. Cf. also 53. Cohen underscores this concept twice. 17 Cf. Ästhetik I, 98. 18 Cf. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 149-150: ‘Just as — something that Kant failed to do for aesthetics — the metaphysical a priori prepares the transcendental a priori, so also will it be both appropriate and instructive to clearly distinguish in consciousness such an originary element for aesthetic judgment and therefore for psychological genesis before demonstrating its transcenden-

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references to the second edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung. Psychology inquires into the processes of consciousness as such, its lexicon — and I would almost say its problematics — remain preliminary. This need for pinpointing a metaphysical a priori even here gives rise to a new type of consciousness, namely Gefühl. This metaphysical a priori is described in important pages19 that seem as if they had been left in suspension. Fühlen is the most originary element of consciousness20 that accompanies them all, it must not be confused, it should be clear, with Bewusstheit, but this direct search in consciousness for an originary element that is affirmed to be of a non-psychological nature cannot but create a certain embarrassment in the ‘classical’ neocriticist approach. On the one hand, this Fühlen is ‘the universal and fundamental mode of consciousness’, while on the other it should give rise to a direction and content of consciousness that are wholly unique. It is as if Cohen discovered there not only a component that unifies a nonpsychological meaning of consciousness, a kind of ‘annex’ — as he actually calls it — that accompanies the moment of knowledge and that of ethics, but also a way of arriving at a new content thus introduced in a non-arbitrary manner. But at this point, when it would be time to come to grips with the problem of subjectivity, Cohen’s reasoning suddenly deviates and proceeds to examine the Kantian definitions. Privileging Gefühl as compared with Judgement, Cohen — who is undoubtedly on the interpretative line proposed by Stadler, namely that, all said and done, it would have been better if the second part of the Kritik der Urteilskraft had been included in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft — entrusts the aesthetic judgement to reflection or Beurteilung, which ‘is not a judgment in the logical sense; it is a psychological process that describes a new, peculiar direction of consciousness’.21 If we bear in mind both the basic principles of Cohen’s treatment, i.e. the systematic linking of the foundation of aesthetic to the foundations of experience and ethics and the identification of the specificity of this foundation as an auto-

tal validity as the condition of art’. 19 Cf. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, especially 152-158. 20 Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 392, ‘Untergrund des Bewusstseins’, ‘Urbewusstsein’. 21 Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 201.

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nomous direction of consciousness (though in this case it cannot be arrived at by working back from some codified knowledge), we realize that the way that Cohen proposes to keep them together is wholly entrusted to the description — and I would here underscore description — of a formal a priori in a new sense, namely in the sense of a form-content in the sense in which psychology (sic!) distinguishes between the objective content of a feeling and its subjective tenor (Verhalten). This feeling is a wholly particular dimension of subjectivity, a dimension to which is entrusted the value of the transcendental foundation of a moment of culture. Indeed, while in the other forms of consciousness this feeling has the role of a component that takes its place by the side of the representation, in the case the aesthetic representation, the content coincides with this feeling, aesthetic consciousness is feeling, and this ensures that aesthetic feeling is form. The manner in which Cohen comes to introduce Kant’s notion of finality into the aesthetic field is truly particular. The problem that clearly urges him, and which is undoubtedly not an easy one for the neo-Kantian coordinates to accept, is precisely that of admitting an a priori, a form of an affective nature that — and this is even more arduous — ends up by coinciding with a content, though without configuring the notion of a material a priori. In those coordinates, in fact, the content is always the individual moment, the single case of a general legality and, as such, the product and correlative of the form as law. But here the form — and we heard Cohen himself say this — is not directly a law. In the case of the content of the representation, as also in that of the content of the will, it takes form — which means that it constitutes itself as an authentic content and not as mere Bewusstheit, which is and remains ‘das Unsägliche’22 — only by getting away from the substrate of feeling. But here one has to drown and dissolve, in the feeling the contents drawn from elsewhere, transforming them completely into that feeling, which thus becomes the content and the form of aesthetic consciousness. ‘This feeling is content inasmuch as it is feeling, [and] like every true content [...] is configured [...] as form’.23 This is how Cohen reads Kant’s free play of the faculties, which he thus sees as the point from which a 22 23

Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 394. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 394.

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new and valid psychology can make its moves. As always in neoKantian literature, this form is a constitution of a form of experience, it is one of its supporting legal structures, a transcendental condition; but the experience that constitutes itself here does not consist of the creation of an objectual sphere, Kant’s aesthetic teleology is interpreted as an aperture of consciousness that rests on itself and in itself, where ‘the object is born only in the feeling or, rather, is constructed only in the posing (Verhalten) of the consciousness. Here, indeed, the posing of the consciousness is the thing that really counts, the only thing, the true content and the true object’.24 Once again, a direct confrontation with Herbart throws light on the real tenor of Cohen’s approach and, more generally, on the collocation of neo-Kantianism in this complex revisitation of the problems of the faculties. Herbart errs in this case due to ‘a defective psychology’ that did not permit him to articulate the various modes in which consciousness is related to its objects in full respect of their mutual autonomy. Thus ‘as a general rule, his aesthetic object is not the objectivation of the aesthetic relationship (Verhältnis), is not derived from the relationship of the consciousness, but from presumed relations of the object. Such are the outlines in the plastic arts, the thoughts in poetry, the sounds in music’. But in this way, so Cohen objects, the aesthetic object is not distinguishable from the natural or moral object. And he replies to Herbart’s affirmation that ‘feeling is not aesthetic judgement’ by saying that ‘this aesthetic judgement is not feeling’.25 And it is precisely in the face of Herbart’s relationalism that Cohen, who nevertheless never abandons his decidedly constructivist notion of synthesis, discovers a form of objectuality in which the mode of tracing the condition from whatever it conditions comes to be lacking, and the condition has to be seen, described directly in its manifestation. An expression of consciousness becomes imperative, and this can only be approached by adopting a descriptive attitude. So much so that later, in his Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, he does not hesitate to recall his ‘psychological’ writings of the ‘sixties (without ever denying a single word thereof) and to enter into a 24 25

Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 396. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 406.

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polemic with Croce about the fact that art is not the expression of a previous impression, but springs wholly from interiority. Cohen is here undoubtedly in line with his principle of Ursprung — ‘feeling is the origin of consciousness’26 — but the accent he places on seeing consciousness directly in its irreducible peculiarity is no less important. In his decidedly positivist language, where it is very difficult to separate the ‘psychological’ — in an almost physiological sense — from the analysis of consciousness in its purity, Cohen always affirms that feeling (Fühlen) constitutes that ‘disposition for the content’27 that turns it into the sole presupposition of consciousness as movement (I shall not here go into the details of Cohen’s theory of Bewegung and of his debt to Trendelenburg). Contrary to what happens in Natorp, in Cohen there thus seems to be scope for paying attention to the modalities of art. ‘In applying the method — so he writes — it would be a mistake if we were to try to construct consciousness only from the objective side and not also from the subjective one’.28 Natorp’s perplexity was immediately aroused. We can see this in a letter he wrote to Görland on 29 February 1912: ‘Cohen’s Ästhetik has at long last been published; I have only just begun to read the book and cannot yet express a judgement. He undoubtedly tries to render ‘feeling’ as active and objective as possible (‘Erfühlen’ would be a more appropriate word), but for me there is still far too much that is passive and subjective, as — for example — in the for me quite incomprehensible weight attributed to Rührung, (even to crying!), to commotion. [...] One must always try to find an objective foundation, otherwise one will not arrive at a philosophy of art. And what has become of the “transcendental method”?’29 And in the commemoration pronounced at Marburg, in the Aula Magna of the University, he speaks of the amicable disagreement about what had to be the heart of aesthetic: for Cohen feeling — ‘as he calls the immediacy of lived experience’ — for Natorp ‘Gestalten’. The circumstances probably obliged him to play down the contrast: ‘in the last resort, we probably meant the same 26 27 28 29

Ästhetik I, 143. Ästhetik I, 139. Ästhetik I, 142. H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp (Basel/Stuttgart, 1986), vol. 2, 408.

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thing [...]. Both of us are expressionists’. Cohen places the accent on the ‘Erfühlen of form’, Natorp on the ‘giving itself of form, on form taking shape in the soul’.30 But in actual fact there is a difference, and a significant one at that. As regards the then very fashionable concept of Einfühlung,31 Cohen writes as follows: ‘The feeling (Gefühl), its production, is and remains the problem. The object is not already there, given to the feeling, so that we can identify ourselves with it, nor are we placed in front of the feeling, so that the feeling has simply to be transferred into or carried outside ourselves to be identified with an object. It is the feeling (Fühlung) that constitutes the problem, not the Einfühlung; it is the birth of the feeling’.32 And even the first reviews already mentioned the importance of Cohen’s psychological analysis,33 and that the definition of Fühlen imposed a revision of Denken itself. Fühlen as ‘Urzustand des Bewusstseins’, which is the expression of the movement in a content, resumes and amplifies the psychological approach — ‘I had to create a new psychology from scratch’ — formulated in Cohen’s Ethik des reinen Willens, where the novelty of this psychology — when one looks more closely — was the transformation of the old faculties of the soul into forms, modes of consciousness of which the diversity was not just derived from the diversity of the cultural facts from which 30

P. Natorp, Hermann Cohen als Mensch, Lehrer und Forscher (Marburg, 1918), 10-11. 31 The term had been used in aesthetics, perhaps especially by Vischer, father and son Theodor and Robert, ever since the end of the nineteenth century. Robert claims to have constructed it autonomously (together with such other terms as ‘zufühlen’ and ‘nachfühlen’), without knowing that it had already been used by Herder, for whom, however, it did not have this sense of an act of productive intuition. Cf. Drei Schriften zum Ästhetischen Formproblem (Hall/Saale, 1927), 77. Cohen shows that he knew of its use by T. Lipps, an author meriting recognition for his reserved role in the ambit of the Einfühlung with regard to apperception. Cf. Ästhetik II, 205. Cf. also Supplementa, 2, Die Hermann-CohenBibliothek, 418. 32 Ästhetik I, 185. 33 I am referring particularly to the one by P. Stern published in Zeitschrift für Ästhethik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1913), vol. 8, 291-303. A little later, the same journal published another one, signed by A. Buchenau, 615-623. Also to be consulted: W. Kinkel in: Deutsche Literaturzeitung, No.27, vol. 33, July 1912, 1669-1740, and G. Falter in: Archiv für Philosophie, Neue Folge, XXV, vol. 4, No.19, 379-396.

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they descend. Moreover, albeit within limits that are of no interest for the moment, Cohen pays particular tribute to the idealism of the aesthetic theory of Fiedler and Hildebrand. The theory of ‘pure visibility’, i.e. expressive originary and autonomous form of the spirit, presented some important points and, in any case, formed part of the ‘Umdeutung’ of Kantianism that found its principal exponents in Liebmann, Lange, Müller and Helmholtz.34 First of all, a conception of pure seeing is no less fraught with elaboration than thought. In his Aphorisms on Art (published posthumously in 1914), for example, he wrote: ‘Discursive knowledge is gradual, intuition is immediate and given once and for all: this can be said only by someone who has a very coarse concept of intuition’.35 Here we have an important suggestion in the direction of an elaborated value of intuition that we have already discussed. Undoubtedly, we here have a conceptual node that can be considered ambiguous: intuition is revalued as regards its constitutive capacity and even though this seems to diminish its immediacy, it is precisely its synthetic nature that places the theme of the givenness of form — and not just of content — onto a new level that is different from the empiristic one. The theory of visibility that characterizes Fiedler’s aesthetics has nothing whatsoever in common with the contraposition of art and knowledge: ‘art can be fully understood only by someone who will impose neither an aesthetic nor a symbolic end upon it, because art […] is language at the service of knowledge’.36 But knowledge, and that is the point, is not a way of constructing reality, it is a form assumed by being. It is essential that ‘thought should be recognized as one […] of the forms of being. Thought is not therefore called upon to penetrate being, but rather to develop one of its forms’.37 In his essay ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’, published in 1887 and then cited and certainly adopted by Cassirer, Fiedler brings out the significance of symbolic forms that have the forms of being.38 Certainly, Cohen 34

Cf.G. Boehm, ‘Einleitung’ to K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst (München, 19912), vol. 1, xlvii-lii. 35 Cf. K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 2, aforism 127, 83. 36 K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 1, 28. 37 K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 1, 52 (my italics). 38 Cf. K. Fiedler, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’, in: Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 1, 111-220.

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accuses both Hildebrand and Fiedler of lacking clarity precisely as regards the relations between aesthetics and logic, which compromises their superiority with respect to psychologism,39 but nevertheless accepts their way of claiming the specificity of aesthetic form that does not place it in contraposition to gnoseological form, because the articulation of spiritual life is given only by the interweaving of all its functions. ‘All Sinnlichkeit, Körperlichkeit, Leiblichkeit, can be present for us only in the manifold processes and forms of Empfinden, Wahrnehmen, Vorstellen, Denken’.40 And I would not exclude that his treatment of language and the weight Cohen attributes to the expression owe something to Fiedler’s conviction that important progress in the definition of the true nature of language began to be made only ‘when was recognized a form of expressive movement in it, a kind of sonorous gesture’. Similarly, the recognition he grants Hildebrand for the importance he attributes to representation as compared with perception, even though it was accompanied by the reservation that it was not a case of merely grasping the form (Auffassung der Form) but also of producing it (Erzeugung der Form),41 could not but take account of the importance that these two authors attributed to representation. (Perhaps one can here see an extreme derivation of Herbartism, via such formalists as Zimmermann, with whom nevertheless first Theodor and then also Robert Vischer engaged in intense polemics precisely as to what had to be understood as the aesthetic content.)42 To 39

Cf., in particular, Ästhetik II, 196-197. Cf. K. Fiedler, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’, 136. 41 Cf. Ästhetik II, 248-249. Cf. also Ästhetik I, 355: ‘Das Problem der Sichtbarkeit ist vielmehr das Problem der Fühlbarkeit; nicht allein der rezeptiven, sondern nicht minder auch der schöpferischen.’ 42 I cannot here indulge in giving even a brief outline of Zimmermann’s work that Fiedler appeals to. Certainly his Allgemeine Aesthetik als Formwissenschaft, which in 1865 followed the Geschichte der Aesthetik als philosophische Wissenschaft published seven years earlier (1858), represents an important moment of Herbart’s presence in the philosophy of the entire nineteenth century, which we know to have been extremely important for both neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. I shall therefore limit myself to the incipit of the work: ‘Philosophy is the science that springs from the elaboration of concepts’. Allgemeine Aesthetik als Formwissenschaft (Vienna, 1865), 3. And then, the entire treatment of representation and of its components introduced by feeling, the evidence of the aesthetic judgement, and so on. As regards the polemic with Vischer, see R. Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl (Leipzig, 1873), and R. Zimmermann’s review thereof in Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. 9, 2. 40

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say nothing, lastly, of the refusal to regard aesthetics as coinciding with theory of art, which Fiedler motivates as follows: ‘Aesthetics aims at inquiring into a particular type of feeling. Art is primarily addressed to knowledge, and only later to feeling’.43 Cohen, on the other hand, bases it on the exigency that aesthetics has to be a fully autonomous element of consciousness, which clearly implies the presence of an a priori of feeling. In his occasional correspondence with Hildebrand about ‘some Philosophica’, Fiedler clearly expresses the common problem of finding foundations for the ‘intuitive consciousness’ typical of art which are as ‘sufficient’ as those of ‘abstract consciousness’. Hildebrand saw the problem of defining the ‘Formvorstellung’ as the foremost need of aesthetics; and Cohen sees in Hildebrand’s little book on the problem of the form ‘ein Hilfswerk für den logischen Idealismus’.44 Fiedler replied that art was not really consciousness (Erkenntnis), but rather representation (Darstellung).45 The problem is wholly formulated in terms of the particular nature of the ‘Geisteskräfte’ and the relationship that exists between the possibly unique mode of responding to a legality and the very different experience or content that they organize,46 in the perception that modern science, modern psychology (Wundt) work ‘only with what is trivial’, that they are incapable of not ‘assuming the sense-material as something that is given and obvious’.47 In my opinion, it is only by giving voice to this less immediately visible aspect of neo-Kantian constructivism that one can understand the presence of psychology in the second and third parts of Cohen’s system. Consequently, if Cohen expresses the summit of his expressionism — as Natorp would have it — in his valuation of the late Beethoven, in this enthusiastic judgement we have the very overcoming of the omnipotence of forming as Gestaltung. Not, it should be clear, for the artistic creation that it gives to the artistic product, but rather for the interpretation of this artistic and aes-

43

Cf. K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 2, 9. Ästhetik I, 64. 45 Cf. Adolf von Hildebrands Briefwechsel mit Conrad Fiedler, published by G. Jachmann (Dresden, 1927), 85-86, 91. The letters are dated 1877. 46 Cf. Adolf von Hildebrands Briefwechsel mit Conrad Fiedler, 103-104. 47 Adolf von Hildebrands Briefwechsel mit Conrad Fiedler, 129. 44

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thetic nature, the possibility of grasping it as such. It is not what is conditioned that becomes less conditioned, less constructed, it is the conditions that have to be grasped, described, in the immediacy of their giving themselves. Even within neo-Kantianism, there thus poses itself the problem of evidence and direct grasping: but we are here concerned with the grasping not of an immediate Erlebnis, but rather of the form that characterizes it, that constitutes it. This has to be very clear. It seems to me to constitute an extremely delicate point also on account of what is conceptually comprised in Husserl’s themes of passive synthesis and evidence, which, after Kant, are profoundly centered on the relationship between passivity and activity. And even though Cohen had said very clearly ever since the first edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung that Kant’s brilliant discovery was the a priori nature of the senses, it is yet undeniable that the fruit of this discovery was — as it were — at first prevented from maturing fully and richly by this selfsame neocritical constructivism, by its historically fundamental anti-psychologism. And it is precisely with respect to this potentiality that had remained just that — and no more than that — that Husserl introduced his innovative themes of apperception. As Holenstein realized very clearly, ‘the dividing line between passivity and activity no longer passes between receptivity and spontaneity, but rather between associative constitution and receptive-apperceptive constitution’.48 The problem that had remained open was, in fact, that of a diversification within the constitution. What, then, was it that Beethoven, the late Beethoven above all, represented for Cohen? The absoluteness of music, certainly, the full perfection of the musical ego that has freed itself of the dominion of drama. But if Beethoven’s is the true ‘autonomous and absolute music’, it is not so by virtue of its titanism or the unbounded power of its expression, but rather due to Beethoven’s lyrical nature, the ‘comfort’ and the ‘joy’ that spring forth from the execution according to ‘no longer the most rigorous rules of form, but according to the individuality of genius’. This genius manifests itself in the capacity of sublimely developing even the tiniest motif, without this involving a moment of decomposition, but rather ‘the moment of the supreme unitarian construction’, 48

E. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation, 85.

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without this involving — as a widely held misunderstanding tends to interpret — a ‘decadence inasmuch as it is a lack of form’, an ‘impressionism’, whereas it is really a matter of grasping it in its sublime beauty — for Cohen always combined with Humor49 —, of succeeding in ‘feeling the impression of an element’.50 This is a somewhat marginal note, but one that usefully introduces the concept of pure feeling on which Cohen constructs his aesthetics and, above all, especially in this context, a new a priori, unique of its kind, because, rather than referring us right away to an objective ambit, it invites us to dwell on its mode of being and self-presentation. As always, indeed, the a priori of pure feeling expresses its purity in a constitution, in the creation of a form, but which in this specific case does not concern the production of objects, but rather ‘the relationship (Verhältnis) [of consciousness] with itself. What does this mean? It is a question of consciousness resting (Verhalten) within itself, in its processes and in its active modes of being’,51 ‘the intimate resting of consciousness within itself, the remaining within itself, the withdrawal into its own active being and there finding firmness and peace, finding satisfaction in this remaining within oneself, without tending beyond, without seeking to attain some external object as content [...]. Only this autarchy can lead us to the autonomy of aesthetic consciousness, to the discovery and affirmation of the validity and novelty and its peculiarity’.52 And Cohen is well aware that the problem is to claim ‘the methodological type of a foundation’ for this Verhalten. It seems to me that another important aspect of Cohen’s reflection may and, indeed, must be briefly touched upon — here I can hardly do more — to support what I am suggesting, namely the new manner in which Cohen faces the problem of creating autonomous and founded space for another moment of reason, culture or experience: religion. It is in polemic with Natorp, who had entrusted religion — not without a reference to Schleiermacher’s Unendlichkeitsgefühl (feeling of infinity) — to the concept of Gefühlsunendlichkeit (infini49 As regards this aspect, see A Poma, ‘Humor in Religion: Peace and Contentment’, in: Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion, edited by S. Moses and H. Wiedebach (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1997), 183-204. 50 Ästhetik II, 191-193; I, 329-330. 51 Ästhetik I, 86. 52 Ästhetik I, 97.

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ty of feeling), that Cohen tells us that he distrusts this mingling of aesthetic and religion and insists on distinguishing the two ambits. If he insists on defending religion from being confused with an obscure immediacy of the soul,53 it is because mediation with the other forms of consciousness is essential for Cohen. But this is not a question of an extrinsic systematic exigency. In my opinion, it is rather a strong need for pluralizing the constitutive conditions that drives Cohen to these positions: ‘if the problem of the system remains the dominant guiding idea, every element of the system will be determined and represented by a pure direction of creative consciousness; consequently, feeling cannot appear twice, cannot respond to two elements. [...] The methodological arrangement here shows itself to be different from a fixed and formalistic scheme, defending itself against being sent off-track and safeguarding the confines not only between the modes of consciousness, but also between the parts of the system.’54 If Natorp’s solution leaves him profoundly dissatisfied, it is on account of the inevitably mystic outcome that he sees there,55 and which had already raised his eyebrows in view of that ‘originary concretion of immediate lived experience’ in psychology that Natorp spoke about and which Cohen cited in this connection. The notes on the Allgemeine Psychologie that Cohen hastily scribbled on the letterhead of the Hotel Pontresina in the Engadine — and which Holzhey published in the second volume of sources of his Cohen und Natorp — do not permit more than a passing comment. Cohen seems struck by a passage (that Husserl had

53

Cf. Der Begriff der Religion, 121. Der Begriff der Religion, 41. 55 Der Begriff der Religion, 95. As regards this matter, see A. Poma’s introduction, 32f. Poma notes with extreme delicacy that Cohen, in the case of the relationship between aesthetic and religion, proceeds directly to a confrontation of the concepts they have in common — love, feeling, excitement, distress — to demonstrate that the meanings are really profoundly different (31-32). I would ask him here whether he would agree that the reason for this unusual procedure may reside also in the peculiar nature of these cultural facts which are not homogeneous with scientific facts, and this over and above the ‘subjective motives’ so rightly invoked by Poma. As regards the relations with Natorp in connection with the aesthetic-religious nexus, see also H. Holzhey, ‘Dieu et l’âme. Les rapports entre la critique de la métaphysique et la philosophie de la religion chez Hermann Cohen’, in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3 (1998), 327-346, esp. 341-344. 54

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likewise annotated in the margins of his copy of Natorp’s text, making a reference to another passage of the book) in which Natorp speaks of the task of psychology as a ‘revoking (zurücknehmen) in the originary concretion, in the concrete originariness of consciousness’, of all the distinctions (Scheidungen) represented by the cultural objectivizations (logic, ethics, esthetics, philosophy of religion). And in notes of the same kind, this time concerning the second (1908) edition of Natorp’s Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität, Cohen rejects the interpretation as ‘originariness and ultimate unity of every life, of every soul’ that his friend had given of his Gefühl, likening it to myth. Cohen writes: ‘by myth I did not want to describe feeling, but the primary element of every cultural consciousness, but precisely of its separations’.56 Here we come up against another twist in this conceptual interweaving in which there emerges the hypothesis that the multiformity of the modes in which the various forms of experience are founded, each in its own autonomy, has its counterpart in a multiformity of relations between what founds and what is founded and that this is such that the founding condition cannot always be presented as the result of a constructive process of regression. In other words, if the relationship between transcendental philosophy, between critical method and psychology has kept on representing itself — to the point of Husserl’s vacillation as to whether or not he should accept the word psychology within his already clear phenomenological design —, that can certainly not be attributed to the mere historical fact of the great development of this discipline in this long period of time. If the very clear antipsychologism of neo-Kantianism and of the Husserl of the Prolegomena does not close the question, that is due to the fact that the shadings are very profound. I believe that a detailed and therefore rigorous reconstruction would call for a definition of the modes and ways of a possible presence of the particular line of ‘psychologism’ that is traced back to Fries.57 Elsenhans’ two volumes on Kant pub-

56

Cf. H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, vol. 2, 102 and 99 (my italics). P. Natorp, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität (Tübingen, 1908), 98. 57 Cf. E. Völmicke, ‘Gewissheit und Geltung. Zur Auflösung der Geltungsproblematik bei Fries’, in: W. Marx und E.W. Orth (Hrsg.), Hermann Cohen und die Erkenntnistheorie (Würzburg, 2001), 31-48.

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lished in 190658 are an indicative example. Elsenhans knows and cites the neo-Kantian panorama, Cohen, Windelband, Rickert, Riehl, to mention only the best known; his reading of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft often leans on Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (second edition of 1885) and it is here — as also from a rapid glance at his other writings59 — that one realizes that the theme of Fries and Kant is not a purely historiographic theme. The problem is whether an inquiry into the conditions of knowledge, even if it lucidly questions their validity though not their origin, can do without a moment of accepting their evidence without thereby reproposing an inadmissible psychologism. Even Elsenhans seems to fall into this trap, seeing that he is convinced that a theory of knowledge cannot but in some way refer to an ‘empirico-descriptive psychology’, regarding even phenomenology as such.60 Husserl charges Elsenhans with a psychologist conception of evidence, showing also that in this case he is moving in the difficult direction of an antipsychologism that will yet have to allow for the phenomenalization of the logical. The clearest accusation is the one found in Ideen I, while even in the Prolegomena his distancing is still accompanied by the claim to a founding value for the critique of knowledge of phenomenology as ‘essential and pure science of lived experience’.61 Psychology cannot be proposed on the basis of 58

T. Elsenhans, Fries und Kant, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zur systematischen Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie. Band I Historischer Teil. J.F. Fries als Erkenntniskritiker und sein Verhältnis zu Kant. Band II Kritisch-systematischer Teil. Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie als Ergebnis einer Auseinandersetzung mit Kant vom Standpunkt der Friesischen Problemstellung (Giessen, 1906). 59 See ‘Das Verhältnis der Logik zur Psychologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 109 (1897), 195-212; ‘Phänonenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, in: Kant-Studien 20 (1915), 224-275; Lehrbuch der Psychologie (Tübingen, 1912); ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, in: Kant-Studien 22 (1918), 243-261. 60 Cf. ‘Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, 249, and ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, 260. 61 See E. Husserl, Prolegomena, in: Husserliana, vol. 18, 215; Ideen I, in: Husserliana, vol. 3/1, 46; the review of Das Verhältnis, in: Husserliana, vol. 22, 203-208. The review originally appeared in ‘Archiv für systematische Philosophie’, published by Natorp, who had asked Husserl’s permanent collaboration as a reviewer of writings on logical topics. As regards this review, see also J. Benoist, Phénoménologie, sémantique, ontologie. Husserl et la tradition logique

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gnoseology, that is no longer called into question, but reflection, evidence, description are not necessarily psychologistic procedures: tertium datur between receptivity and construction. Since Elsenhans underscores the validity of Kant’s concept of experience as a union of two components, ‘receptivity of impression’ and ‘spontaneousness of concepts’, though without there being ‘a third to which one can attribute at one and the same time spontaneity and givenness’,62 Husserl sees him noting a meaning of constitution that does not imply an activity like participation of thought.63 Once one recognizes the validity of the need to which metaphysical exposition responds, the problem of the ‘place’ in which this metaphysical a priori is located can no longer be eluded. Elsenhans contests that phenomenology has posed Kant’s problem of the givenness of the a priori in a satisfactory manner and writes that this important question ‘of consciousness and knowledge of the a priori’ has been posed at the centre of the gnoseological problem only by Fries and his school.64 And if this ‘place’ cannot be a consciousness, a mind, a reason, which would turn them into an object of inquiry of psychology now become scientific, experimental — though not mathematical as Herbart had dreamed — it could possibly justify a method of inquiry in which discovery and founding could become identical, in which the ultimate conditions present themselves with a particular evidence of their own, recuperating reflectively, and therefore indirectly, the founding value of immediacy. The merit of Fries is that of having proposed a significance of immediacy that is not to be confused with the psychologistic-empiristic one that is usually put forward. The Evidenzgefühl that Elsenhans explicitly refers to, basing himself on Fries’ Glaube — (which both Hegel and Herbart, for once in the same camp, autrichienne (Paris, 1997), 225-229. As regards the two cited works published in Kant-Studien, see Husserliana, vol. 25, 226-248, where Husserl defends his Wesenschau against Elsenhans’ criticism by showing him that ‘frei erzeugen’, ‘vorfinden’ and ‘gegeben haben’ are not in contrast with each other (244). See also, P. F. Linke, ‘Das Recht der Phänomenologie. Eine Auseinendersetzung mit Th. Elsenhans’, in: Kant-Studien 21 (1916), 163-221. 62 Cf. ‘Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, 237. 63 Cf. Husserliana, vol. 25, 242. 64 Cf. ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, 245.

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had smiled upon) —, is connected with the theme of the Faktum of reason that Kant introduced for the moral law. To all intents and purposes, it is suggested that the problem posed by Fries — and, according to Elsenhans, inaudible even for neo-Kantianism65 — should be listened to, that a self-giving of the presuppositions of knowledge in immediate certainty had to be accepted, thus extending to all the conditions of knowledge that very special Faktum that Kant would recognize only in the moral field.66 ‘Search (Auf65

Cf. T. Elsenhans, Kant und Fries, vol. 2, 141-142. Elsenhans cites Cohen and Riehl. When Cohen writes in Kants Theorie der Erfahrung that the concepts valid in science and its conceptual system impose the finding (‘Ausfindigmachen’) in consciousness of the ‘elements’ that constitute the guarantee of its validity, and when in Logik he writes that new problems will bring new categories, when Riehl affirms that a priori laws of knowledge can be laws known inductively, they do nothing than confirm the legitimacy of the problem posed by Fries. 66 H. Holzhey returned to this matter quite recently in Urteilskraft, Erwägungen zum Verhältnis von Vernunftkritik und empirischer Psychologie, edited by G. Riconda, G. Ferretti and A. Poma, (Genoa, 1992), 97-116. Holzhey does not propose to look to phenomenology, but finds the interest of Fries’ position in a nonpsychologist notion of Gefühl that thematicizes the theme of the becoming consciousness of immediate knowledge in a manner that is original, interesting and full of possible developments. It is the central theme, as we shall see, of Natorp’s psychology or, rather, his unsuccessful psychology. Holzhey writes as follows on 108: ‘Precisely because ‘internal experience’ or ‘self-observation’ cannot be identified with the analogous concepts of an empirical psychology of a modern stamp, but — over and above introspection — imply reflection and a particular ‘feeling’, the introduction of an empirical component into the critique of reason is undoubtedly interesting’. Moreover, the theme of Gefühl was of great importance in the philosophies that sought to distinguish the logical from the psychological and shows just how intricate were the bonds they very rightly wished to untie. Not only this, for both Rickert and Husserl found themselves to be reasoning precisely around the Evidenzgefühl, the Geltungsgefühl: though they certainly took different roads, they always started from the problem — and as a problem it was postulated with the greatest clarity by Fries — of the nature of the ultimate justification of the conditions of knowledge. On this front — to give an example I believe to be significant — Rickert and Husserl found themselves on the same side as regards their debt to Hume. Husserl writes: ‘There are works of a psychologist trend that, notwithstanding their extreme aberrations, have earned merit, and even immortal merit, vis-à-vis psychology and philosophy. I am thinking of Hume’s Treatise, a work that failed in principle, and is yet of inestimable value for phenomenology and the critique of knowledge. (Review, 1903, of W. Jerusalem, ‘Die Urteilsfunktion’, in Husserliana, vol. 22, 223). And Rickert: ‘To this day Hume exerts an influence that goes far beyond the specific philosophy

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suchung) and foundation (Begründung) will coincide, since the authentic core of the foundation, the universality and the necessity of knowledge based in the last resort on a rational faith, does not come within the ambit of scientific procedure, but rather, as the general presupposition of the self-confident reason, has to be ascribed to those principles that in the particular search are recognized as the right principles with the help of the aforesaid criteria’.67 In fact, on closer examination it is found that the rejection of psychologism — very rightly considered to be the principal note that neo-Kantianism and phenomenology have in common — has considerable shadings68 and at this point I believe it will be useful for me to conclude with a few brief remarks about the confrontation with Natorp. The presumed psychologism of the Philosophie der Arithmetik was really a response to an urgent exigency with respect to classical psychologism: to find the connection between the transcendental plane and the empirical plane. Here I shall do no more than recall the readings of Bernet and Derrida.69 And we can illustrate which of ‘experience’’, and this influence depends on his having ‘implicitly’ glimpsed ‘a concept of the matter of knowledge of immediate intuition’ that does not disappear even in the ineludable coordinates of Kantian criticism (‘Die Methode der Philosophie und das Unmittelbare’, in: Logos 12 (1923), 235-280, esp. 255-256). As far as Rickert is concerned, it is my conviction that even though these themes of immediacy and givenness are — all said and done — derived from the confrontation with his contemporaries, this cannot be said of the problem of the nature of the conditions of knowledege. 67 Cf. T. Elsenhans, Kant und Fries, vol. 2, 138-139. 68 As regards the vicissitudes of psychologism, I would refer readers to the very detailed historiographic overview in M. Kusch, Psychologism. A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge (London/New York, 1995). See also M. Rath, Der Psychologismusstreit in der deutschen Philosophie (Freiburg/München, 1994). 69 Cf. Bernet’s first chapter of the monograph E. Husserl. Darstellung seines Denkens (Hamburg, 1989), authors R. Bernet, I. Kern and E. Marbach: ‘The liberation of objects and logico-formal laws from psychological determination was not the very ultimate purpose of Husserl [in the Prolegomena], but rather a preliminary work intended for the comprehension of the nexus between pure logic and concrete lived (psychological and phenomenological) thought experiences, between ideal knowledge conditions and acts of temporally individuated acts of thought. The Prolegomena have therefore undoubtedly to be understood as a continuation of the problem already touched upon in his Philosophy of Arithmetic.’ See also Derrida’s Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de

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of the internal problems of neo-Kantianism could hardly be resolved within its initial constructivism, problems that had already begun to break up this rigid approach from within, by means of the various questions that form the hub of the greater part of the real and ideal dialogue between Natorp and Husserl. I shall choose one that seems to me somewhat less explored and closer to the various aspects I have so far outlined. As compared with Über den Begriff der Zahl, written in 1887, the later Philosophie der Aritmetik (1891), though a literal reproduction, nevertheless introduces a page or two with a critique of Kant’s concept of synthesis. Husserl underscores the importance of grasping the peculiar nature of the description of phenomena, especially the phenomenon we have to face when we are thinking of a manifold, of distinguishing between the psychological description and the conferment of a meaning. It seems clear that Husserl understands this second moment as the act of synthesis. This makes his criticism of Kant very significant. Kant’s fundamental error is that he confused synthesis as unity of the parts in a single whole and the intellectual activity of bringing together. More precisely, Husserl is convinced that Kant always — and no matter what — sees the second sense as the foundation of the first. In support, he cites Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B §15. But what we should be interested in for our immediate purposes is that, reading Kant’s words as descriptive of a procedure, a way of acting, he opposes to them his own conception of the givenness of what is bound together, unified. Even for Husserl, the givenness of relations is certainly something inherited from Herbart, whom he explicitly cites. But here already invested with the essential problem: the synthetic configuration is the result of both a passive synthesis and an act, the latter not as a generator of contents, but as the conferrer of meaning.70 Kant’s error derives

Husserl (Paris, 1990) (but the text goes back to 1953-54), 59: ‘Ever since these first considerations [in the Philosophy of Arithmetic], Husserl clearly overcomes the psychologism of his epoch’. An overcoming that Derrida very rightly identifies with a conception of the synthesis that is not associationist and such that syntheticity was soon to lead Husserl to detach himself from intentionality as a psychological quality of consciousness (as it had been in Brentano). 70 Cf. Husserliana, vol. 12 (1970), 30, 31, 38-40, 42-43. As regards the theme of the synthesis, see the fundamental text by E. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation.

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from having turned into a single whole the synthesis that constitutes an object and the synthesis that confers a meaning. The possibility of overcoming the limits of a rigid constructivism implies the possibility of affirming this difference, which is the difference between constructing and constituting. This kind of attention to the connection between the psychological plane and the transcendental plane cannot be found in Natorp, who moved from the diametrically opposite preoccupation. What, then, was it that could constitute the subject of a dialogue between him and Husserl? Kern has insisted on the importance of Natorp’s thought, especially his psychologies, in the passage towards a genetic phenomenology in the course of the ‘twenties. And it is an important thesis that was subsequently adopted by other leading interpreters of Husserl’s thought.71 I don’t feel competent to call it into question. But I do propose to look at it in the other direction: to what extent can Natorp’s passage from the positions of 1887-1888 (his texts Über objective und subjective Begründung der Erkenntnis and Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode) to the Allgemeine Psychologie be interpreted as the result also of Husserl’s reflections? And this, at least in the context of the present reflections, means wondering whether one can sustain the hypothesis that if Natorp returned to writing a psychology according to the critical method after the passage of more than twenty years, this was due also to the fact that phenomenology had highlighted the limits of construction so sharply as to oblige neoKantianism to take account of them. Analyzing the 1887 text, Rath has pointed out — and with great insight — that Natorp seemed to entertain at heart not a rejection tout court of psychological research, but rather a notion of subjectivity that could be elevated into legality.72 But Natorp finds no solution other than a translation into objectivity. Why? A reply, I believe, obliges one to consider the problem of acts, content and objects of consciousness. A theme I have already touched upon earlier on. More particularly and also more explicitly, Natorp, in an annex to a letter dated 1897, confirms to Husserl — and at some length — his negation of 71 For example, Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation, speaks of a ‘decisive’ (195) or ‘very important’ (254) influence. 72 Cf. M. Rath, Der Psychologismusstreit in der deutschen Philosophie, 107-109.

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the difference between act and content of consciousness. I have already considered this text elsewhere and want to avoid repeating myself. The result of my reflections was that Natorp takes a road that leads to the impossibility of differentiating the constitutive, to an enclosure in logical indifferentiation. I have already said that the problem here is to look at the inverse aspect, the obverse of the coin, as it were. Namely the expressions that reveal an internal difficulty, that make us understand how in the case of Natorp — who, as I have already said, is more rigid than Cohen and therefore less open to more advanced, though possibly not wholly coherent outcomes — the move in the direction of the ‘mystical’ is due also to his not knowing how the instance of sentimental and affective forms of the a priori can be resolved differently. There is a passage in the Allgemeine Psychologie that is highly significant. Natorp does not admit that description and explanation may belong to different sciences: ‘description implies objectivization just as much as explanation’.73 But what does this mean, what does it imply, I would almost say what does it condemn us to? To moving away — always and invariably — from the immediacy of consciousness, to always introducing pauses into the flow of lived experience, and therefore killing consciousness, which in its immediacy and concreteness is flowing life and never a pause, a tarrying. The problem of drawing away from the concrete that besets the whole of the Allgemeine Psychologie had already been formulated in the pages of notes sent to Husserl, where the difference between act and content of consciousness was deemed to consist solely in the former being the concrete individual realization of the latter, a realization that can be defined only by an abstractive procedure.74 If the act cannot mean anything other than ‘individuality of a [...] 73

P. Natorp, Allgemeine Philosophie nach kritischer Methode (Tübingen, 1912), 190. 74 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, vol. 5 (Dordrecht /Boston/London, 1994), 44-46. These are notes that Natorp sent to Husserl together with the manuscript of his review of K. Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (Vienna, 1894), published that same year in Archiv für systematische Philosophie 3 (1894), 391-402. Twardowski’s text, the reviews by Natorp and Husserl, as also other important pages by Husserl regarding this topic can be found in a French edition prepared and extensively prefaced (9-84) by J. English: Husserl — Twardowski, Sur les objects intentionnels, 1893-1901 (Paris, 1993).

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content being given here and now’, it is already evident that logically it can come only after the relationship of something or other with consciousness. Here we already have the proposal of the Allgemeine Psychologie: the psychic phenomena as the maximum of concreteness can be arrived at only by driving the method of determination to its maximum limit. If we compare the psychology of 1887 with its 1912 counterpart, it will be easy to see the kind of radicalization that Natorp’s neocriticist constructivism was destined to undergo. The identification of description and objectivization — (‘describing already means determining. [...] Determining means objectivating’)75 — made it unthinkable that there could be any direct observation of lived experience, any direct access to the pure and simple given of consciousness, because — always and invariably — it could not but be a reflection.76 And ‘the reflection on the content of immediate consciousness inevitably exercises an analyzing effect, a chemical breakdown, as it were’.77 The elements that this chemical analysis consigns to us are thus never anything other than different contents and different relations between contents. Here we already have Natorp’s complete refusal to make any distinction between act and content of consciousness. Herbart’s rejection of the Kantian faculties is here fully accepted and pushed to the point that every modality of consciousness, pleasure and displeasure, feeling and will, are only modes according to which a certain representation is known. But Bewusstheit itself does not know any other modes. All said and done, this is the position with which Husserl polemicizes in the passage of his Logische Untersuchungen that we here took as our starting point. A position that Natorp can maintain — wanting also to propose psychology as a non-science among the sciences — only by crossing the Rubicon, by being more royal than the King: the wealth of the vitality and mobility of consciousness cannot be conquered even if one assumes that a difference between acts can be grasped. If, for example, this act character of 75

Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (Freiburg, 1888), 92. Elsenhans appeals to Natorp when he wants to criticize what to him seems the weakest point of phenomenology: the union of the non-empirical and the given (cf. ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, 243, and ‘Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, 270). 77 Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode, 93. 76

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consciousness is expressed by Streben, one has to object that this is no more than an illusion. As far as Streben is concerned, one really has to think of an originary being-one of being and non-being, which cannot therefore be grasped in time and resolved into a series of processes. The purity of consciousness, consciousness in its orginariness is not a mode of manifestation alongside the physical one. In this way Natorp places himself, together with Husserl, well beyond the more ingenuous distinctions between physical phenomena and psychic phenomena in circulation ever since Brentano. But he can do so only by declaring consciousness to have the significance of a general expression of manifestation in general,78 and therefore for its science, psychology, a method that is totally different from the descriptive one, indeed, too ‘different’ for the conceptual coordinates of neocriticism. It does not seem to me to be particularly daring at this point to affirm that the always deferred project of a second volume of psychology dedicated to the ‘phenomenology’ of consciousness from a genetic point of view — a project that Natorp was eventually to entrust to the more robust shoulders of Husserl, who he thought could translate it into practice ‘with greater wealth’ 79 — had its authentic outcome in the ‘Metakritischer Anhang’ Logos — Psyche — Eros (1920) that appeared in the second edition (1921) of Platos Ideenlehre. A reading that will not let itself be fascinated (or bothered) by the mystical pathos of the later Natorp will have no difficulty in finding in these pages the problem of the meaning of the psychological moment as descriptive of a level of logico-cognitive expression or, rather, of an autonomous form of this expression. Behind Plato there thus emerges Heraclitus. Moreover, the selfsame Heraclitus of the famous fragment cited by Husserl in Krisis: ‘you can go and look for the confines of the soul and will not find them, even if you follow all the roads, so profound is the Discourse it implies’.80 According to this Plato who concords with Heraclitus, the psyche comes to coincide with the logos. Natorp, who did not

78

Cf. Allgemeine Psychologie, 257. E. Husserl, Briefwechsel, 159. These are words that Natorp wrote to Husserl on 22 September 1922. 80 Cf. Platos Ideenlehre, 465. The fragment (Diels Kranz 45) already served as exergo for the edition of De anima edited by Trendelenburg. 79

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think it possible to avoid objectivization, did not succeed in giving expression to the affirmed ‘subjectivization’ as the peculiar task of critical psychology. Natorp found himself in the grip of the pincers constituted by his need to find a method of grasping living continuity and the conviction that the concrete consists in ultimate and individual determination, an extreme result and, in the last resort, only the ideal goal of the objectivating determination process. Natorp now starts from the postulated metaphysical unity81 and he therefore unifies the two counterposed directions that the Allgemeine Psychologie spoke about and recuperates the plane of the psyche as the plane of the doxa. And that is not enough. The value of truth assigned to the doxa ‘between the passivity of aisthesis and the activity of episteme depends precisely on ‘the originary aperture of being in the foundation peculiar to the psyche’,82 which means reopening space for the particular reflection procedure peculiar to the repudiated and in some way psychologist philosophies of knowledge, for which — and here one need only think of Fries as a particular example — thought is an originary function of the psyche. ‘The psyche arrives at self-justification of the logos [...] thanks to the movement that takes place backwards and in circles within itself, and which in Plato (as previously in Heraclitus) has to found the reflective nature of consciousness’.83 Certainly, in theory Natorp is still talking about Plato, but the doxa as a ‘sudden sending of light: it is so! in the psyche’84 really serves Natorp for that positive recuperation of not so much as what is out of the reach of the logos or objectivation, but rather of what has to be capable of being grasped, or at least affirmed. quite irrespective of the constitutive constraints of scientific objectivating consciousness. It serves him

81

This reversal or turning upside down of the ‘classical’ Marburg version of the interpretation of Plato’s and later Kant’s idea is somewhat emblematic: ‘‘idea’ is therefore not simply [...] a visual penetration of (Durchschau zur) the totality, grasping every detail by entering into it (Hineinschau) [...] but intuitively grasping it in all its profundity (An- und Einschau) starting from the totality’, Platos Ideenlehre, 472. 82 Platos Ideenlehre, 474. 83 Platos Ideenlehre, 504. The reference to Heraclitus is to the edition by Diels Kranz, ‘the psyche is the logos that keeps on growing’, which Natorp cites on 499. 84 Platos Ideenlehre, 493.

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to give voice to the ‘Sache selbst’ — the expression cannot but strike one, even though it only translates Plato’s auto to pragma — which the word does not constitute, and which has to be known starting solely from itself.85

85

Platos Ideenlehre, 508.

NOTES ON FUTURE AND HISTORY IN HERMANN COHEN’S ANTI-ESCHATOLOGICAL MESSIANISM PIERFRANCESCO FIORATO, SASSARI

Contemporary culture appears to have lost the possibility of immediate, positive access to the dimension of the future. An ever increasing number of analyses and debates deal with the difficulty of finding plausible forms of a positive projection in this direction, the decline of historical projectuality, the inflation of the new and the parallel loss of plausibility of the projects of modernity.1 While the ‘no future’ attitude is actually as widespread as its manifestations are ‘undramatic’, the residual ‘ethics of the future’, in the face of the inappropriateness of positive historical teleologies, has to face, above all, the task of a ‘heuristics of fear’2 while the theme of the end attracts ever wider interest.3 Thus, in the face of a much publicized return of philosophies of history celebrating the achievement of the final goal of the historical process by re-presenting the worst mystifications and defences of the existent, which an off hand use of teleology brings with it,4 the only apparently reliable perspective for a reading of the past using teleological interpretations more subtly

1

This paper is a revised version of my article ‘Una debole forza messianica’, in: Annuario filosofico 12 (1996), 299-327. Translated from the Italian by John Denton. One example is the extensive interest and widespread discussion, in European philosophy, following R. Koselleck’s reflections on ‘experience space’ and ‘expectation horizon’ in Vergangene Zukunft (Frankfurt am Main, 1979). 2 Cf. H. Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung (Frankfurt am Main, 1979). Cf. also the widespread, predominantly Anglo-American discussion on responsibilities and obligations to future generations. 3 Cf. J. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie (Paris, 1983). 4 I am especially thinking of the international best-seller by F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992).

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and which intends to aim at an adequate exploitation of the remaining open alternatives and possibilities seems to be the ‘eschatological’ one.5 In the crisis situation described above, a further look at Hermann Cohen’s messianism may seem to be a provocation, and, worse still, a gratuitous and ineffective one; interest in this important representative of late nineteenth century German liberal-rationalist optimism who theorized progress being at most historical (as is generally the case with neo-Kantianism). The purpose of these notes is different. Their author is convinced that positive results could emerge from interaction between Cohen’s theoretical outlook and some of the arguments put forward by subsequent ‘philosophical extremism’.6 Expectations of interesting results from an experiment of this kind originate in the fact that ‘the Marburg School was put aside but not “surpassed”’ by subsequent generations.7 Cohen’s outlook is inevitably enriched by new meanings in this new situation, or, at least, undergoes new foregrounding. This is what the title of these notes aims at underlining, by drawing attention to the anti-eschatological character of the messianism in question. The theoretical proposition to which this paper wishes to contribute has its kernel here: philosophical dignity will be attributed to this ‘anti-eschatologism’ considered in the light of the different theoretical outlooks variously associating ‘philosophical eschatologism’ with the theme of decision.8

5

Such a strong contrast between the teleological and eschatological interpretation of history is a recurrent theme in J. Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt. Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987). 6 The expression comes from N. Bolz, Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt. Philosophischer Extremismus zwischen den Weltkriegen (München, 1989). 7 A ‘kurze Rekapitulation des Herganges, in dem die Marburger Philosophie zwar verdrängt, aber nicht “überwunden” wurde’ opens D. Adelmann’s dissertation: Einheit des Bewußtseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Heidelberg 1968), which has the merit of opening up a new phase in the reception of Cohen’s philosophy. Similar considerations lie behind studies by H. Holzhey: Cohen und Natorp (Basel/Stuttgart, 1986), and A. Poma, La filosofia critica di Hermann Cohen (Milano, 1988), English translation: The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Albany, 1997).

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To make this proposal plausible, this paper aims to illustrate how Cohen’s ethical messianism (the ‘practical idealism of messianology’, contrasted by Cohen with the ‘myth of eschatology’)9 is not an empty academic position, but a serious, radical philosophical meditation, which is capable of withstanding confrontation with the nihilistic aspects of the subsequent problematic reflection on the meaning of history.

1. An inexact quotation The paradigmatic nature of Cohen’s reflection on the future and history is borne out by the fact that Karl Löwith, in the introduction to his Meaning in History, in order to illustrate the structural reference linking the very concept of history to that of the future, quotes some of the most significant passages from the former’s Religion der Vernunft organically amalgamating them with his own viewpoint. In the 1949 American edition these passages followed the acknowledgement ‘in the words of Hermann Cohen, freely translated’, which is absent from the main text of the German edition. Löwith only mentions their origin in the notes and does not verbatim quote Cohen’s original German.10 We are dealing with a patchwork of passages, almost all of them taken, with slight modifications, from two places in Cohen’s posthumous work, where he points out how the concept of history taken as the ‘being of the future’, is a creation of 8 It is clearly impossible to consider all the aspects of these outlooks in the brief space of one article. A better strategy is to concentrate on the most essential relevant features in this sense of Cohen’s less well known approach. A collection of the main links between decisionism and eschatology is to be found in Taubes’ writings on Schmitt (see note 5). For an interpretation of the common features of the different forms of decisionism, including Heidegger’s, cf., in addition to the well known concluding pages of the essay by K. Löwith, ‘Der okkasionelle Dezisionismus von Carl Schmitt’, in Sämtliche Schriften (Stuttgart, 1981ff.), vol. 8, 32-71, the persuasive views, influenced by Taubes, of N. Bolz in Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt, 47-94. 9 Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 505. 10 Cf. K. Löwith, Meaning in History (1949), 17; German edition (1953), revised by the author: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, in: Sämtliche Schriften (Stuttgart, 1983), vol. 2, 28.

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prophetic messianism.11 What is presented as the last quotation (‘instead of a golden age in the mythological past, the true historical existence on earth is constituted by an eschatological future’) is not only translated freely, but also, interpreting the messianic future in an eschatological sense, is actually a radical alteration of Cohen’s thought.12 When Löwith takes over Cohen’s statements, he adapts them so radically to his own argument as to provide an unacceptable interpretation.13 The fact that we are not dealing with a secondary question here, but that, on the contrary, the elimination of any eschatological value from messianism is an essential aspect of Cohen’s outlook clearly comes out in various places in his philosophical works. This is obvious in the Religion der Vernunft, where the introduction of the distinction between messianism and eschatology at the end of the first, fundamental chapter confers on it the dignity of a principle for all the subsequent argument.14 The fact that the first of the conclusions reached by the exhaustive survey of the ‘messianic passages in the prophets’ in Chapter XIV 11

Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 305, 291f. — Löwith is actually quoting from the 1919 Leipzig edition, which, however, has no variations compared with the Frankfurt edition published ten years later, as far as the passages in question are concerned. 12 The book’s complicated publishing history evidently affected attention to detail. It is significant that not only this last quotation, but also the lack of precision in the quotation of the other passages are absent from the version Löwith prepared for Anteile, the Festschrift for Heidegger published by Klostermann in 1950, i.e. a year after the publication of Meaning in History in the USA. Cf. the essay ‘Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen’ (1950), now in: Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 2, 240-279, esp. 255. Löwith himself points out in the introduction to the 1953 German edition that in 1949 he had had to use a language that ‘the author had to make his own’ and that ‘does not lend itself to conceptual and verbal subtleties’. Since several terminological and conceptual clarifications were introduced into the 1953 text, for the above reasons, it is from this edition that we shall quote, though also with reference to the American edition. 13 The same orientation in an eschatological direction of Cohen’s thoughts and expressions can be traced in the passage where Löwith writes: ‘“mankind” has not existed in the historical past, nor can it exist in any present. It is an idea and an ideal of the future, the necessary horizon for the eschatological concept of history and its universality.’, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 29; Meaning in History, 18; cf. Religion der Vernunft, 292. 14 Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 57.

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is the need to activate this distinction is only one confirmation.15 Actually the question needs to be raised whether Cohen’s limited conception of eschatology, which he saw as practically only a doctrine concerning death and the destiny of the individual soul, is the consequence of a low consideration of the complexity of the eschaton itself, which his philosophy maintains, as we aim to show, in a systematic and structural form. It is at this level that comparison with Löwith can supply useful indications for the organization of an argument. Löwith’s definition of ‘philosophy of history’ on the first page of the quoted introduction implies the relation of historical events to an ‘ultimate meaning’16. Here, in accordance with the well known reconstruction, ‘ultimate’ leads back to an eschatological source: ‘the quest for an ultimate meaning ... emerged from the eschatological faith in a final purpose of the history of salvation’.17 This ‘final purpose’ (Endzweck) is in turn coherently interpreted as ‘final goal’ (Endziel) and it is with reference to this that the problem of ‘ultimate meaning’ is clarified: ‘The claim that history has an ultimate meaning implies a final purpose or goal transcending the actual events’.18 Starting from the reference to this goal the ‘eschatological future’ from which we started out is defined as: ‘The temporal horizon for a final goal is, however, an eschatological future’.19 Thus the ‘eschatological compass’20 allows an ‘orientation towards something ultimate and future, which is both end and meaning’.21 We can define this orientation towards an ‘ultimate end’ where finis and telos coincide22 as the ‘strong’ model of the philosophy of history. The thought of ‘fulfilment’ is essential to it: ‘The fullness of meaning is a question of temporal fulfilment.’.23 The structural link between meaning and fulfilment 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 336. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 11; Meaning in History, 1 Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15; Meaning in History, 5 Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15; Meaning in History, 6 Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 16; Meaning in History, 6 Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 29; Meaning in History, 18 ‘Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen’ (= essay for Anteile, see note 12), 259. Cf. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 29; Meaning in History, 18 Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15 — words added to the German edition.

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which comes to light here confers decisive weight on the determination of ‘wholeness’ (Ganzheit). Only the meaning of the ‘whole event’ is concerned: ‘“whole” by a definite point of departure and an ultimate, eschatological point of arrival’.24 Löwith’s contribution to Anteile is important here for the light it sheds on the whole problem. After returning to his argument in the Introduction to the American work published the year before, he illustrates the presence of such an ‘eschatological orientation towards something ultimate and future, which is both end and meaning’ in Heidegger’s existential analytic.25 The mutual entailment between meaning and end at the root of Heidegger’s concern over the Ganz-sein-können of the Dasein, and therefore the ‘eschatology’ implicit in ‘being for death’ are foregrounded here in a form which, if it is certainly not that of formal homage, is not, as it would like to appear, a mere illustration of the survival of schemes of theological origin in contemporary thought. What emerges here is instead the overwhelming presence, for Löwith, of an unavoidable term of comparison, which is inevitably destined to determine the entire orientation of his reflection on history. As is well known, it is in the second essay in the collection Heidegger. Denker in dürftiger Zeit26 that Löwith adopts a more detailed standpoint regarding Heidegger’s ‘historicity’. Here he reconstructs the progressive radicalization of Heidegger’s outlook from his position concerning the eschatology of the Dasein, in the sense of the rooting of ‘historicity’ in ‘being for the end’,27 up to his re-thinking this historicity starting from the ‘absolutely ultimate requirement’ for a Seinsgeschick28 and then to the ‘eschatological construction of universal history as the history of being’.29 Löwith concentrates on the demanding character imposed by such an eschatological background on ‘resoluteness’ (Entschlossenheit), a resoluteness which, actually, in its radicalness, 24

Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15; Meaning in History, 5 Cf. ‘Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen’ (see note 12), 258f. 26 ‘Geschichte, Geschichtlichkeit und Seinsgeschick’, in: Heidegger. Denker in dürftiger Zeit, (Göttingen, 19602), 44-71, reprinted in vol. 8 of Sämtliche Schriften (henceforth: ‘Geschichte’). 27 ‘Geschichte’, 67. See also 47. 28 ‘Geschichte’, 47. 25

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‘does not know what it is resolute about’.30 The reflections on the absence in Heidegger’s thought of criteria for distinguishing ‘between what really happens and what happens “vulgarly”’31 and the pages describing the ruthless way in which vulgar history takes vengeance on the thinker of resoluteness are too well known to be re-discussed here. As a victim of the ambiguity of history, Heidegger, through reflection on the ‘need’ for misunderstanding, was to confer a deeper meaning, ‘without a shadow of irony’ on his own ‘ineptitude’ (Ungeschicklichkeit).32 The true root of the impossibility of identifying sure criteria for evaluating events, and thus of Heidegger’s ‘failure’, in Löwith’s view, is to be traced in the very philosophical project of ‘understanding time starting from time’.33 In opposition to this he places the need to return to the thought of something indomitable on the temporal horizon of the temporal historical world. Thus, behind his scepticism towards history, the idea of eternity is more constantly present, the idea of ‘something everlasting’, which, in the end, he identified with ‘nature’.34 This is certainly not the place to deal in detail with the problematic aspects of a perspective thus opened up.35 What is of interest, for a confrontation with Cohen, is Löwith’s loyalty, even when abandoning the philosophy of history, to some of the essential categories of the ‘strong’ model of the philosophy of his29 ‘Geschichte’, 56. Cf. also 45. The expression ‘eschatology of being’ is used by Heidegger, as is well known, in his essay on the saying of Anaximander, where it is stated that ‘being itself, inasmuch as it is geschicklich, is in itself eschatological’, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main, 19806), 323. On the meaning of this ‘eschatology’ cf. G. Vattimo, Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger (Genova, 19892), 23-25; here see also the considerations on the eschatological structure of temporality in Sein und Zeit, 77f. 30 ‘Geschichte’, 49. — As can be seen in his autobiographical work Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933 (Stuttgart, 1986), this expression comes from a successful parody of Heidegger by one of his students. 31 ‘Geschichte’, 49. 32 ‘Geschichte’, 51. 33 ‘Geschichte’, 44 and 50. 34 Cf. the final pages of the essay ‘M. Heidegger und F. Rosenzweig. Ein Nachtrag zu “Sein und Zeit”’, now in: Sämliche Schriften, vol. 8, 161-188. 35 Cf. J. Habermas, ‘Karl Löwiths stoischer Rückzug vom historischen Bewußtsein’, in: idem, Theorie und Praxis (Neuwied am Rhein/Berlin, 19672), 352-370, as well as the concluding pages of A. Caracciolo, Karl Löwith (Napoli, 1974).

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tory from which he believed he was keeping his distance. Despite his self proclaimed scepticism, this is particularly valid in the face of concern over Ganzheit, sinnstiftende Ganzheit. The critical comments concluding his 1968 work entitled ‘Philosophie der Vernunft und Religion der Offenbarung in H. Cohens Religionsphilosophie’ are especially significant in this respect.36 Here Löwith returns to what he calls not only ‘the oldest’ but also ‘the only fundamental philosophical question’ i.e. what is ‘one and all’,37 and maintains that ‘Cohen’s philosophical error’ is to consider ‘the shared, surrounding historical world in which one is born by chance’ as if it were already ‘the one and all of that world of importance to philosophy, inasmuch as it is thought of one and all’.38 It is not in history, with its remote teleological presuppositions, but rather in nature, which ‘immediately testifies by itself’,39 that the ‘one and all’ is identified where man should recognize his originary and authentic place. Löwith’s scepticism, though capable of appreciating ‘problems as problems’40 does not appear to have any room for a problematic, questioning philosophy of history, on the basis of his own categories. Whatever man’s chances of freeing himself 36

This is a revised and expanded version of the lecture he gave in Marburg on 21 June 1968 on the occasion of the fiftieeth anniversary of Cohen’s death. It was first published in the same year in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften and reprinted in vol. 3 of Sämtliche Schriften, 349-383, from which quotations are taken here. Although this is his only work dealing specifically with Cohen, Löwith’s familiarity with some of the former’s writings is borne out by his Habilitationsschrift: cf. Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen (München, 1928), 2 and 55, reprinted in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1 (1981), 17 and 71. Cf., however, his letter dated 15 April 1935 to Leo Strauss, where he admits that he had ‘not studied [Cohen] very much’. 37 Sämtliche Schriften vol 3, 381f. 38 Sämtliche Schriften vol. 3, 381. 39 Cf. Sämliche Schriften vol. 3, 383: ‘Die Welt der Geschichte bezeugt sich in historischen Dokumenten, die Welt der Natur bezeugt sich unmittelbar selbst.’ (The world of history testifies in historical documents, the world of nature immediately testifies by itself.) This presumed ahistorical immediacy of our access to nature is actually, perhaps beyond Löwith’s intentions, the exact overturning of that ‘in gedruckten Büchern gegebene und in einer Geschichte wirklich gewordene Erfahrung’ (experience given in printed books and become real in history) which Cohen mentions, cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik (Berlin, 19102), 35. 40 Cf. M. Heidegger und F. Rosenzweig, 188.

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from questions on the meaning of such an essential dimension for him as history, ‘determined resoluteness’, remains the last word in Löwith’s outlook in the face of that lack of irony before the ambiguity of history characterizing Heidegger’s blind ‘resoluteness’. It is this ‘determined resolutenes’ which, under the guidance of Burckhardt’s Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, puts the seal on the reflections in Meaning in History.41

2. Negative ontology of time: the presuppositions of ethical messianism The following pages aim to contribute to a definition of a problematic, questioning philosophy of history. Helmut Holzhey, in his introduction to a collection of articles aiming at readmitting ill treated neo-Kantian ‘ethical socialism’ to contemporary discussion of the problem of history, recently wrote of ‘a weak variant of the philosophy of history’ with reference to Cohen.42 The references to Löwith in the previous section aimed at offering a point of contrast, outlining in classic terms what can be considered a ‘strong’ version of the philosophy of history. This seemed to be essentially characterized by structural reference to something ultimate which is, at the same time, end and meaning. It now needs to be pointed out that it is in respect of that model that Cohen’s philosophy systematically undervalues the eschaton as such, denying himself any speculation on the goal of history. Actually, we are about to show how Cohen entrusted messianism with the task of such undervaluation.

41

Cf. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 213. Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus und Sozialismus’, in: idem (ed.), Ethischer Sozialismus. Zur politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 23.

42

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Gershom Scholem’s well known considerations on the messianic idea as ‘an authentic anti-existentialist idea’43 become particularly significant and important for the problem we are dealing with here, if they are related to Heidegger’s concern for the Ganz-sein-können of Dasein. This is the direction our appreciation of the messianic paradigm as an essential constitutive trait of Cohen’s philosophical thought will take. We shall acknowledge it as an effective antidote against the trend, which is deeply rooted in reason, to think Ganzheit and determine the meaning in it. This is a trend that even some of the most artful nihilist outlooks seem to have been unable to avoid. On the basis of these premises the philosophical principle value that we intend to attribute to messianism is clear. In the well chosen words of Peter A. Schmid, Cohen’s messianism does not concern ‘a particular idea of the Jewish religion, but rather a universal principle of reason; in the final analysis, even the principle of unity of reason itself’.44 It may be useful to add that by this one does not intend to restore the whole of Cohen’s philosophy to Judaism so as to present an interpretation in terms of ‘Jewish philosophy’. It is not that we wish to deny the validity of

43 G. Scholem, Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), 167. Scholem underlines this idea by the use of the concept of ‘life in postponement’ (Leben im Aufschub). He had originally developed this train of thought on this theological category in his notes ‘Ueber das Buch Jonas und den Begriff der Gerechtigkeit’ written in Bern in 1919; now in: G. Scholem, Tagebücher 1917-1923 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 522-536. He attributed the inapplicability of the written Torah to the fact that, though it is divine law, it is not yet justice. It becomes the latter in ‘the infinite postponement of tradition’. In this sense, ‘justice is the idea of the historical annihilation of divine judgment’. These notes considerably influenced Benjamin: cf. Scholem’s remarks in: Walter Benjamin — Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 93, 181, 213 and Benjamin’s texts in Gesammelte Schriften vol. 2, 427 and 1191, vol. 6, 60. It is also significant that Aufschub is the German translation of Derrida’s term différance: cf. the translation of L’écriture et la différence: Die Schrift und die Differenz, trans. by R. Gasché (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), especially 311: ‘Der Aufschub bildet das Wesen des Lebens’. It also appears relevant that this interpretation of messianism met with disagreement by J. Taubes in his Jerusalem lecture ‘The Price of Messianism’, now in a German edition in: idem, Vom Kult zur Kultur (München, 1996), especially 48f. 44 P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik. Systematische Untersuchungen zu Hermann Cohens Rechts- und Tugendlehre (Würzburg, 1995), 197.

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such an approach or, worse still, ignore the importance of the feeling of belonging to a cultural tradition and the ‘historische Pietät’ towards it of Cohen’s philosophical Selbstverständnis. It does appear to be crucial to underline the fact that the moment of ‘aufklärerische Verpflichtung’ in the face of the principles of universality of critical rationalism is an equally important part of this Selbstverständnis.45 In other words, and without ignoring the insuppressible ‘personal’ dimension characterizing a philosopher’s reflections,46 it is a question of keeping to Cohen’s parameters of rationality and ‘scientific precision’, by which he certainly wanted his philosophy to be judged. As far as messianism is concerned, it thus seems to be inevitable that the preliminary question be raised as to its qualifications to enter the field of philosophy and be accepted as a philosophical principle. Cohen himself faces the problem at the beginning of the chapter in Religion der Vernunft devoted to ‘The idea of the Messiah and humanity’. Providing concrete evidence of the Verpflichtung towards the ‘transcendental method’ to which the selfawareness of the Marburg School of critical philosophy was mostly entrusted, he asks himself here whether ethics ‘draws inspiration for the concept of man only from history, the doctrine of law and politics, or whether religion supplies useful material’ for the problem under consideration. The answer, which can already be found in the title of the chapter, for which the very idea of humanity is a creation of prophetic messianism, legitimizes, following the parameters of the transcendental method, the inclusion of contents originally expressed by messianism in philosophy.47

45

Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Hermann Cohen: der Philosoph in Auseinandersetzung mit den politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen seiner Zeit’, in: R. Brandt, F. Orlik (eds), Philosophisches Denken — Politisches Wirken (Hildesheim, 1993), 15-36, especially 32. Cohen’s interpretation of the legend of the three rings is of particular significance here: Der Begriff der Religion, 119f. 46 This aspect has been especially highlighted in Cohen’s case by H. Holzhey, ‘Hermann Cohen: der Philosoph in Auseinandersetzung mit den politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen seiner Zeit’, passim, and by P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 168-173 and 293-309. 47 Religion der Vernunft, 278.

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All this, obviously, does not yet justify the raising of messianism to the dignity of a philosophical principle. If one accepts the thesis that messianism expresses the ‘principle of the unity of reason itself’, the messianic idea is attributed with a fundamental role at a systematic level. This can only happen if the role itself is associated with the theme of humanity.48 Only the ‘deduction’ of the systematic centre-of-gravity function belonging to the latter can be the authentic justification of the philosophical necessity of messianism. The systematic character of this problem prevents it from being elaborated and resolved in the framework of one of the parts (even if this be the most directly relevant one, i.e. ethics) of the system. It is only within the dimension of truth of the system itself,49 that is in the context of the definition of the mutual relationship between the different Systemglieder, that the question of messianism as a principle of unity of reason can be adequately formulated. The very centrality of ethical concern, in this sense, derives from a wider problematic context and originates in certain fundamental motives of the systematic setup. These motives, which we can succinctly refer back to Cohen’s anti-ontologism, find their most effective expression in his philosophical reflection on reality and time. It is from here, from the radical, anti-metaphysical standpoint expressed in the treatment of these problems, that the ethical messianic outlook attains its significance. This outlook is essentially defined by the radical taking up of responsibility that the abandonment of ontological, objective guarantees of meaning makes necessary. In his essay entitled ‘Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik’, Cohen had already identified the fundamental condition for understanding idealism in general as an ability to understand the ‘the difference between being and existence’ (Unterschied von Sein und Dasein).50 The philosophical conception to which Cohen entrusts, against any (either spiritualist or ma48 The ‘motive of humanity as a fundamental, systematic problem’ is the core of the third chapter of D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewußtseins, 109ff. 49 For the relationship between truth and system in Cohen cf. especially Chapters 1 and 9 of the Ethik. 50 ‘Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik’ (1878), in: Schriften I, 336-366, esp. 348.

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terialist)51 metaphysics, the safeguarding of the heritage of critical philosophy thus, right from the outset, obtains an essential characterization, precisely from an opposition to ontologism. In the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, it is the discussion in this sense of the ‘ontological problem’ that significantly acts as an introduction to the principle of origin52 thus decisively contributing to the definition of the fundamental terms of Cohen’s theoretical thought. The specific radicalism of his ‘meontology’53 is highlighted by the contrast with the metaphysical conception of the ontological foundation. Even though, for certain aspects, the most scandalous face of Cohen’s loyalty to anti-ontologism consists in the theology of the ‘in’-existence of God developed in the works on the philosophy of religion,54 in order to understand the basic reasons for this viewpoint, it is advisable to start from the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. Initially it may help to consider some of the main changes he thinks necessary to introduce, in the general arrangement of the work, into Kant’s table of judgments and categories. The new positioning and new meaning of the determination of reality (Realität) are important for the reconstruction of the fundamental traits of Cohen’s negative ontology. In the section devoted to ‘the names for being’, the primacy of reality is acknowledged.55 This new displacement, however, reflects the different value now attributed to this fundamental determination. More than a shift from quality to quantity (a shift that, in the end, simply strengthens an already latent link in Kant’s argu51

On spiritualism, materialism and idealism cf., in this sense, Ethik, 315. Cf. Logik, 80f. 53 The expression ‘meontologia’ is used by S. Givone, Storia del nulla (RomaBari, 1995), xviii. Certain similarities and differences between Cohen’s negative ontology (with the raising of Plato’s mè ón to a structural principle) and an ontology of nothing originating in Heidegger will emerge from subsequent pages. Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Heidegger und Cohen. Negativität in Denken des Ursprungs’, in: G. Hauff, H.R. Schweizer, A. Wildermuth (eds.), In Erscheinung treten. Heinrich Barths Philosophie des Ästhetischen (Basel, 1990), 97-114. 54 Cf. Begriff der Religion, 46f., 50 and Religion der Vernunft, 38, 51f. I attempted a more detailed treatment of this aspect in my article ‘Problematologia divina. La filosofia dell’origine in Cohen tra ontologismo cristiano e nichilismo’, in: Discipline filosofiche 9 (1999), 103-120. 55 Logik, 127f. 52

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mentation)56 the consequent loss of any link between the concept of reality and the moment of affirmation appears significant in this sense. The latter finds a new term of reference, within qualitative determinations, in the concept of identity, but loses its primacy in favour of that originary operation with negativity which is implicit in questioning and which Cohen’s logic takes up as the principle of origin.57 On the other hand, the first position now occupied by reality within the quantitative determinations does not imply identification with the positive ‘stability’ belonging to unity, but is accompanied, on the contrary, by denial to the latter of the character of univocal determination: ‘The meaning of unity is not at all unitary, but reflects the obscurity hovering over the ground of pure thought’, adds Cohen significantly.58 In the place of this lack of identification, a rather more worrying correspondence between reality and origin appears on the horizon. Reality for Cohen is nothing other than the determination of ‘how being reaches definition on the basis of origin’.59 Rather: the ‘motive of reality’ is ‘specification’ of the ‘motive of origin’,60 which thus acquires the ‘meaning of being’ which it had not yet achieved.61 It is the ‘originary’ movement with which thought, so as to justify its simplest content, is forced to take on the ‘adventurous Umweg’ of nothing that is invested with new ‘ontological’ meaning (in such a way as to undermine the very possibility of reassuring positive ontology). This nothing, which, as ‘a station along the way of questioning’ and as a ‘strengthened question’, shows itself to be the logical origin of something. Ab nihilo ens qua ens fit.62

56

Cf. in this sense M. Heidegger, Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 390. 57 Cf. the relevant chapters in Logik, 79-104. 58 ‘Die Bedeutung der Einheit ist keineswegs einheitlich; sondern sie spiegelt die Unklarheit ab, welche über dem Grunde des reinen Denkens schwebt’, Logik 144. 59 Logik, 134. 60 Logik, 129. 61 Logik, 134. 62 Cf. Logik, 84.

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Awareness that thought acquires in this vertiginous moment of finding itself all alone and discovering that it is more originary than any determination of being and ‘beyond its presence’,63 is the essential nucleus around which Cohen builds up his ‘logic of pure knowledge’. If this nucleus must find its ‘specification’ in the motive of reality, the latter can only represent this ‘abyssal’ surpassing of all positivity hereby acknowledging the being itself in it. In the infinitesimal seen as pure presupposition of thought, the foundation of every finite determination which avoids, in turn, the same determination64 and is thus destined to remain absolute Voraussetzung of being, but not its Erfüllung,65 Cohen believed he could find the most appropriate expression of reality. The opposition of Cohen’s idealism to the mixing of being and existence proper to ontologism finds its deepest motives here. Negation rather than affirmation of an originary presence, being as reality is constitutively characterized by in-existence. It should not only be distinguished from Dasein, but is precisely defined as Nicht-Da(sein), as the negation of all the constitutive characters of the latter determination. One essential trait of Cohen’s negative ontology consists in this sense in denying the present the dignity of originary determination of being. The present is constitutively linked to extension and, presupposing the ‘mediation of simultaneity’ (Zugleich),66 actually constitutes a ‘moment of space’,67 and thus of the final, extrinsic arrival of that ‘adventure of realization’ (E. Bloch) which, starting out from non extended reality, is initially and decisively — though precariously — activated in time.

63

Logik, 31 Logik, 135 65 Logik¸ 146. 66 Ethik, 399. 67 Logik, 228. An emphasis somewhat analogous to the spatial component of the ‘ordinary present’ can be found in E. Bloch, Experimentum mundi (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 84ff. 64

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The very characterization of time as a ‘category of anticipation’68 — a characterization accompanied by the conviction that ‘the future contains and reveals the character of time’69 — can be included in its actual justification only starting from the conception of reality outlined above. Cohen contrasts, as more originary, the ‘per-spective’ of anticipation with the extrinsic retrospectiveness of the ordinary conception of time as a given succession. The correlation of future and past within which the logical determination of ‘plurality’ (Mehrheit) finds its originary formulation, replaces the ‘correlation of past and present’:70 In the face of the not-yet the no-longer emerges. Thus the two points making up the series are born in them. Thus the first form of plurality is born in them: in the separation of the past from the originary act of the future.71

To avoid ambiguities, Cohen believes he must insist on the fact that the present nothing is less than that ‘fixed point’ which is usually considered, but is, on the other hand, ‘suspended’, consists ‘in suspension between anticipated future and its retrieval, its echo, the past’.72 It is only starting from here, from decentralized temporality, that the ‘logic of origin’ tenaciously contrasts with the dominance of the schemes of ontologism, that the primacy of the future on which philosophical messianism is then grafted can be understood in its non-gratuitousness.

3. Being of the future and final purpose: ethical anti-eschatologism The need to rethink the determination of the future, so as to restore significance that would otherwise have been lost to it, comes out clearly in the most successful characterization of the messianic age that the Religion der Vernunft is able to offer:

68 69 70 71 72

Logik, 155. Logik, 154. Cf. Ethik, 399. Logik, 154f. Logik, 155.

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Time becomes future and nothing but future. Past and present are submerged in this future time. This return in time is the purest idealization. Any existence disappears before this being of the future. Thus the notion of history arises for the life of men and peoples.73

Some of Cohen’s other texts can help to adequately understand the ‘being of the future’ mentioned above and the general meaning of this transformation, which is paradoxical at first sight, of all time into future. That this future cannot be understood as a mere ‘not yet’, lined up in time seen as a succession, comes in from the short circuit established between the need, raised in the Ethik, for which ‘the future can never transform itself into a present’74 and the statement in the Religion der Vernunft, according to which the ‘messianic future’ must fill every moment of existence, without ‘waiting for the future’.75 The result of these two statements can only undermine a flat linear conception of time, shifting attention to the forms of its temporalization. The two different temporalities were already like that, being defined by the above mentioned ‘past-present’ and ‘futurepast’ correlations The future is not simply defined by the ‘not yet’, but is, more exactly, a way of being of time; it constitutes, in the words of the Logik, its ‘originary act’, ursprüngliche Tat.76 An ‘originary act’ which is, however, misunderstood and which needs to be brought to light, against the tendency to consider succession as ‘given in itself and for itself’, as if it were not time itself which instituted before and after, but that, in conformity with it, time simply flowed away.77 Cohen’s idealism is certainly, constitutively, ‘idealism of the future’.78 But only if one avoids considering these words — and the (partly provocative) profession of optimism connected with them79 — as the mere expression of naive 73

Religion der Vernunft, 291. Ethik, 408. 75 Religion der Vernunft, 360. 76 Logik, 155. 77 Cf. Logik, 151-153. 78 Religion der Vernunft, 312. 79 For an adequate treatment of this problem area in Cohen’s thought cf., the pages of Religion der Vernunft where the ethical optimism of messianism is contrasted with the subtle metaphysical lure of pessimism (Religion der Vernunft, 74

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faith, can the structural link be glimpsed joining this attention for the future to the fundamental themes of Cohen’s critical philosophy. In opposition to the blunting tendency to shut oneself up in a given horizon, it is, first of all, a question of restoring the nature of an open, non-guaranteed frontier to time, a nature of a risky, exposed ridge from which, moment after moment, (in the words of the Ethik) there is a ‘leap, as if into the void’.80 It is precisely the highlighting of these anything but reassuring features of this outlook that makes Cohen’s reflections on the future, even in the eyes of the contemporary orientation crisis, still relevant today. It is the very dizziness caused by the thought of origin that returns here, in a new rejection of the placating given. Even the all too easy ambiguity of passages such as that where the ‘plus sign’ is defined as ‘the symbol, the heraldic mace of time’81 finds a parallel in the apparently triumphalist proclamation of the ‘sovereignty of thought’ with which the Logik introduces the principle of origin.82 The sovereignty of thought before being is, however, above all the expression of the radical assumption of responsibility which brings with it a passing from the condition of subject to that of co-legislator — and a similar need is also expressed in the necessity of restoring the full meaning of a decisive front of realization to the future. With the reference to the concept of responsibility the point has been identified where Cohen’s anti-ontologism reveals, at its root, ethical inspiration and value. This is the (hostile) place of 20f., 524), and also the final statement of the first edition of Kants Begründung der Ethik (1877): ‘Es ist in Wahrheit nicht nur ein Fortschritt der ethischen Kultur, sondern mittelbar auch ein solcher der ethischen Wissenschaft, daß die Frage des Optimismus in unserm Jahrhundert, sofern man von der Unterhaltungs-Philosophie abzusehen hat, abgelöst ist durch das Problem des Sozialismus’. (368) (Actually the fact that the question of optimism has been substituted, in our century, regardless of drawing room philosophy, by the problem of socialism is a sign of progress, not only of ethical culture, but, indirectly, of ethical science). 80 Ethik, 140. 81 Logik, 155. These expressions are used by E. Bloch in his essay ‘Differenzierungen im Begriff Fortschritt’, see: idem, Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), 119f. 82 Logik, 31.

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ethics. It is from here, from this ‘abyssal’ consciousness of self of thought, that ethics must make a start; not in the sense that in praktischer Absicht it is possible to achieve a new absolute foundation — in a new version of Kant’s passage from presupposition to postulate —,83 but in the sense in which ethics is nothing more than the elaboration of this ‘non-achieving’. As Peter Schmid pointed out with particular cogency, it is especially Kants Begründung der Ethik that contains the most helpful indications from this point of view concerning the systematic connection of problems and the deepest hermeneutic dimension of ethics. 84 According to this work, ‘in the face of the abyss of intelligible contingency the problem of morality arises’.85 It is the ‘metaphysical experience of the abyss of the intelligible contingency of all knowledge’86 that is the departure point for ethics. Cohen’s ethical reflections do not flee the threat of this abyss; on the contrary, they remain constantly in its presence. Even the overcoming of this abyss remains ‘constantly conscious of its abyssal condition’.87 The possibility of an ‘elaboration’ of this experience allowing the ‘covering’ (bedecken) of the abyss of intelligible contingency is entrusted by Cohen, in the first instance, to ideas, understood

83

For Cohen’s criticism of the postulates of practical reason, cf., especially, Kants Begründung der Ethik 344-369. 84 P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 101-109. But on the systematic meaning of Kants Begründung der Ethik, cf. also D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewußtseins, 142165, and G. Gigliotti, Hermann Cohen e la fondazione kantiana dell’etica (Firenze, 1977), 31-66. 85 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 185. 86 P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 147. For an exhaustive analysis of the problems concerning the concept of intelligible contingency (developed by Cohen especially in the first chapter of Kants Begründung der Ethik) cf. 115ff. As is evident both from the Kommentar zu Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Leipzig, 1907), reprinted in Werke, vol. 4 (1978), 150, 198, and from Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636ff., Cohen is not so much thinking of the note to the thesis of the fourth antinomy, where Kant refers specifically to intelligible contingency, but rather of the passage on the contingency of experience in Kritik der reinen Vernunft B 764f. Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Wissenschaft und Gottesidee. Cohen vor dem “Abgrund der intelligibeln Zufälligkeit”’, in: I.U. Dalferth, Ph. Stoellger (eds.), Vernunft, Kontingenz und Gott (Tübingen, 2000), 273-290. 87 P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 170.

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by him as other ‘ways of interpreting the thing-in-itself’88 and thus as ‘attempts to resolve’89 that delimitation task represented by the thing-in-itself as a limit concept of the unconditioned. An essential systematic function is carried out, in this context, by the idea of end (Zweckidee), where not only the different meanings of this Grenzbegriff90 are assembled, but a definitive clarification of the connection between the doctrine of experience and ethics begins.91 The need for reference to a final purpose (Endzweck) comes particularly to the fore here as an essential moment for elaborating the problem of contingency. This takes place at first in the enigmatic form of recourse to an intelligible substratum of nature, which is still indeterminate: Thinking the chain of conditions is closed implies such a link with the unconditioned, such a connection with a final purpose, in whose legality all contingency ... finds its solution in an ultimate enigma. 92

Though these considerations are carried out in a part of the work illustrating the meaning of the idea of God as ‘systematic unity of ends’,93 Cohen hastens to point out that the identity of the idea of end with the idea of God ‘should be only understood in a limited sense’, since ‘the idea of end has its eminent regulative value in ethics, in the idea of freedom’.94 This change of direction cannot be without consequences for the interpretation of Endzweck; it will actually find its decisive expression here. Cohen clarifies this point explicitly in the Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag to Geschichte des Materialismus by F.A. Lange and in the Ethik des reinen Willens, where he complains about Kant’s use of the term Endzweck, which, owing to its ‘theological feel’,95 88

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 79. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 48. 90 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 103. 91 For an analysis of these problems cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 151167. 92 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 110. 93 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 103. 94 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 110f. For an interpretation of this passage cf. D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewußtseins, 149f. 95 Ethik, 320. 89

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supposedly contributed — together with the fact that teleology ‘has always been the arsenal of reaction, of lack of clarity and of ambiguity’96 — to blunting the historical and political incisiveness of its ethical outlook. The necessity, stated in these texts, for the meaning of Endzweck to be clarified in terms of what is ‘end in and to itself’ (Selbstzweck) finds its most effective confirmation in the interpretation of Endzweck posited in Kants Begründung der Ethik. As well as in the final part of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, Cohen’s attentions turns especially to the second formulation of the categorical imperative, in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: ‘Act in such a way as to treat the humanity in your person, as in that of everyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means’ — a formulation which Cohen sees thus: ‘the categorical imperative formula can be expressed aptly as the principle of humanity’97 and in whose ‘aggressive’ clarity98 he believes he can see, unequivocally, the enunciation of the ‘political idea of socialism’99 against the capitalist reduction of the worker to goods.100 It is precisely the character of ‘end in itself’ (Zweck an sich) recognized here for the ‘moral being’ as ‘autonomous nature’ that for Cohen is the only possible ‘final purpose’.101 It is a final purpose whose meaning he further clarifies, excluding any monological residue from Kant’s determination of autonomy102 and thus arriving at identification, on the basis of an interpretation of the ‘kingdom of ends’ as a ‘community of legislators’,103 of the

96

Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 113. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 274. 98 Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 113. 99 Ethik, 319. 100 Besides the contributions collected in the volume Ethischer Sozialismus, cf. H. van der Linden, Kantian Ethics and Socialism (Indianapolis, 1988). 101 Cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 265. 102 Cf. H. van der Linden, ‘Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants’, in: H. Holzhey (ed), Ethischer Sozialismus, especially 154-159. 103 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 227. 97

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very ‘moral law’ with the idea of a ‘community of ends which are autonomous in themselves’ (Gemeinschaft autonomer Selbstzwecke).104 It is precisely acknowledgement of the fact that — following Cohen’s incisive formulation — ‘autonomy ... is autotely’105 that confers an amplitude and reach on the principle of self-legislation sufficient to allow it to be glimpsed as the true place of elaboration of the problem of contingency and meaning. The context and form of a more exact definition of these problems exalt rather than hide the moment of vertiginous gratuitousness which inevitably accompanies the being an end to itself of Selbstzweck. The ‘extreme’ character of the dimension we are facing, at the moment Endzweck inasmuch as it is Selbstzweck reveals itself as the (metaphysically empty) centre of creation is brought to notice by Cohen’s particularly incisive use of the term ‘end’ (Ende); a use which makes this page of Kants Begründung der Ethik the true place where he, facing unreservedly the problem of that which is ‘ultimate’, can lay the foundations of his ethical antieschatologism: I have reached the end with every practical comparison and I must find myself in this end, I must go deeply into the meaning of this end … In the face of the thought of a community of autonomous ends all cunning ceases. He who can gain possession of this thought, he who can fill his spirit with it — ‘spirit’ in the ample, ancient sense of the word — he knows that asking again: end in view of what? would be misuse of the practical scheme, would become a stereotype. The end is here. Moral law is the final law.106

Certainly the vertiginous gratuitousness mentioned above — which is none other than the first expression of the abyssal awareness that the ethical subject acquires of its responsibility — cannot avoid recovering within itself the criteria and principles for its own elaboration. In this sense the further reference to the ‘community of autonomous ends’ with which Cohen had identi-

104 105 106

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 272. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 270. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 270.

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fied, under the guidance of the second and third formulation of the categorical imperative, ‘the content of formal moral law’, 107 must prevent any misunderstanding of such problems in a solipsistic sense. If, as has been seen, ‘moral law’, to which one is referred as to an ‘ultimate’ requirement, coincides with ‘thought of a community of autonomous Selbstzwecke’, ethical life itself, in the sense of the place of the responsible and never definitive community elaboration of a non guaranteed sense, will flow from such a vertiginous experience. It is the ‘principle of humanity’ that becomes the fundamental ethical criterion, only being recovered in the apparent gratuitousness of Selbstzweck, in the radical acknowledgment that ‘the end is here’. Thus the end turns into the real beginning, in the sense that only here, only starting from the rejection of the possibility of finding elsewhere a guaranteed, given sense in objective terms, does the possibility of ethics as an infinite research perspective open up. The perspective of ethics is turned constitutively towards the ‘in-finite’, bewildering as compared with any given calm horizon and the tendency to shut itself up within it. This infinity only opens up starting from the ‘end’. Cohen successfully defines this aspect of the problem, which can easily be reduced to the terms of an already given infinite task as the immediate determination of a ‘task which has not yet concluded’, when he points out how ‘being infinite’ is ‘the goal expected of moral activity’.108 In the pages of the Ethik dealing specifically with this problem, a more precise focus is entrusted to the possibility of attributing a ‘new meaning’ to the concept of future,109 so as to be able to think the infinite in specifically temporal terms, without limiting it to strongly connotated determinations in a spatial sense, as that of totality can be.110

107

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 227. Ethik, 411 — my italics. 109 Ethik, 408. 110 Cf. Ethik, 400. In Logik der reinen Erkenntnis the category of space had been placed in the context of the quantitative determination of totality (Allheit); cf. Logik, 188ff. 108

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In the next section we shall deal with this ‘new meaning’ of the concept of future, which for Cohen is nothing other than eternity itself. It is possible, nevertheless, in this problem area, to trace the ground from which one can understand the meaning of the transformation of time into pure future dealt with in the Religion der Vernunft. The pathos worthy of true messianic fulfillment of the times with which this transformation is described — a justified pathos, since a true Erfüllung is involved, a fulfillment of time, in the sense of the restoration of its most apt, originary nature — does not refer back to any consummatio saeculi, but rather announces its definite negation.111 As restoration to time of its risky, open nature, its ‘fulfillment’ is only thinkable as taking up that radical ‘incompleteness’ which only ethical life can make its own. This taking up inaugurates the ‘being of the future’ that the Religion der Vernunft immediately identifies specifically with the open dimension of history.112

4. Messianic humour The fact that the very notion of eternity is involved again foregrounds the radical character of Cohen’s reflections, a coherently divergent definition from the ontologistic one of absolute metatemporal presence being found. The notable structural analogies between the way in which Cohen presents the rise of history as ‘being of the future’ and that in which tradition thought of the headlong rush into time of the suprahistorical requirement of eternity should not be underestimated, but actually offer a significant glimpse of certain motives operating in the deepest layers of his thought. The very concept of ‘historical eternity’ (geschichtliche Ewigkeit), with the formulation of which his posthumous work rather spectacularly ends,113 is not only a rhetorical device by which Cohen attempts 111 That time should not be reduced to ‘an infinite sum’, but rather that ‘any sum is an impediment’ is the theme to which Cohen frequently returns in already mentioned parts of the Ethik, against easy misunderstandings of his remarks on the ‘plus sign’ as a ‘symbol of time’ (cf. Ethik, 400, 409). 112 Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 291, 305. 113 Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 533.

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to evade aporias by means of an extrinsic juxtaposition of terms, but is also in this sense, a concept equipped with actual philosophical significance.114 Eternity represents nothing other than that ‘new meaning’ to which the ‘fundamental concept of the future’ must refer,115 so as to confer the consistence of a ‘being’116 on the extreme precariousness of what, such as ethical realization, is entrusted to time without reservations. This must happen, obviously, without implying absorption in the spatial exteriority of the kósmos: it is rather the ancient concept of aión, that, once stripped of its mythical features which are more immediately linked to the principle of the eternal return, finds its idealization in the ‘being of the future’ which is history.117 Anyone expecting, at this stage, linkage of Cohen’s foundation of ethics to ‘strong’ guarantees of an ontological type118 — with consequent betrayal of the spirit of critical philosophy — will be disappointed. On the basis of radical loyalty to Kant’s interpretation of the unconditioned as focus imaginarius, for Cohen eternity is nothing other than the ‘perspective point for a trend forward, without respite or end, of pure will’.119 Schmid once again calls our attention to the importance of this aspect: eternity, ‘temporal condition’120 without being actually ‘determination of time’, on the one hand ‘transcends’ the latter, while, on the other, it supplies the present with its orientation criteria and in this does not only appear structurally analogous to the ‘days of the Messiah’, but plays a methodological role for the ethical problem which is similar to that which, in the Logik, belonged to the principle of infinitesimal reality.121

114

I attempted to demonstrate this in greater detail in Geschichtliche Ewigkeit. Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Würzburg, 1993). 115 Ethik, 408. 116 Ethik, 417. 117 Cf. Ethik, 400f. and Religion der Vernunft, 292. 118 The fact that such characteristics cannot be attributed to the ‘idea of God’ in Cohen’s ethics, has been pointed out again by P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 222ff. 119 Ethik, 410. 120 Ethik, 410. 121 Cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 201.

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The infinite outlook, which, in this Blickpunkt, is guaranteed by the ethical concept of eternity, and which is more exactly awareness of the goal ‘of infinite being’ which is engaged in moral activity,122 makes this Blickpunkt the point by point negation of the illuminating, definitive impact of the Augenblick and the conscious expression of the need for the postponement, the Aufschub.123 This is how Cohen describes the function of the Blickpunkt of eternity towards ethical reality: The infinitely far off point to which it refers according to its concept belongs to each single level. This infinitely far off point is eternity for each finite point. They must be taken together if one wishes to understand that eternity means the actual reality of morality.124

The convergence of the problem of eternity and of that of history comes to the fore yet again, if these words are compared with the passages carefully collected by Simon Kaplan125 to illustrate how for Cohen it is not only ‘the link of time’ that holds together the ‘problematic unity of history’, but he refers to an ‘ideal historical connection’ (idealer geschichtlicher Zusammenhang)126 and, even, to ‘an as it were atemporal synthesis of all contents’.127 The ideal character of the connection of which history consists certainly does not have the meaning of an absolute metaempirical guarantee of meaning. Although, to define the ideal force that holds together the moments of history, Cohen even appeals to the concept of eternity, this is only a fleeting trace in the sea of events: just like the ‘limit determination of the moment’ to which the Religion der Vernunft consigns redemption itself, as well as the historical consistence of the individual.128

122

Ethik, 411. Cf. note 43. 124 Ethik, 411. 125 Cf. S. Kaplan, Das Geschichtsproblem in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Berlin, 1930), 40f. 126 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 8. 127 Ästhetik I, 47. 128 Religion der Vernunft¸ 238, 269, 355. 123

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Here the programmatic revival of the small and what has been put aside returns. These had already induced Cohen, in his Logik, to introduce the principle of infinitesimal analysis as a new cornerstone of the systematic edifice. In that context — which is decisive for the definition of his ‘negative ontology’ — Cohen had not failed to highlight the strong operation in that revival of the ‘irony foregrounding the small’, where, aesthetically speaking, he was to recognize the ‘eminent trait of artistic humour as of all things spiritual’:129 It is as if there were irony towards that infinity which, up to now, inasmuch as it is ens realissimum, had been raised to foundation of the finite. It is not infinity of metaphysical-theological speculation, but the infinitely small that must be recognized from now on as Archimedes’ point.130

Such humour appears in various places in Cohen’s philosophical works, showing particular sensitivity to the ambiguous and complex plot of history. That thought is constantly exposed to the risk of ambiguity and error is one of the fundamental themes of the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. Often thought must rediscover ‘by different routes and in a different expression’ what can be no longer recognized, or retrace it in ‘other questions’ into which, in the meantime, it has been ‘split up and dispersed under other formulations’. The connection between the ‘new version’ and the ‘old kernel’ can be found where it appears so ‘estranging that the old question is not always immediately recognized in the new answer’.131 However, this is still not the most worrying aspect that the enigmatic ambiguity of history can take on, Cohen, the Jew, knows this well when he acknowledges ‘an irony in history without equal’ in the fact that the very symbol of the suffering of Israel in history, the figure of the servant of Jahvé, became, in the story of the passion of Christ, the emblem of another religion. ‘Philosophy of history of future centuries will have to consider and in-

129 130 131

Ästhetik II, 192. Logik, 125. Logik, 80; cf; also 51f.

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vestigate this enigma of the most intimate history of the spirit as it has developed up to the present’ is the author’s dry comment.132 On one of the final pages of the Religion der Vernunft — devoted to peace, the messianic virtue par excellence — Cohen can highlight the deep link uniting this virtue to humour; a humour that, ‘interwoven with tragedy’, the ‘tragic dignity’ of martyrdom, has always supported the Jewish spirit and conferred unity upon it.133 Such a distant attitude from the absence of irony characteristic of the ‘eschatological’ determination of the philosopher of authentic existence, exposes Cohen much less to the risk of being a victim of the oppressive ambiguity of history. Cohen’s humour cannot in any way, however, be closely related, by inspiration or meaning, to the resigned detachment134 which Löwith’s scepticism would like to be considered his own last word. In the awareness that the contingency of the ‘shared, surrounding historical world in which one is born by chance’135 is the dimension of human existence — of an existence that can be called ‘human’ only insofar as it can elaborate the problem of contingence in an ethical horizon136 — it is, in Cohen’s view, a question of actively contributing to the ‘process of self-clarification of ‘humanity’ on its global historical goal’ where the most authentic heritage of ethical socialism can be seen, even today.137 Thus it is that very ironical self-awareness which guides critical thought in the definition of its own fallibility and its own limits that allows this thought, at the end of its work of reflection, to find in itself, under the guidance of humour, the tenacity of messianic hope. 132

Religion der Vernunft, 508. Religion der Vernunft, 530. An exhaustive, systematic treatment of this page within Cohen’s thought can be found in A. Poma, ‘Humour in Religion: Peace and Contentment’, in: S. Moses and H. Wiedebach, (eds), Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion. International Conference in Jerusalem 1996 (Hildesheim, 1997), 183-204. 134 On the relationship between irony and resignation in Cohen, cf. the detailed remarks of P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 262f. 135 K. Löwith, ‘Philosophie der Vernunft und Religion der Offenbarung’ (see note 36, above), 381. 136 Cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik,167, 174-177. 137 Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus und Sozialismus’, 28. 133

HANGING OVER THE ABYSS: On the relation between knowledge and experience in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin ASTRID DEUBER-MANKOWSKY, BERLIN

In 1877 Hermann Cohen wrote graphically in his commentary on Kants Begründung der Ethik: And the whole of experience hangs over the abyss of intelligible contingency.1

The chosen metaphor shows impressively how aware Hermann Cohen was of the peril in which philosophy found itself since Kant confronted the philosophical claim to knowledge with the inadequacy of reason. At the same time it indicates the task which Cohen, following on from and radicalizing Kant’s critique, assigned to philosophy: if the whole of experience hangs over the abyss of intelligible contingency, the task of philosophy is to make suspension over the abyss possible and prevent a fall into the abyss. The challenge for philosophy, then, is to safeguard talk about the whole of experience in the foundation of knowledge. In his book Kants Begründung der Ethik published in 1877, Cohen described this ‘inevitable task of reason’ as ‘covering the abyss which intelligible contingency uncovers’.2 Naturally the required ‘covering of the abyss’ should not be misunderstood as covering it up. To cover up the abyss, instead of, to use another word of Cohen’s, bridging it, would be the same as falling into dogmatics. The inevitable task, requiring magic powers as it were, which Cohen hands over to philosophers, is to let thought hang over the abyss with open, seeing eyes.

1 2

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 31. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 34.

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Cohen’s use of the abyss metaphor is closely connected with the condition moderne of philosophy and is, precisely on account of this connection, of more than just philosophico-historical interest. This can be shown by a reading which becomes itself an exponent of restlessness through the abyssal nature which Cohen designates as the condition moderne of thought. It starts from the experience of thought’s contingency, an experience which, as Helmut Holzhey puts it, can ‘neither be undone nor dealt with on a higher level of reflection by critical philosophy’, which robs thought of ‘the rest of its natural proceeding’ and its ‘tranquillitas animi’.3 Someone who at a very early stage noticed the philosophical explosiveness of Cohen’s use of the abyss metaphor was Walter Benjamin, who was born in 1892.4 According to a testimony by Gershom Scholem,5 Benjamin had heard lectures and talks by Cohen in his Berlin period at the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. He made his analysis as part of a secret programme of a philosophical self-understanding, which he did not even confide to his friend Gershom Scholem.6 As a result, the systematic significance of the analysis of and dissociation from the older philosopher for the formulation of Benjamin’s own position has even escaped the notice of those interpreters who have observed the special position which Cohen occupied for the early Benjamin.7 In what follows I will clarify and put up for discus3

Helmut Holzhey, ‘Empirische und intelligible Zufälligkeit. Eine Kantische Unterscheidung und ihre Interpretation durch Hermann Cohen’, in: Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung. Akten des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, vol. V (Berlin, 2001), 280-287, 281. The considerations presented here owe decisive impulses to this article and ensuing discussions with Helmut Holzhey. 4 On the importance of Hermann Cohen for Walter Benjamin, cf. Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen. Jüdische Werte, Kritische Philosophie, vergängliche Erfahrung (Berlin 2000). 5 Gershom Scholem, Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 78. 6 Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, 64ff. 7 Vgl. Lieselotte Wiesenthal, Zur Wissenschaftstheorie Walter Benjamins (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), 25; Bernd Witte, Walter Benjamin — der Intellektuelle als Kritiker (Stuttgart, 1976), 88; Uwe Steiner, Die Geburt der Kritik aus dem Geiste der Kunst (Würzburg, 1989), 76ff. An exception is formed by Francesco Fiorato, ‘Unendliche Aufgabe und System der Wahrheit. Die Auseinandersetzung des jungen Benjamin mit der Philosophie Hermann Cohens’, in:

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sion this systematic significance by looking at how Benjamin links up with and radicalizes Cohen’s description of the philosophical task as a hanging over the abyss.

Abyssal nature of metaphor In the introductory passages of his manuscript ‘Über die Sprache überhaupt und die Sprache des Menschen’8 written in 1916, Benjamin uses several fundamental concepts of Cohen. In doing so he discusses not only their philosophical intention, but also considers the element, not taken into account by Cohen, which the fact of metaphoricity and the question of representation contribute to the problem of philosophy. Unlike Cohen, Benjamin includes the common bond of language and concept in his reflection on the premisses of philosophy. To do justice to the difference between the two, he first distinguishes between the ‘linguistic’ and the ‘mental essence’ of a thing. He immediately discovers that the indissoluble common bond between both conceals an abyss of its own kind: it lies in the dependence of every philosophical content on the form of its representation or, to put it differently, in the dependence of truth on its medium. Benjamin takes over Cohen’s concept together with the movement imprinted in its imagery, in order to make clear, in a double exposition of both, a difference which distinguishes his attitude and his procedure with the philosophical concepts and the abyssal nature concealed in them from Cohen’s. With this gesture he declares his support for Cohen, while at the same time dissociating himself from him. His agreement is reflected in the adoption of Cohen’s definition of the philosophical task, which Benjamin describes with Cohen as a ‘hanging over the abyss’.9 Reinhard Brandt und Franz Orlik (Hrsg.), Philosophisches Denken — Politisches Wirken, (Hildesheim/New York, 1993), 163-178; idem, ‘Walter Benjamin als Leser von “Kants Theorie der Erfahrung”’, in: Stéphane Moses und Hartwig Wiedebach (Hrsg.), Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion (Hildesheim/New York, 1997), 71-85. 8 Walter Benjamin, ‘Über die Sprache überhaupt und die Sprache des Menschen’, in: Gesammelte Schriften vol. 2.1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), 141. 9 Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2.1, 141.

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The phrase ‘hanging over the abyss’ not only expresses Cohen’s supreme philosophical concern, but also the historical task of enlightenment with which he sees a ‘mature’ humanity confronted. Cohen sees enlightenment as a historical task. However, this implies that humanity could also fail in the task, could refuse to accept it. Indeed, the formulation of the historical task as a ‘hanging over the abyss’ also implies the possibility of the worst case: the perversion of the challenges which, as Benjamin was to write in his unfinished book on Baudelaire, written during his emigration while fleeing National Socialism in 1937, the modern age demands of people and is out of all proportion to the powers which they possess.10 This perversion can be interpreted with Cohen as a catastrophe which is brought on by a devastating underestimation of the historical task. Owing to this underestimation of the task, the abyss, instead of being bridged, would be created in an eschatological attempt to flee history. Precisely the prevention of this becomes the real task of philosophy for Cohen when he defines it as a ‘hanging over the abyss’. To this end he mobilizes not just his by now proverbial optimism but also the metaphorical power of language. But is he not asking too much of philosophy in this way? After all, philosophy alone cannot be a guarantee of the faith in which Cohen’s optimism has its source, only Messianism can guarantee this faith.11 The Ethik des reinen Willens says tellingly on this point: The ethical value of Messianism consists in its political, or rather, philosophico-historical significance.12

Hermann Cohen’s socialist philosophy of history teaches us, as Helmut Holzhey has aptly put it, to give ‘meaning to historical processes in their abyssal contingency ethically under the “guid10 The essay ‘Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire’ contains a lapidary pronouncement on this matter: ‘The opposition which the modern age sets against man’s natural, productive élan is out of all proportion to his powers. It is understandable when he grows weary and escapes into death.’, Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1.2, 178. 11 Cf. Helmut Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus und Sozialismus. Einleitung’, in: Ethischer Sozialismus. Zur politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 25. 12 Ethik, 406.

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ing star of the future”’.13 Naturally, this presupposes knowledge of the abyssal nature of contingency and consciousness of the possibility that meaning be absent. Cohen knew this and was aware that contingency is the other side of freedom and thus the precondition for a socialist ethics, which for Cohen was only conceivable as an idealistic ethics. Nevertheless, or perhaps one should say, precisely for this reason, he placed philosophy of history under the guiding star of the future: in order to be able to give meaning ethically to historical processes, philosophy must, in a double movement, know the abyssal nature of contingency and at the same time fade it out, in order not to create the abyss by conjuring it up. In this commitment of philosophy to the future Cohen presupposes, in what can be described as a doubletracked procedure, the ‘inner power of optimism’, whose philosophico-historical translation he declares at the same time to be the task of philosophy. A new question thus follows from the one already formulated: is Cohen not just asking too much of philosophy, but is he not also, by adjuring it to optimism, robbing it of its critical power?14 Benjamin marks his distance from Cohen by putting up for consideration the proverbiality of metaphor. In doing so he elevates the question which poses itself in relation to the meaning of the abyss metaphor in Cohen’s texts to an object of philosophical reflection. He introduces this turn by pointing to the difference between the metaphor of the abyss and the abyssal nature of metaphor. Thus the distinction between the ‘mental essence of a thing’ and its ‘linguistic essence’ amounts to the indistinguishability of the two. One, says Benjamin, cannot be separated from the other and at the same time is not identical with it. Now Cohen would agree with a distinction between the mental essence on the one hand as logos and the linguistic essence on the other as medium. All the more so if it is formulated, in the way that Benjamin proposes, as a ‘hypothesis’, and so in Cohen’s sense as an idea connected with the task of foundation. 13

Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus und Sozialismus. Einleitung’, 25. This perspective could help to explain the controversial defence of Germany’s role in the First World War which Cohen undertook in the work ‘Deutschtum und Judentum, mit grundlegenden Betrachtungen über Staat und Internationalismus’ published in 1915, now in: Werke, vol. 16, 437-465. 14

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But how would he reply to the question which Benjamin formulates in view of the observation that the distinction, too, between mental essence and linguistic essence does not safeguard against a substantialization of the logos, but by renouncing the constitutive meaning of the linguistic essence sees itself falling into the abyss of all linguistic theory: whether the abyss of all philosophy does not consist in the temptation of giving primacy to the hypothesis, i.e., the idea, without regard to the insoluble paradox which this creates? Benjamin’s question, which he added in a footnote, already suggests the criticism which he would formulate in the ‘Erkenntniskritischen Vorrede’ to his Trauerspielbuch with reference to Cohen’s explication of the origin in the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis: that the category of origin is not purely logical, as Cohen believed, but historical.15 The place to which I am referring in Benjamin’s essay on language is very well known. I quote it here at full length for the sake of clarity: The view that the mental essence of a thing consists precisely in its language — this view, taken as a hypothesis, is the great abyss into which all linguistic theory threatens to fall,(1) and to survive suspended precisely over this abyss is its task. The distinction between a mental entity and the linguistic entity in which it communicates is the first stage of any study of linguistic theory; and this distinction seems so unquestionable that it is, rather, the frequently asserted identity between mental and linguistic being that constitutes a deep and incomprehensible paradox, the expression of which is found in the ambiguity of the word ‘logos’. Nevertheless, this paradox has a place, as a solution, at the centre of linguistic theory, but remains a paradox, and insoluble, if placed at the beginning. (1) Or is it, rather, the temptation to place at the outset a hypothesis that constitutes an abyss for all philosophizing?16

Benjamin’s remark amounts to the warning that philosophical reflection has access neither to its own origin nor to that of knowledge nor to that of experience. With his reflection on the linguistic and metaphorical nature of all language, including philosophical language, he opens up a new abyss which con15

Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 226. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol 2.1, 140ff. Transl. by Edmund Jephcott, in: Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), vol. 1, 63. 16

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fronts philosophy with the unavailability of the origin and forces it either to take this abyss into account or to forfeit its critical power.

Abyss of intelligible contingency For Cohen, the abyss of thought consists in ‘intelligible contingency’. Thought is confronted by this when it tries to found the ‘givenness of the world’ as a totality of experience. To explain Cohen’s fear of this abyss and what he sees as its consequences, I will have to digress somewhat. Cohen adopted the concept of intelligible contingency from Kant. Whereas for Cohen intelligible contingency represents an abyss, Kant sees in it only an ‘empty thought’.17 What is the basis and what are the effects of this different assessment? Both questions go back to Cohen’s discussion with Kant. For Kant, the ‘givenness’ of an object is the criterion which allows him to assign the competence of the mind or reason. If the object is given in time and space, it is an object of experience in the scientific sense. It is, in other words, a phenomenon, to which a reference belongs. But if it is an object which cannot be located within the limits of space and time, the question about the nature of its givenness cannot be answered. The proof of non-answerability is the task which belongs to reason in this case. Now already in Kant the question regarding the status of ‘the whole of experience’ or ‘experience in its totality’ opens the crevice of the abyss which Cohen sees yawning in the ‘intelligible contingency’ of the universe. The concept of the universe encompasses that which falls within (empirical) experiences. The universe encompasses the realm of nature, is identical with it and — as its unity — is more than it at the same time. If one considers only that which falls within nature — empirical experiences or phenomena which relate to objects given in space and time —, blind chance, says Kant, can be excluded as much as blind necessity.18 Since knowledge cannot claim validity in relation to things as they are in themselves but only within the 17

Cf. Holzhey, ‘Empirische und intelligible Zufälligkeit’, 284.

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sphere of phenomena, the concept of necessity can only be related to the necessary connection of perceptions according to the law of causality — and so not to the existence of objects. In his comments on the table of categories Kant defines the category of (absolute) necessity as ‘the existence which is given by the possibility itself’.19 In contrast to this absolute necessity he designates the necessity which applies to phenomena as ‘hypothetical’.20 It is ‘only’ hypothetical because the existence of an object cannot be inferred from the possibility of thinking it. Kant defines the category of contingency in contrast to absolute necessity as that of which the non-existence can be thought. However, he amplifies this definition in the ‘Transzendentaler Analytik’ in a ‘Allgemeine Anmerkung zum System der Grundsätze’. He distinguishes there the use of the concept as category of modality (something of which the non-being can be thought) from that in which the concept of contingency contains the category of relation. In the second use contingent means ‘something that can only exist as the consequence of another thing’.21 Analogously to the exclusion of absolute necessity from the sphere of phenomena, the distinction of the category of modality from the contingency contained in the category of relation serves to exclude an absolute or blind contingency from the sphere of nature. In this conditional sense, contingent means that something exists not by itself but only as the effect of a cause. The definition according to which contingent is that of which the non-existence can be thought is no longer said by Kant here to be a contradiction of absolute necessity but a contradiction which is only temporally qualified: accordingly, non-being can be understood as a change of phenomena related to time. Contingency therefore always relates ‘to changes not just to the possibility of thinking the opposite.’22 By limiting contingency in this way, Kant wants to knock the bottom out of speculations such that everything contingently existent in an absolute sense has a cause. His con18 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 228, B 280. Cf. Holzhey, ‘Empirische und intelligible Zufälligkeit’, 282. 19 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 111. 20 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 228, B 641. 21 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 289, 290. 22 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 290.

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cern is to prove that the existence of something contingent without it being previously known by the mind cannot be understood at all — that the case of blind contingency, like that of absolute necessity, therefore involves mere flights of thought. In the comments on the fourth antinomy he finally introduces, for the concept of the contingent in the pure sense of the category, the concept of ‘intelligible contingency’. This means, in contrast to ‘empirical contingency’, precisely the empty thought. As in the ‘General comment on the system of basic principles’,23 Kant relates the concept of (empirical) contingency here to ‘all that which is determined in the sequence of time,’ owing to which in the future ‘everything absolute, and all absolute necessity, is entirely removed.’24 There are reasons relating to the critique of reason which lead Kant to distinguish between an absolute and a hypothetical necessity on the one hand and between intelligible and empirical contingency on the other. The assurance that one cannot ‘at all infer intelligible contingency from empirical contingency’25 is meant to put an end to speculations about a first cause or a possible beginning of the world. However, with the reduction of necessity to a hypothetical necessity and that of contingency to an empirical contingency, the distinction between necessary and contingent threatens itself to become obselete.26 Phenomena are hypothetically necessary because they do not exist by themselves and yet follow the necessary connection according to the law of causality and for the same reasons are empirically contingent. In both cases, however, it amounts to the assurance that objects are ‘given’ objects. This makes it clear that Kant’s treatment of the problem is based on the previously achieved limitation of a sphere of given phenomena to which the insights of the mind relate. Only standing on this firm ground can he designate intelligible contingency so sovereignly as an empty thought. But what happens if this supposedly firm ground itself turns out to be a fallacy? The distinction between insights of the mind and in-

23 24 25 26

Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 488, A 460. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 489, A 461. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 488, A 460. Cf. Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 631.

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sights of reason rests, as is known, on the distinction of pure forms of intuition from the pure concepts of the mind. On this basis Kant not only distinguishes between empirical and intelligible contingency, but also draws the boundary between nature and the universe. To question the doctrine of the two powers of intuition and of the mind would therefore not only destroy the boundary between that which lies on this side and that which lies on that side of the safeguarded sphere of phenomena, but also the boundary between a position within and a position outside of nature, indeed the assumption of a universe itself. It was precisely this theory which Cohen undertook to question in his book Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, published in 1871. And as a result of this critical questioning, intelligible contingency changed from being an apparently empty thought into an abyss. For Cohen, the proposition that knowledge should be based on two different powers represents a ‘metaphysical remnant’ which would lead to the resolution of philosophy into the theory of cognitive capacity and so into psychology.27 This, in turn, as Cohen saw very clearly, would have meant the end of (critical) philosophy. Experience, says his provocative thesis, which he formulated with the intention of saving philosophical criticism from disappearing into empiricism, must therefore be produced by thought itself. He purified Kant’s critical approach and his theory of experience of its metaphysical remnants, with the result that intelligible contingency turned out to be an abyss of thought instead of an empty thought.

Trust If Kant’s epistemology was deficient in its construction of the thing in itself, Cohen’s special interpretation of the Kantian concept of experience was in danger of leading to a coincidence of experience and its preconditions. Experience itself would become a priori in this case. With his special interpretation of the 27 Cohen no longer understands intuition as a separate power but, as he writes in 1883 in Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte, as an ‘orientation of consciousness as to a given’, 18.

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concept of experience, motivated by a rejection of metaphysics, Cohen, as he himself was aware, was coming almost eerily close to dogmatics.28 To affirm the distinction between criticism and dogmatics, he conceded that although experience is generally produced as hypothetically necessary, this possible experience itself is ‘something wholly contingent’.29 Unlike Kant, for whom the concept of hypothetical necessity of experience is safeguarded by the prior differentiation of a sphere of given experience, Cohen, in order to avoid the collapse with dogmatics, had to anchor the ‘givenness’ of experience elsewhere. If experience must be generally recognized as produced, where is this anchoring to take place? Cohen’s solution is to declare the universe a fact and thus a given. Though he safeguards the general coherence of scientific experience in this way, he must, in order to do so, declare necessity a ‘necessity of something contingent’.30 This means that thought, even if, as Cohen insists, thought must itself produce experience, cannot safeguard the ‘givenness’ of experience. And precisely at this point ‘intelligible contingency’, which for Kant was an empty concept, turns out to be an abyss, to hang over which Cohen declares to be the task of philosophy. The abyss of ‘intelligible contingency’ is opened by the frightening insight that, though possible experience is necessary, the possibility of experience itself is a fact and thus ‘something wholly contingent’.31 For Cohen, this insight is frightening because, unlike for Kant, it is not neutralized by the prior safeguarding of a sphere of given experience. Consequently, the criticism of the doctrine of the two powers leads Cohen to shift the problem of ‘givenness’. For him, the whole of experience is given and thus contingent. The abyss which now threatens as the obverse of dogmatics is scepticism, which arrives with the idea that the world could also not exist, or that its existence could abruptly end. Cohen’s proposal to bridge all these abysses is based on a further interpretation of

28 29 30 31

Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 639. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636.

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his designation of the universe as a fact or as a given. In his view, the whole of experience should be understood in a further step as a borderline concept and this, in its turn, should be explained as a task. In this way the contingency of possible experience becomes an infinite task of producing possible experience in its totality and this means the totality of possible knowledge. Of course, thought depends here on an element which can no longer be produced by thought itself, namely on trust — and this, in my view, constitutes both the radicality of the critical movement, in which Cohen lays down the limits of thought, and its topicality. Thought demonstrates this trust by carrying out its task.Trust in the givenness — the existence — of the world is the foundation (incapable of further foundation) which precedes all hypotheses, or in other words: it is the non-foundation32 of thought. The necessary trust given in advance, it is Cohen’s philosophical conviction, is made good and realized in the constant progression of knowledge. In other words, the presence of the future reveals itself when, confronted by the possibility of the abyss, the latter is bridged rather than brought about. This bridge is built on the confidence that it is possible to hang over it. But the bridge itself is created by the systematically safeguarded anticipation of the future.

Abyss of infinite natural conditionality In the study Kants Begründung der Ethik, published six years after Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Cohen once again deals with the abyss of intelligible contingency; this time against the background of a possible foundation of ethics. If for knowledge the abyss of intelligible contingency harbours the danger of a loss of 32 Cohen ironizes the desire for a concept of the absolute. Non-foundation would be the foundation which is independent of any foundation (hypothesis). To illustrate the paradox of this desire for the absolute, he translates the concept of foundation into that of non-foundation: ‘Non-foundation (…), that is how the objective word, which indicates the content, should by translated into the methodological word, which after all the word of the content nestles up against, in order to make the paradox of the expression immediately unmistakable’, Ethik, 429.

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faith in the world’s existence and so the danger of scepticism, for ethics the terrifying moment of intelligible contingency lies in the abyss which yawns in the ‘infinite natural conditionality of human actions’.33 So the fear is not just for the contingency of possible experience with a view to the necessity of scientific knowledge, but also of the contingency of a possible realm of freedom and so the possibility of self-determined action. In Kants Begründung der Ethik Cohen locates ‘the problem of intelligible contingency ultimately in the context of the third autonomy of freedom’. In this way he declares, as Helmut Holzhey summarizes, ‘“endless natural conditionality” to be the conceptual content of intelligible contingency’.34 But what does the abyss of ‘infinite natural conditionality’ mean in the context of the ethical question? It is the abyss which opens on the thought of complete heteronomy — the knowledge of the impassiveness and complete indifference with which nature meets the human question. It raises the fear registered in Nietzsche’s programme of an affirmation of the eternal return of the same. For Cohen, the modern form of this abyss is already anticipated in the Hobbesian image of homo hominis lupis. The image of man as wolf is, as he objects to contemporary Darwinism, not self-evident, but is founded in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy precisely on the reduction of man to a natural being. Thus he writes in the Ethik des reinen Willens: People see only natural beings in people and in the nations of history. The life of people and of nations therefore seems to be most aptly captured in the image with which Darwin modernized ancient Heraclitus. War is the father of the universe. War of every man against every man, that is how Hobbes imagined Rousseau’s nature. This is characteristic of our time, that the best and most noble do not take offence at the struggle for existence, as the motto of human life and work.35

33 34 35

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 108. Holzhey, ‘Empirische und intelligible Zufälligkeit’, 286. Ethik, 360.

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For Cohen — as for Kant — man is, on the one hand, a natural being. But by natural being Cohen understands something different from Kant. And here we find, in an unexpected place, a far-reaching consequence of Cohen’s refusal to start from a sensory given. Thus, in determining man’s natural being, he does not refer to man’s corporeality with its connotation of transience. Just as nature itself can only be ‘given’ as a scientifically produced concept — Cohen rejects as metaphysical the assumption of an immediately given substantiality —, so man as natural being is only ‘given’ mediated through the sciences. Decisive here for the determination of the concept of nature is the continuous logical coherence, production by the sciences: ‘Nature exists in the totality of its laws, which have their foundation in logic’.36 However, as product of the sciences, nature, unlike ethics and history, is precisely characterized by the absence of freedom, which Cohen sees as the possibility of self-change.37 Man as a natural being, Cohen says elsewhere, is a ‘mass individual’ — the object of statistics, so influential in the second half of the nineteenth century. ‘This idea,’ Cohen specifies, ‘that the individual is a natural being, is the principle of statistics’.38 Now Cohen is not fundamentally opposed to statistics, nor to its integration in population policy. His objection concerns the reduction of the individual to an average statistical value. The moment that statistics claims to include the entire human being, Cohen maintains, it becomes the ‘theology of the new age’.39 It is, as theology was, dogmatic instead of critical and like theology it produces ideology instead of scientific knowledge. Cohen’s criticism stems from arguments relating to the theory and critique of science. Man is not just a ‘natural being’ therefore means that he is not just the object of the sciences, he is not reduced to the picture which science draws of him. As an individual he is also and in the first place an ‘individual of history’.40

36 37 38 39 40

Ethik, 464. See more extensively Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Benjamin, 130ff. Ethik, 290. Ethik, 290. Ethik, 290.

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History In the eighth chapter of the Ethik des reinen Willens Cohen identifies the realm of moral man with history. The realm of morality starts where thought, scientific knowledge, and logic come up against the limit of their valid range: where finiteness and transience can be experienced as temporality. So morality and, with it, freedom do not find their reality, as Hegel asserts, in the state, nor, as Kant believes, in the realm of pure reason, but in history. The question which intelligible contingency poses to philosophy in relation to ethics is the question of the reality of history. The experience of the limit which philosophical thought comes up against in the attempt to found the necessity of the whole of experience becomes the point of separation where ethics differentiates itself from logic and, with it, the laws of the state from the laws of nature. If the abyss of intelligible contingency confronts thought with its inability to found the existence of the universe, the same limit turns out, in relation to ethics, to be the seam where history arises. Along this seam runs the border between nature, oriented to space, and history, open to time. In his late work Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, Cohen himself makes the connection between the apocalyptic idea of the end of the world and the birth of history: Within monotheism the end of the world can only be applied as the judgement of God. But God’s covenant with Noah already makes the entire destruction impossible. […] In this way the prophet becomes a politician and a social politician. In this way, moreover, he becomes, for international relations, a historical thinker, the author of the concept of world history.41

By designating history as the counterpole of nature, Cohen not just takes the difference between thinking and willing into account, but also — and in doing so he goes far beyond Kant and Hegel — tries to allow for the temporality of the will.42 For — and in this the difference between thinking and willing culmi41 42

Religion der Vernunft, 286-288. Cf. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin, 154ff.

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nates in his view —: while thought always remains exclusively oriented to space and thus nature, the will is defined by temporality. If this difference is levelled, time is spatialized and history naturalized.43 Or as Benjamin puts it in the Trauerspielbuch: a projection of the temporal process takes place in space, and history ‘walks into the arena’.44 However, it is also important to avoid the impression that thinking and willing or nature and history form two autonomous, independent spheres. According to Cohen, they are more like two parts of a system, to which aesthetics is added as a third part. The concept which connects the two and at the same time takes the difference between them into account is that of eternity. It is an ‘original concept of time’ and yet, as Cohen emphasizes, it also means ‘the world’.45 It does not go beyond the boundary of the universe; it is, in other words, not an ‘empty thought’. In Cohen’s view, eternity forms the analogue to the concept of totality. If the latter is the infinity of space, the former means the infinity of time. The two together, however, create the coherence which helps to cover the abyss of intelligible contingency. Their task is to safeguard the existence of the world; their ‘content’ is identical with that of Noah’s covenant with God, which, says Cohen, is ‘nothing other than the preservation, i.e. the future, of the human race.’46 Eternity alone, however, is not yet a sufficient condition for the reality of the moral world. Unlike space, time is open to eternity in two directions: one leads to the past and the other to the future. The crucial thing for Cohen is that the will be directed at the future. For only the future, in his view, is connected with eternal values. Orientation to the past, he objects, only produces the

43 Ethik, 451. Jakob Taubes has already observed that Cohen thus formulated an alternative to the ‘dialectics of the Enlightenment’ of Horkheimer and Adorno. (Taubes, ‘Zur Konjunktur des Polytheismus’, in: idem, Vom Kult zur Kultur. Bausteine einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft (München, 1996), 340-352.) Cf. also Deuber-Mankowsky, ‘Das Gesetz und die Suspension des Ethischen. Jacob Taubes und Hermann Cohen’ in: Gesine Palmer et al. (Hrsg.), Torah, Nomos, Jus (Berlin, 1999), 243-263. 44 Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1.1, 271. 45 Ethik,400. 46 Religion der Vernunft, 293.

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desire to eternalize transitory values. As negative values he repeatedly cites the following three utopias operative in the history of culture: the dream of the lost paradise, the myth of the Isles of the Blessed, and the idea of the Golden Age.47 Cohen takes the past in the literal sense as that which has passed and at the same time abandons it, precisely because it connects desire with transitory pleasure instead of the eternal future, to transitoriness. In his view, history cannot be won by an orientation to the past. History arises, as he repeatedly declares, through the connection of the will with the future by means of eternally future values. As a counterpole of the Hobbesian definition of man as homo hominis lupus, eternal peace ranks highest among the eternal values.48 Thus the Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums leads to the union of eternal peace and messianic time: Peace is the symbol of eternity and the solution to human life in its individual conduct as well as in its perennial historical calling. In this historical eternity the peace mission of messianic humanity is fulfilled.49

With the concept of eternal peace Cohen consciously links up with Kant and with Messianism at the same time. He sees its ethical value, as he says in the Ethik des reinen Willens, in the ‘political, indeed, philosophico-historical significance’.50 It is rooted in the meaning which prophetic Messianism awards to the future. According to Cohen, not just the reality of history but also the ‘right knowledge of time’ depends on ‘starting from the future’.51 But what is the ‘right knowledge of time’? The answer will lead us once again to the meaning of metaphor and ultimately to the question what place memory has in Cohen’s future-oriented interpretation of history.

47 48 49 50 51

Cf. Ethik, 401; Religion der Vernunft, 289f. Ethik, 408. Religion der Vernunft, 533. Ethik, 406. Ethik, 399.

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Memory as internalization Unlike Kant, Cohen does not think of time as mechanical time. In a beautiful image, he says that time is not ‘the board on which images are marked out in their constant sequence; but it is the shaft from which that sequence is dug up.’52 If this comparison suggests a movement into the depths of what has already taken place, the impression is false — and correct at the same time. It is not the past in which the digging takes place. The comparison of digging relates rather to the extraction of the future from the internalizing (Innern), the remembering (Er-innern) of the experience of time itself. The image describes the gesture of anticipation, which is fundamental to Cohen’s understanding of philosophy itself. It involves a change of temporal perspective: the point of view from which the world is now seen no longer lies in the present but in the eternity of the future. Viewed from this perspective, the historical world appears as a unity and the present as that which is long past. From this point of view, it eventually transpires that the ‘end of time’ is the ‘one day’ (Einst) to which, as Cohen says, all politics should aspire.53 Cohen thinks of time as temporality and thinks of history from the perspective of its end. The image of the abyss, so prominent in his texts, is part of the message which Cohen communicates to us. It is as unspectacular as it is immeasurable in its consequences and can be summed up in the proposition: the perception of the possibility of the abyss entails as much the danger of falling prey to it as the requirement of covering it and thus preventing it. Cohen interprets intelligible contingency as the obligation to hang over the abyss which it opens. The topicality of his response to the abyss of intelligible contingency thus lies in keeping alive the knowledge that it is up to us to prevent the catastrophe and that this can only succeed if we turn away from eschatological attempts to flee from history. ‘Would the correct

52 53

Ethik, 399. Ethik, 406.

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answer to this question,’ he therefore says in the Religion der Vernunft, ‘be to designate Messianism as the replacement of eschatology?’54 But what is the place of memory in this scheme? In the framework of Cohen’s Messianism, memory of the past exists only as the memory of ‘one day’. ‘Memory’ is totally devoted to ‘internalization’.55 Memory is in a certain sense contemplation. As regards the past that cannot be internalized, it is important to observe that for Cohen this is not worth remembering. He commits it lightly — as Benjamin makes clear in his critique, all too lightly — to oblivion, because it threatens to distract the will from the future. But how is it to be explained that a philosopher, who like no one else in the nineteenth century was bound up with the tradition and took so much from it, accorded so little importance to the past? A significant reason for this is that Cohen drew precisely from this tradition the trust and also the strength which allowed him constantly to see over the abyss. The tradition itself taught him to equate the end of time with ‘one day’, it taught him to trust in the future and forget the past. Cohen did not ask whether and how people’s powers could be adequate to the fulfil the mission of peace, trusting in the eternity of the future, if they are not or are no longer bound up with the tradition. The question does not occur in his writings, any more than Benjamin’s question about the abyssal nature of metaphor, owing to which Benjamin not leastly claims the rights of the transitory and emphasizes the importance of remembering the past. Of course, we can only speculate how he would have responded to Benjamin’s question whether the temptation of putting the hypothesis at the beginning does not form the abyss of all philosophizing. Perhaps, for whatever reasons, he would not have understood it.

54 55

Religion der Vernunft, 336. Ethik, 398.

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Metaphysics and transitory experience Benjamin is not only familiar with Cohen’s critique of Kant and his theory of experience, he endorses it too. In his manuscript ‘Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie’, which he wrote in November 1917, he presented neo-Kantianism as the philosophy which goes in the ‘proper’ and required direction for developing Kantian philosophy.56 With Cohen he rejects the distinction of intuition and mind, which is constitutive of Kant’s epistemology, as ‘primitive elements of an infertile metaphysics’.57 Like Cohen, Benjamin is concerned with a continuation of critical philosophy and not with a naïve reconstruction of metaphysics. Nevertheless, in order to formulate it more strongly, he is convinced, unlike Cohen, that it is necessary to make reference to ‘metaphysics’. For only an explicit reference to metaphysics, Benjamin argues, could allow the ‘continuity’ of experience to be preserved without covering up the abyss of intelligible contingency at the same time.58 In contrast to Cohen, who believed that metaphysics can be surmounted, Benjamin was convinced that the relation of experience and knowledge refers necessarily to the metaphysical question. The reason for this is that Benjamin connects the problem of contingency and of givenness with the question of the transitoriness of experience. As he says in ‘Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie’, every epistemology must ask itself two questions: that of the certainty of knowledge and that of the dignity of an experience which is transitory. Unlike in pre-Kantian philosophy, the metaphysical question no longer arises in connection with the certainty of knowledge but, paradoxically enough, in the philosophical safeguarding of the experience of transitoriness. The chief concern for criticism is now to take up the experience of contingency in a more radical way than was the case in Kant and/or Cohen. As Benjamin argues,

56

Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2.1, 164. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2.1, 160. 58 Kants Begründung der Ethik, 259. Cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik: systematische Untersuchungen zu Hermann Cohens Rechts- und Tugendlehre (Würzburg, 1995), 2. 57

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contingency affects epistemology itself with transitoriness. In order not to postulate thought as absolute, thus opening the door to dogmatics and losing reality, it must be provided with a historical index. Both in a fragment ‘Erfahrung und Erkenntnis’, going back to his interest in Kant and neo-Kantianism and in the ‘Programm der kommenden Philosophie’, Benjamin emphasizes Kant’s achievement in subjecting philosophy to the requirement that it justify its insights. For Benjamin, as for Cohen, philosophy is in the first place critique of knowledge. The foundation of a ‘higher concept of experience’ does not spring from the wish to recover an ontology, which is said to underlie for instance Heidegger’s critique of Cohen, but on the contrary, a radicalization of philosophy’s obligation regarding the critique of knowledge.

Knowledge and experience In the note ‘Erfahrung und Erkenntnis’ Benjamin distinguishes three concepts of metaphysics. He defines all three in terms of the relation of knowledge and experience operative in them. He adopts the first meaning of metaphysics directly from Kant. Reason is of that ‘metaphysics of nature’ which Kant in his preface to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft announces as the ‘system of pure (speculative) reason’. The reference is to the material formulation of the system which Kant provided in the Metaphysik der Sitten as the completion and systematic exposition of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. However, as Cohen’s treatment of the problem already showed, the danger of dogmatics now also looms in Kant’s definition of metaphysics as the system of reason. For, says Benjamin, ‘this meaning of metaphysics could now easily lead to its total coincidence with the concept of experience and Kant feared nothing as much as this abyss’.59 Why? Because knowledge and experience would be identical and the distinction of demonstrable knowledge of understanding or natural knowledge and knowledge of reason would be as unfeasible as the distinction of logic and ethics. To prevent the 59

Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 34.

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coincidence of metaphysics and experience, Kant, as Benjamin underlines, connected knowledge of understanding with the forms of intuition of space and time.60 But Kant paid a high price for this safeguard. By sacrificing a unified epistemological centre, Benjamin concedes, he ‘tore apart the continuity of knowledge and experience’.61 A consequence of this is a one-sided Kantian reduction of experience to scientific experience. So the price is exactly the exclusion of transitory experience from philosophy. The second way of using the concept of metaphysics relates to reason’s empty flights of fancy which result from the unlimited expansion of rational knowledge. In the ‘Transzendentalen Dialektik’ Kant describes them as deception and illusion. It forms the ‘arena of endless quarrels’ which is called ‘metaphysics’, says Kant in the preface to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.62 Benjamin follows Kant in the definition of this second concept of metaphysics and also follows Kant in his designation of it as a ‘fanciful use of reason’. However, unlike Kant, Benjamin goes on to distinguish from it a third concept of metaphysics: the concept of ‘speculative knowledge in the strict sense of the word’.63 This refers to the pre-Kantian, i.e. pre-critical philosophy in which the world is deduced from a supreme principle. In contrast to that of Kant, this concept of metaphysics tries to find the closest connection between experience and knowledge. What interests Benjamin in this concept of metaphysics is the ‘fullness’ of the connected concept of experience, in which experience was not yet divided into scientific and ‘vulgar’ experience. Again the point is to return transitory experience to the bosom of philosophy — not to retreat behind Kant but to radicalize the critique of knowledge with a view to the problem of contingency. Benjamin understands the problem precisely when, commenting on Cohen’s interpretation of Kant, he says that cancellation of the distinction between categories and forms of intu-

60 61 62 63

Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 34. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 34. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vorrede zur 1. Auflage, A VIII. Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 35.

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ition ‘truly seems to herald the transformation of the transcendental philosophy of experience into a transcendental but speculative philosophy’.64 For just as experience and knowledge seem wholly to coincide in pre-critical philosophy, since the world can only be deduced from principles of knowledge on the assumption of their closest connection, so the coincidence of experience and knowledge also represents the real abyss in Cohen’s philosophy. In what direction can a way out be seen? It will lie, and at this point the carefully laid tracks in Benjamin’s text come together, in a new determination of the relation between knowledge and experience, in which the two neither coincide nor are torn apart.

Diversity of the relation Cohen tried to oppose the coincidence of knowledge and experience — the ‘abyss of intelligible contingency’ — by integrating into thought itself the passive element of the happening of chance (das Zufallen des Zufalls) in the course of events. Like Kant, he assumed that contingency happens to knowledge at the boundary of experience — with the question of the totality of experience. He integrated this ‘chance’ in thought in a second step by explaining necessity itself as ‘given’ and so as a fact. By furthermore limiting givenness to the fact of possible experience, he could designate this experience itself as ‘something wholly contingent’65 and at the same time observe that the relation is of course necessary for possible experience, by which he understood mathematical science. In this way he succeeded in interpreting contingency as a borderline concept and setting thought the latter as the infinity of the task. Thus ‘chance’ changed into the boundary and the boundary into an infinite task for thought. As the solution to this infinite task, the task, naturally in retrospect, proves to be a product of thought itself.

64 65

Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 36. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636.

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For Benjamin, as for Cohen, the relation to the contingency of all experience forms the crucial point where, as Cohen puts it in his book on Kant, ‘the distinction between criticism and dogmatics cannot be evened out’.66 Unlike Cohen, however, Benjamin holds on to the element of the happening of the experience of contingency. This element of the happening of the experience of contingency allows him to reopen the question of givenness and redefine the relation of experience and knowledge. The question of givenness brings us back to the problem of the thing in itself or Cohen’s application of the ultimately ethically motivated critique of authority to the logic of knowledge. Cohen concluded from this that thought must produce experience itself. I have followed his argumentation up to the experience of contingency. And it is precisely at this experience of thought, the experience of its own involvement in contingency, for which critical philosophy does not provide a philosopheme, that Benjamin stops. He holds on to it. It is an experience which can no longer be thought, but which on the other hand is only accessible if one tries to think thought to its end, and which therefore presupposes thought. ‘But can man as an empirical being think at all?,’ Benjamin therefore noted in the same period. ‘Is thinking an activity at all in the sense of hammering, sewing, or is it, not an activity realized upon something, but a transcendental intransitive, just as going is an empirical intransitive?’67 If this aporia hidden in contingency is kept in mind, it is possible to understand the strategy which Benjamin pursues when he observes that all three concepts of metaphysics are based on a confusion of the concepts ‘knowledge of experience’ and ‘experience’: The fact is that, for the concept of knowledge, experience is not something new that lies outside of it but only itself in a different form, experience as an object of knowledge is the unified and continuous variety of knowledge. Experience itself, however paradoxical this sounds, does not even occur in the knowledge of experience, precisely because this knowledge of experience is therefore a complex of knowledge.68

66 67 68

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 43. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 36.

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Experience, we can conclude, is not subsumed in knowledge. Consequently, the question of the relation between knowledge and experience now arises again, namely as the question ‘how the concept of experience in the term “knowledge of experience” is related to the mere concept of experience’.69 However, because experience is identical in both cases, it is no longer experience which is in question but, as he observes in conclusion, the relation to it: what, in both cases, constitutes the difference in the relation to it, since it experiences in experience but is deduced in knowledge?’70 Unlike Kant and Cohen, Benjamin does not safeguard the boundary of knowledge by limiting the sphere of experience, but by distinguishing two different kinds of relation to it. The knowledge which the knowledge of experience refers to must therefore remain aware that it is concerned with knowledge and not with the truth of experience or with the world. The distinction of these two kinds of relation brings back Kant’s distinction between knowledge of understanding and knowledge of reason, which had becomes blurred in Cohen with the reinterpretation of the concept of experience as a product of knowledge. So up to this point, on which depends the architecture of the Kantian system, its tripartition into logic, ethics, and aesthetics, Benjamin remains faithful to Kant. Now, for Benjamin, unlike Kant, the fact of givenness is not tied to objectivity, nor, unlike Cohen, to the fact of the sciences, but to the fact of the linguistic nature of knowledge. This bringing together of experience and language forms the basis for Benjamin’s fourth meaning of the concept of metaphysics, which he derived from a critical continuation of Kant’s and Cohen’s concepts. Benjamin himself presents them as the result of years of preoccupation with the philosophical problems presented. In a letter of February 28, 1918 to Ernst Schoen he reports that he has advanced to a ‘unity in his thought’ or, as he puts it in another letter, to the ‘centre of his thought’:

69 70

Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 37. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 37.

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ASTRID DEUBER-MANKOWSKY Connections of the widest scope disclose themselves to me nowadays and I can say that I am now for the first time reaching the unity of what I think. I remember that you once seemed to understand me extraordinarily well when, at the corner of Joachimsthalerstrasse and Kantstrasse (we came from the direction of the zoo), I told you about my desperate reflection on the linguistic foundations of the categorical imperative. I have to tried to develop the way of thinking which exercised me then (and the special problem of which has not yet been solved for me today, but has become part of a larger context). […] Above all: for me, the questions of the essence of knowledge, justice, art are connected with the question of the origin of all human expressions of the mind from the essence of language. It is precisely this connection which exists between the two excellent objects of my thought.71

For Benjamin, as for Kant and after him Cohen, the question of the contingency of experience arises at its limit, with the question of totality. This totality, which makes thought possible and at the same time goes beyond the limits of knowledge, is understood by Kant in experience as concept of the world,72 Cohen in the interpretation of the borderline concept as infinite task, and Benjamin as experience of the linguistic nature of all knowledge. As I indicated above, Benjamin’s distinction between concepts of ‘experience’ and ‘knowledge of experience’ takes up the Kantian division into insights of understanding and of reason. Unlike in Kant, however, this division is not based on the differentiation of the respective spheres of validity (knowledge of understanding for objects given in time and space and knowledge of reason for questions about the immortality of the soul, the beginning of the world, and the existence of God) but on the ‘difference of relation’ to experience, which in both, that of knowledge and that of what will be called ‘representation of ideas’ in the ‘Erkenntniskritische Vorrede’, is the same. So, by distinguishing between the concepts of ‘knowledge of experience’ and ‘experience’, Benjamin is not delimiting experience — for him there is only one identical sphere of experience and nothing besides it — but the relation to it. It is decisive to take this into account. In the ‘Erkenntniskritische Vorrede’ Benjamin places the philosopher in between scientists and artists. They are 71

Gesammelte Briefe I, 436f. Cf. Holzhey, Kants Erfahrungsbegriff. Quellengeschichtliche und bedeutungsanalytische Untersuchungen (Basel/Stuttgart, 1970), 244-273. 72

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all concerned with the same world, but differ in their attitude and relation to it. Unlike the scientist, the philosopher does not divide the world into concepts — he is not concerned with knowing it scientifically —, and unlike the artist he does not depict a simulacrum of the world of ideas, but, as it is said, represents the world in the order of ideas.73 This, Benjamin argues, requires patience, perseverance, renunciation of intention, and love of truth. These are moral virtues to which nobody can be forced to aspire, for which good reasons can be adduced at most, and which are nevertheless required to be able to follow Benjamin’s roundabout method.

Historicity and origin In his book on Die Bedeutung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen, Hartwig Wiedebach has noted that ‘rejection of the transitory’ is a secret motive that guides Cohen’s determination of the moral ideal. This motive also plays a role in tying the will to the future and almost deliberately neglecting the past. For only the future opens a window on the infinity of moral progress and so on eternity. On the other hand, the past, Cohen emphasizes, has an alliance with the transitory. It is no more capable of producing eternity than the present. In Cohen’s view, overcoming the transitory goes hand in hand with forgetting the past. Now, Cohen obtains the ‘counter-concept of eternity’ by withdrawing the ideal from the ‘inventory of aesthetics’74 and reserving it for ethics. In this way the rejection of the transitory, the resort to a ‘primal image’ given to the mind, the fixation on the future, and the will to power seem to be directly connected with each other. In fact pure will is distinct from mere desire only in that the latter lacks the ‘goal of eternity’ and therefore yearns for pleasure and aspires to what is ‘temporal’.75 Almost euphorically Cohen goes on to describe the gain that is achieved over the ideal and the fixation of the will on the future: 73 74 75

Cf. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1.1, 212. Ethik, 421. Ethik, 412.

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Pure will wants eternity. It wants nothing but the eternal and only it can produce the eternal. All that is transitory, all that is selfish perishes, becomes invalid, and disappears in the self-consciousness of eternity.76

So then the gain would be the downfall of the transitory. But does not, in this case, the gain also mean the price — precisely the downfall of the transitory? And so the passing of the past? If Benjamin goes further in his criticism than Cohen, his deeper motive, precisely as against Cohen, is to save the transitory. Rejecting the transitory means forgetting the past. Benjamin extended this reading in his analysis of Cohen, and it determined his thought up to the theses ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’. Thus his much-quoted criticism of social-democratic ideas of progress is directly aimed at the fixation on the future immanent in the belief in progress. As a countermove, the materialist historian privileges the rescue of the transitory: ‘In the fight for the oppressed past’, the historian must prove himself, in order to save — in a kind of negative representation — ‘the inner of time as a precious seed’ in the ‘nourishing fruit of what is understood historically’, albeit a seed which ‘dispenses with taste’.77 The idea being that the delusion of violence can only be dealt with by remembering the victims. In this way the task of the historical materialist can be described as the prevention of further victims. In order to release the living, for the sake of the present and not the future, the historian — as Benjamin says in objection to social democracy’s fixation on the future — must become the ‘herald who invites the departed to take their places at the table’.78 When Wiedebach identifies Cohen’s ‘rejection of the transitory’ as his motive for emphasizing the future at the expense of the past, he emphasizes just as rightly how familiar nevertheless the experience of transitoriness was to Cohen. Following Pierfrancesco Fiorato,79 Wiedebach points out that the experience of 76

Ethik, 412. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1.2, 703. 78 Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5.1, 603. 79 Pierfrancesco Fiorato, Geschichtliche Ewigkeit: Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Würzburg, 1993). 77

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transitoriness found its way into Cohen’s philosophy and specifically into the logic of origin. This clearly emerges from the opening chapter of the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. Thus in the first part of the system logicity does not spring from undisputed certainty. What comes first rather is the ‘deepest need’80 of thinking knowledge, the abyss of nothing, and the experience of discontinuity. In other words, thinking requires that, as Cohen puts it, the ‘way of the cross of nothing’81 be risked. However, this tension of the origin falls victim to oblivion as the logic of pure origin develops. Though it almost seems to be an ordained oblivion, the point at which it starts can be precisely determined. The threat from the abyss of nothing disappears the moment continuity is introduced as a law of thought. The latter, Cohen stresses, is not to be regarded ‘as a category which is produced by the infinite judgement of origin’.82 As a law of thought, continuity has a ‘deeper and further reaching significance’. But its most important task is to safeguard the origin itself. To perform this task, thought is not just enabled to produce ‘unity’ and the ‘interrelation of unities’ through the thought-law of continuity; in retrospect, the thought-law of continuity is rather declared to be the precondition of the origin itself. After all, the origin for its part presupposes the connection which the thought-law of continuity in turn can only have produced. The moment continuity has been anticipated, Cohen observes calmly and reassuringly: No awful vision of nothing interrupts this interrelation of the unities of origin to be produced. No abyss may yawn anywhere. Nothing forms the true transition everywhere.83

So the danger has been averted. But again the question arises: at what cost? And again the answer is: at the expense of historicity. In this spirit Benjamin objects to Cohen in the ‘Erkenntniskritischen Vorrede’ that the category of origin is a historical category: ‘So the category of origin is not, as Cohen believes, a 80 81 82 83

Logik, 84. Logik, 84. Logik, 91. Logik, 91.

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purely logical but a historical category.’84 When he designates the ideal of the philosophical problem as a ‘non-existent question’85 about the unity of the philosophical system, he not only gives the experience of discontinuity its due, but also recalls the historicity of thought which has been lost in Cohen’s logic of origin.

84 85

Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol 1.1, 226. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol 1.1, 172.

ETHIK

JURISPRUDENCE IS THE ORGANON OF ETHICS: Kant and Cohen on Ethics, Law, and Religion ROBERT GIBBS, TORONTO

If some of us turn today to the question of the relation of ethics and law again, then we are called to that question from an altered perspective on ethics. The work of Derrida, of Habermas, of Rosenzweig, and especially of Levinas, has conducted ethics from a space of self-consciousness and autonomy, to one of responsibility, responsibility constituted in our relations to other people. An ethics of responsibility takes its orientation from the other person, not from the spontaneous reason of my self. What freedom I exercise in responding is limited and that capacity arises in the call from the other person. Ethics then arises in reflection about why I should answer. Because responsibility finds me in a social context, social justice emerges from responsibility for others, indeed, from infinite responsibilities for others. The determination of limitations upon those responsibilities is performed as a society. The need for norms and indeed, for laws, arises from our extreme responsibilities for others. This essay explores the role of law in ethics by commenting upon texts by Kant and by Cohen.1 I am not trying to advance the scholarship on each thinker nor on that which deals with their relationship. I am not a champion of either’s ethics. Neither thinker bears the suspicion that ethics today must bear for the state, a suspicion with which I norm this essay. These two thinkers, however, taken in careful juxtaposition offer keen insight into the relation of ethics and laws, insight into the possibility of holding the two apart, and the possibility of melding the two together. If Kant remains one of the unavoidable sources for exploring ethics, even when autonomy is displaced with respon-

1 This paper has benefited greatly from comments and discussions of an earlier draft by Reinier Munk, Arthur Ripstein, Ernest Weinrib, and Lisa Austin.

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sibility, then Cohen, too, gains a seminal role for breaking into the realm of I and You — an interpersonal realm of address which lies at the heart of both law and ethics. But the task of this paper is not, I repeat, an exposition of their thought, nor of their interaction. I force the two through a series of contrasts in order to see a possibility for opening a realm of law more suited to the ethics of responsibility: A kind of law-making and adjudication where coercion is not the essence of legality and where the state is not the exclusive center of law. In place of these modern axioms, I am seeking a law that arises more directly in relation to others and that is able to function in ethical modes of sociality as well as political ones, a law that is part of religion as well as state politics. Such a revision of the idea of law re-coordinates the relation of ethics and law, finding the essence of law as constitutive of ethics and not in opposition to it. Law may then appear as forming a representative universality, where one stands responsible for any other, and not as a totalizing universality. This paper is constructed by commenting on a set of texts (which I call pretexts) by the two authors. I chose and translated (or re-translated) the pretexts, and then parceled them into small chunks. Each pretext is numbered consecutively, and the chunks of each text are lettered (2a, 2b, 2c…). In another context, I would set up a page format that imitated the printed Talmud, and would include a more layered textual apparatus, but for this essay, you will need to refer to the indented pretexts. I set phrases from the pretext upon which I comment in SMALL CAPS to help you identify the work of my commentary. I will start with a straightforward opposition: Kant clearly distinguishes laws from ethics in his Metaphysik der Sitten.2 The moral justification of state coercion is complex, but just laws serve morality. Ethics knows no such coercion, and is indeed a realm of private morality — not to be confused with private right or law. Cohen rejects this distinction and argues unambiguously that the organon for the study all of morality, called ethics, is ju-

2

I have translated all texts myself and have used the German edition, Metaphysik der Sitten of Karl Vorländer (Hamburg, 1922), with consultation of the English translation: The Metaphysics of Morals of Mary Gregor (Cambridge, 1996), but the citations are to the pagination of the Akademie-Ausgabe.

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risprudence (or the science of law). In order to break down the difference between external duties and internal duties, Cohen must reinterpret action. The agency of the moral actor arises not in myself, but through another, indeed, through the other as ‘you’. In the second section the role of the state is explored. Cohen argues unambiguously for the necessity of the state for law. But while Kant supports the foundation of the state, and indeed, the coercion to join the state; he also articulates a phase called provisional right. Private right seems to be not merely fulfilled by public right, but even to yield an interpretation of law upon which the state depends. Thus I shift from Cohen back to Kant to envision law that is not simply statist. Finally, both thinkers explore religion as a form of society alternative to the state. Kant’s construct of an ethical commonwealth raises important questions about what is essential to a legal order, again raising qualifications on the demand for coercion. Cohen, for his part, offers a second account of the Iyou, and this time emphasizes the plurality of unique individuals, each responsible for others as an alternative way of forming society, including the universal idea of humanity. But that position still depends on a legal order, indeed, it is preserved through such a legal order. This paper, thus, moves from an examination of law and coercion, to a search for a legality that is not based on the state, to conclude with reflections on the gap between state and religion, and indeed, on the possibility of laws in an ethics in relation to religion.

1. Ethics and Law The most basic distinction in Kant’s Metaphysik der Sitten is between ethics and right or law (Recht) That distinction is repeated in various ways throughout the text, but the division of freedom into external and internal is the most basic.

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Kant places FREEDOM in bold, as the commonality and focus of this passage. Freedom is a metaphysical concept, the very possibility of which has been the task of much of his critical philosophy. As metaphysical, freedom itself is not a phenomenal effect, but is rather the interruption of the phenomenal world, producing phenomenal effects. Morality, in both its internal and external aspects, depends on freedom, on the possibility of the free agent to initiate an action independent of the necessity of empirical causes. The possibility of legal responsibility, especially, depends on the moral attribution of free agency—that someone can be held to be free and not compelled by empirical forces. But even the ethical judgement I make of my own internal actions depends on freedom. For Kant, freedom is twinned, but the twins are not identical and emphatically not joined. There is a radical and complete SEPARATION of two kinds of freedom: an internal and an external. While these two kinds of freedom are disconnected, THE DUTIES are in a parallel way in need of a DIVISION. But while the duties that arise from the external freedom are moral, they are not truly ethical and the ETHICAL duties are exclusively found in the exercise of internal freedom. While the Kantian ethicists might have led one to think that Kant retreated into an internal realm for the exercise of freedom, he is committed to external freedom—but the gap then between internal and external is all the more disturbing for us: because it is not at first clear what purpose it serves. The Universal Principle of Right defines legal or rightful external freedom precisely as a relation of my freedom with other people’s freedom (not my relation of freedom to the world of nature or of scientific physics, nor of my own psychological drama). 2a) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 230-231: Any action is right, if according to its maxim the freedom of arbitrary choice of anyone can coexist with the freedom of everyone according to a universal law.

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This social realm requires a universality that does not demand moral free action of others, but only the possibility (CAN COEXIST) of the others’ free action. This principle is doubly metaphysical: first it requires freedom as possibility—that someone could act freely, undetermined by the empirical situation. Second, however, the principle requires a universality in relation to others (EVERYONE). Universality is not an empirical effect, but depends precisely on reason. Law is constituted by a universal judgment about other’s moral freedom. The universal law that is the criterion of right constitutes a realm where our freedom of choice, or arbitrary will (WILLKÜR), must respect others’ moral freedom. 2b) It also follows from this that it cannot be required that this principle of all maxims be itself in turn my maxim, that is, it cannot be required that I make it the maxim of my action; for anyone can be free so long as I do not impair his freedom by my external action, even though I am quite indifferent to his freedom or would like in my heart to infringe upon it. That I make it my maxim to act rightly is a demand that ethics makes on me.

Law concerns external freedom, freedom understood in relation to others’ freedom, and so does not address the reasons that lead me to do what is right. What Kant calls incentives are closely related to the determination of the will. Moral freedom depends precisely on a freedom from external compulsion. I have the freedom to do what reason requires independent of external direction. But moral freedom binds me to not impinge or hinder anyone else’s freedom. Because this universal principle of law addresses external freedom it does not, rather CANNOT, require that it become the internal ground of my will. Law, for Kant, does not address internal freedom. It is not the case that I can do anything to another that could force him to immorality: that I could somehow present an empirical force that would compel him to will immorally in his internal freedom. Internal freedom requires precisely independence from external causes. But I could limit his external freedom, his possibilities for action in relation to other people. Even if I want him to act immorally: from a pathological desire for some good, if I do not interfere with his external freedom, I am within the limits of the law. I do him no

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legal wrong. Thus I could tempt him with a low price for junk food, trying to corrupt his ethical duty to pursue good nutrition, but I may not ban him from the market-place, for exclusion from his lawful use of freedom is not itself lawful. Legality, therefore, is a respect only for each other’s external freedom, a freedom from impinging, from force and empirical obstruction to the freedom to do what another can legally do. It is ethics, on the other hand, that concerns internal freedom, and it is an ethical duty to will to be law-abiding—it is not a legal duty to choose to be law-abiding merely for the sake of the principles of law. To be law-abiding as a matter of legality requires reason, universality in judging the appropriateness of each maxim, but reason need not determine the will from reason. One may wish to be lawabiding for many other incentives, including self-interest, and even a mere formalism of following the law. Law and ethics, in Kant, then relate as yet another form/content distinction on the topic of freedom. 3a) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 380-381: The doctrine of law dealt only with the formal condition of external freedom (through the consistency with oneself, if its maxim were made a universal law), that is, with the law [Recht]. Ethics, on the contrary, also provides a content (an object for the free arbitrary will), an end of pure reason, that is at the same time an objectively necessary end, that is, represented for human beings as duty.

External freedom is governed by what Kant calls a formal condition: to not infringe on others’ freedom. One’s own freedom is bound by reason (judging the universality of the maxim), but the goal or END is not determined. Normally Kant is regarded as formalistic because he ignores the consequences of a deed, but within Kant’s own morality, there is a further form/matter distinction: the form is the means to the matter which provides the end. The end, however, is also determined by reason. Ethics determines ends rationally, while law determines means rationally. In neither case is empirical intuition determining: we neither have our ends given to us, nor are we reasoning instrumentally or tactically in determining the means. The metaphysics of morals determines both means and end through reason, through universalizing judgment—but the internal freedom

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concerns the ends of morality; while external freedom is only a means—a rational means, to be sure, but not itself concerned with ends. Indeed, to stipulate legally any end for external action is to betray the realm of law and corrupt it. 3b) For this reason ethics also can be defined as the system of ends of pure practical reason. — End and Duty distinguish the two divisions of the universal doctrine of morals. That ethics contains duties, to the observation of which one cannot (physically) be coerced [gezwungen] by others, that it is a doctrine of ends, because either to have or to presuppose a coercion [Zwang] is to contradict oneself.

Ethics, in contrast to Law, is the realm of ends. Both law and ethics are realms of duties, but while law has no concern for the end, ethics has no toleration for constraint or COERCION (Zwang). The end of action always must be determined freely. This freedom from constraint is what makes ethics a matter of inner freedom—the principle is that whatever role others have, they in no way determine my will. Reason understands ENDS as utterly unfettered from external concerns or influences. As far as ends, this argument seems more like our familiar Kant. The question then is the legitimation of coercion, if not in ethics, then specifically in law. Kant depends on a simple negation of negation here. 4) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 231: The resistance that is placed in opposition to the hindrance of an action is a furthering of that action and is in harmony with it. Everything that is wrong is a hindrance to freedom in accord with universal laws; but coercion is a hindrance or a resistance to freedom. Therefore; if a certain use of freedom itself is a hindrance to freedom in accord with universal laws (that is, wrong), so also is coercion which is placed in opposition, as a hindering of the hindrance of freedom, in harmony with freedom in accord with universal laws (that is, right); thus an authorization to coerce he who injures the right is connected to the right according to the principle of contradiction.

The justification of coercion is at one level quite simple for Kant. External freedom can be hindered, or thwarted, by someone else’s action. In some cases such hindrance will violate the universal laws, the principles of external action that we should all follow. In other cases, however, we might need to prevent someone from violating another’s freedom. Kant has recourse to THE

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PRINCIPLE OF CONTRADICTION, with the almost simple argument that if we stop someone from stopping others, we permit the freedom of the others. Thus a simple double-negation makes for freedom. This, however, points to a deeper sense of what right is for Kant: freedom from coercion, that is a counter-coercion applied to unjust, or particularistic, limitations on my freedom. Or, perhaps, we may wish to go one more step: right itself is not a kind of freedom, but a kind of coercion. For an action that is free and in accord with universality, there is no need for right simply. Law is exclusively for the coercion against coercion, for the limitations upon freedom in the wrong — external freedom that limits another’s freedom against the universal. The task of law is not to make us free to act, but rather to limit the obstructions (HINDRANCE) that we or others might undertake. As such, law is not only governed by the principle of contradiction, it is solely negative. As such, Kant in the next paragraph then defines law by coercion, excluding the concern for ethics from law.

5) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 232: [R]ather one can posit the concept of right directly in the possibility of connecting the universal reciprocity of coercion with everyone’s freedom. Namely, right in general has for its object what is external in action, so strict right, namely that with which nothing ethical is mixed in, is that which requires nothing other than the utterly external for its determining reasons for the arbitrary will; because only as such is it pure and mingled with no prescriptions of virtue. Only a completely external right can one call strict (narrow) right.

Not only law, but EXTERNAL FREEDOM itself is to be bound directly to coercion (Zwang). Because such freedom depends on universality, only when every person is limited away from this coercion can anyone be free. Moreover, this insistence on coercion as constitutive of external freedom (or simply coextensive with it), means that STRICT RIGHT has no concern for internal freedom and for virtue. As a force applied against force, law will be unconcerned with your virtue. Indeed, your virtue is not a matter for the state or for law. The separation of private morality and public legality is framed by the restriction of coercion to the public realm. What is less clear is why any concern with ends is excluded from the public realm. We might not want the state to punish us for

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our moral shortcomings, to usurp the role of conscience in matters of virtue, but the exclusion of ethics from law is another matter. The moral psychology of both freedoms is markedly different, precisely on the role of the incentives to do one’s duty. 6a) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 219: Duties according to the legal law-giving can be only external duties, because this law-giving does not require that the idea of this duty, which is internal, be for itself the base of determining of the agent’s arbitrary will, and since it still needs an incentive suited to the law, it can connect only external incentives with it.

External freedom arises in LEGAL LAW-GIVING, which produces external duties. These are duties that one must do in relation to other people’s freedom, duties to not infringe upon others’ freedom. Such duties cannot depend on the internal incentives, the ends of our actions. Duty, an idea that motivates us, as the end of our action, is irrelevant to legality, which must content itself exclusively with external incentives. What is required may be consistent with virtue, but given the coercion of law, it is appropriate to sense that the threat of such coercion is itself adequate incentive in most cases for our external freedom. 6b) On the other hand, ethical law-giving, while it also makes internal actions duties, does not exclude external actions but applies to everything that is a duty in general. But just because ethical law-giving includes within its law the internal incentive to action (the idea of duty) and this feature must not be present in external law-giving, ethical lawgiving cannot be external (not even the external law-giving of a divine will), although it does take up duties which rest on another, namely an external law-giving, by making them, as duties, incentives in law-giving.

There is, however a second form of law-giving, the ethical, which is the determination of the will in internal freedom. Here is the sort of ethics that seems more familiar to us as Kantian. While duty alone can motivate ethical freedom, it is also the case, that the same idea MUST NOT BE PRESENT IN EXTERNAL LAW-GIVING — for external law-giving is a realm of coercion and so duty itself is not relevant. But similarly the coercion of external freedom must also not be present in internal freedom — and so ethical law-giving CANNOT BE EXTERNAL. There is a possibility of making for myself

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duties which REST ON ANOTHER, of determining my internal freedom to respect the law as a matter of duty and so an ethical duty — and not merely as a matter of legality. Indeed, there are ethical duties in relation to others, to foster their own ethical goodness, for instance, but I am bound to that through the incentive of duty itself, and not through any threat of imprisonment or fines. No law can force me to make myself bound to external duty for the sake of duty. I can only do that for myself inwardly, in ethical freedom. Kant’s separation of two realms of freedom, two kinds of duties, and so two aspects of morality is not a simple separation, nor is it a simple denigration of law. However, as he negotiates the separation, he maintains at all times the true court of inner freedom for ethics, and also limits both the function and the constitution of law to a public realm where law cannot determine our ends, but only serves to negate our trespasses against universal laws of action. The refusal to let law (Recht) intervene in our inner court is coupled with a highly juridical view of our public interactions. In another paper, I would pursue how that juridical view coheres with and even in important ways demands the metaphysics of Kant’s speculative philosophy. Here, the linking of social relations to external law-giving and to coercion is a major and positive insight to bring forward into the discussion of Cohen — that is, Kant does not conceive of moral social relations except in the categories of law. The decisive challenge to Kant that Cohen frames surrounds the need for jurisprudence as the organon for ethics. At first glance, this is simply impossible from a Kantian perspective: ethics has nothing to do with law. As we proceed to Cohen’s theory of action, we will reframe the opposition of inner and outer freedom, but in the first moment, we need to see Cohen grapple with Kant’s separation, which for Cohen focuses on coercion. Both in his exposition of Kant’s philosophy (Kants Begründung der Ethik) and in his own Ethik, Cohen contests the distinctions we have just been claiming — precisely in order to transform both the methodology and the concept of ethics itself.

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7a) Cohen, Ethik 268: For the concept of law was made involuntarily and unavoidably suspicious through that legality which is opposed to morality. The basic concept of morality is at once the word for its very opposite. Such an ambiguity may not cling to the concept of law, it must be distanced from it. It has in reality no right and no philosophical origin, but an indubitably religious one. It arises in the polemic that Paul practiced against the Mosaic Teaching that he designated and knew as Law.

Cohen plays off the two different terms (Recht, Gesetz), both of which are often translated as law. It is Gesetz that suffers self-contradiction when ethics and legality are severed. For legality, as abandoning the very inner freedom and ethical insight of duty done for its own sake, is reduced, and made SUSPICIOUS. Legality becomes a mark of external coercion, and so is stripped of its truly morally lawful sense. To defend law (in both terms), Cohen refuses this ambiguity. Indeed, he argues that the transformation of law away from ethics is the result of Paul’s polemics. It is not a legal distinction itself, nor has it any PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGIN — for Plato and Aristotle, and others, all recognized the ethical dimension of laws and of legality. But Paul reacted against Judaism, against the TORAH of Moses (DIE MOSAISCHE LEHRE), and argued against all law and legality — as inadequate for salvation. The Lutheran reading of Galatians and of Romans stands in Cohen’s eyes for Kant’s view of Paul. Kant’s own position owes much to Pietist interpretation of law, and such considerations would lead to a much larger and more challenging topic on law and religion, in the dimensions of Weber or Durkheim. Cohen is not himself making a theological point, but claims a philosophical one: this suspicion of law, which produces the separation of ethics from law, is inconsistent philosophically and imports extra-philosophical perspectives to the detriment of ethics. 7b) We discover ourselves here again at a turning point of ethics in the direction of philosophy of law. Kant distinguished this as the metaphysical originary grounding for the doctrine of law from ethics; and truly not only in relation to the technical realization. The principal became something other. Coercion took the place of the moral law.

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When Cohen, opposing Kant, refuses to suspect legality, he arrives at A TURNING POINT, where ethics turns towards law, the point that I am now pursuing in my various researches. He moves from an inner freedom as the sole province of ethics, to A PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. Kant did not simply separate the two for some technical reason, but rather he introduced a principle, as we know: COERCION. Cohen, in truly flamboyant manner, accuses Kant of replacing the moral law itself with coercion. Simply put, Cohen suggests that when we understand laws as stemming from the moral law, then the ethical dimension works in laws, but when we understand law as Kant does, as severed from ethics, we are left with laws arising solely through coercion, through force. Cohen offers a complex interrogation of coercion, claiming that if it resides in law, it will also reside in ethics (through the moral law), and so will not serve to separate the two sides of ethics and law. But that argument also leads to different if consistent arguments in different places. Cohen insists on interrogating coercion, on providing a non-coercive justification for it, and so allowing it not to define legality, but serve a higher principle of universality.3 He finds its compulsion in relation to the necessity for each to enter society, linking coercion to the founding of the state — of which more later.4 But he also discovers that the place of coercion and of force in general lies not in the prescriptives of ethics, but in the judgments or descriptions of theoretical reasoning. Cohen’s theory of ethics depends on norms that are commands and imperatives, making demands upon us, requirements for the future. Unlike the must of coercion, they operate in the shall of normative commands. The challenge for Cohen is how to think of morality without the radical separation of inner and outer freedom. The concept of action (Handlung) serves Cohen to re-interpret the realm of ethics. For action is attributable to the actor — and is not a merely individual or private matter of the determination of the will.

3 4

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 399. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 412.

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8) Cohen, Ethik 177: The deed is not the action, but the action is a deed. The internal is not transformed through the action into an external. But the internal should go over in to an external. It should remain the internal in this going over, but it should extend itself in an exteriorization. That is the difference between willing and thinking. This difference marks the specific concept of action. It should be at the same time deed.

A deed (Tat) is something done, but done in a merely external way. Action is rather a GOING OVER from the inner to the outer. For Cohen the internal dimension, the rationality, of the actor remains even as the deed is done. There is no action without an external deed, no morally significant exclusively internal action or freedom. We are seeing a mode of schematism, of motion from idea to reality, of EXTERIORIZATION. Cohen notes this distinguishes WILLING FROM THINKING. For thinking would be deed-less, would culminate in a thought, but willing must also produce a deed. Ethics is, as the title of Cohen’s book claims, an ethics of pure will. The purity comes from the purity of ideas, the purity of reason. But the willing is decisive in distinguishing ethics from logic (which treats pure cognition). Action, not in a mechanical sense, not in a spiritualized sense (or even shall we say metaphysical, of a disincarnate or incarnate soul), is a deed that arises from the inner person. And as such is imputable or attributable to him. But precisely because of this externalization, ethics depends on jurisprudence for its whole realm. Action, and not freedom, links ethics and jurisprudence in the tightest knot. 9) Cohen, Ethik 64: In jurisprudence it proceeds otherwise. It deals first of all with actions [Handlungen]. It is not accidental that the word for action became the basic word for the whole of technical juristics: actio is the action and the complaint. A right which is not actionable is no right. Therefore, the concept of action is legally attached to the concept of actionableness. The realization of law is fulfilled in the trial. And thus from the other side the concept of law is also attached to that of action. Action means actio, not merely the claim to a right, but the claim to a court’s judgment.

For jurisprudence depends on the term ACTIO — which Cohen cites in Latin many times. For while an actor does an action, a plaintiff also brings an action. The subject of a complaint will

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likewise be another’s action — that is I bring an action concerning your action — what you will be held accountable for in court. Jurisprudence will, for Cohen, provide us with a superior interpretation of action — derived from legal practice and not from a theory of inner-willing as in Kant’s merely inner freedom of ethics. Cohen proceeds with some wit and even delight, for actio has been pushed into double use by the technical use of legal terminology. And yet, the principle of bringing an action is at the heart of law (Right/Recht). Kant himself had defined law in relation to actionableness — as we will discuss below. But Cohen makes the simplest point: that if you cannot claim or bring an action for your right, it is not your right — it is NO RIGHT at all. To act is therefore, rightly and LEGALLY (RECHTLICH), interpreted as being subject to legal actions. There is no legal action to be brought without an attributable action. Thus jurisprudence is bound to a theory of action — to ethical theory. On the other hand, if I do something that no one can legally hold me responsible for, I may have done something, but I have not acted — juridically speaking. Thus the theory of action is also bound to legal concept (ALSO ATTACHED). For action cannot be interpreted without recourse to court. Indeed, Cohen makes it clear: action means not a claim simply to a right, but a claim to bring the claim to court. Cohen has a rich theory of virtues, first in his Ethik, and then doubled by an account in his Religion of Reason, but these accounts are not of inner duties, or determinations of the will that are free from public interaction. Cohen’s pure will is not a private choice that may or may not relate to other’s freedom in public. It is constituted through others, and so is always in action. The problem of self-consciousness in Cohen’s ethics is where the separation that Kant established between internal and external freedom is broken down in relation to an other person. 10a) Cohen, Ethik 212-13: The ethical problem of self-consciousness is the problem of the pure will. The pure will, however, is fulfilled in action. And two subjects belong to the action, as we have recognized in legal action. For the will and for action self-consciousness cannot mean the consciousness of the self as a unique person. This self must not so much include the other, but rather be related to him. Through inclusion the

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other could appear involved, and so seem sublated as an other in the one self. This may be the case as little for the one as for the other. Neither the one in the other nor the other in the one is swallowed up.

Internal freedom, for Kant, would in principle exclude any other. For Cohen, self-consciousness culminates in ethical action. As such, it must involve others, or at least one other. Cohen makes intersubjectivity constitutive of action, and also of selfconsciousness. A solitary individual, in the privacy of internal freedom, cannot be self-conscious. The moral self does not preexist its self-consciousness, but arises as a possibility in self-consciousness. Self-consciousness cannot simply INCLUDE the other. Were I to take account of another, to make the other a matter of my consciousness, absorbing or appropriating him for me, or alternatively, losing myself in the other, I would still be incapable of action. The other is recognized as other, in order for the self to become aware of itself. 10b) No one can be regarded as expanded by the other. Both must remain standing isolated. But precisely then they do not remain isolated; rather they are related to each other and build self-consciousness in this correlation. Self consciousness is in the first case determined through the consciousness of the other. This uniting of the other with the one generates self consciousness for the first time, as that of the pure will.

Cohen’s ethics depends not on isolated self-consciousness, but on a separation of two parties, who thus can become related through the separation. The lack of sublation, of a higher unity of the parties is required not only for action, but more importantly for self-consciousness. Indeed, self-consciousness arises THROUGH THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE OTHER — that is, only in relating to another can I become aware of myself, indeed become a moral self. Such an argument is not simply temporal or developmental, that before we can be ethical we are first in relation to our parents or siblings. Rather, it is about the very constitution of consciousness — that it depends on separated others, others with whom we form alliances but with whom we do not simply unify into one new substance. What in Kant, was essential in constituting external freedom, the freedom of the others, becomes in Cohen transformed into the very formation of self-consciousness.

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This argument might seem to have more than a resemblance to Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, but the differences are significant, and indeed, the development in Cohen of the category of the other person is much more closely aligned with his followers, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas, than with the Hegelian tradition. For the refusal (emphasized in his text) of sublation is a key indicator of the requirement of separation (BOTH MUST REMAIN STANDING ISOLATED). Moreover, as Cohen develops the question of the other, he focuses on the legal categories of others, following Jewish legal texts regarding the poor and the stranger,5 as well as medieval and modern traditions. The stranger becomes the touchstone of interpreting otherness, and indeed for constituting my consciousness. Later in this development Cohen arrives at one of the primary texts about I and you, for in the final result, the other must be a ‘you’ to be constitutive for my self-consciousness. And so the ‘I’ can only arise in relation to its ‘you.’ This more familiar terrain, however, is set in a context of jurisprudence with a key concept of law: contract. 11a) Cohen, Ethik 248: The contract is a claim, a claim of right, which I raise to the other. The legal action in general is such a legal claim, at least to a court’s judgment. The contract now makes the address from the claims. And thus the other changes to I and you.

Contract depends on the two parties, and is a legal product. Contract establishes the right to a claim, the legal claim upon another person. Contract, as claim determines a relation from I to another. And again, we see that a legal claim is a claim to bring an action in COURT. Any legal action then can be seen as a contractual claim — the right to make a claim upon another in court. But to understand the TO THE OTHER is to recognize a change from claim (Anspruch), to address (Ansprache). Because a claim is not merely an internal thought, but is an action, made public and made to another, it requires an address. The address constitutes its addressee as one who also can speak, and is not a mere object of discourse (a ‘he’). Not only claim but also action becomes address — and so transforms the other into the two

5

Ethik, 214ff.

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parties of address: I AND YOU. A contrast with Kant or Hegel on contract would be truly fascinating, as each interprets the exchange much more than the address. But for Cohen, this moment of address, of dialogue is what makes contract: and address requires the indexicality and particularity of two people who speak to each other. This dialogic element then appears here in the context of contract, even though Cohen’s disciples made it familiar in quite other contexts. 11b) You is not he. He would be the other. He stands in danger of becoming treated as it. You and I simply belong together. I can not say you without relating you to me, without uniting the you in this relation [Beziehung] with the I.

A ‘he’ is only a half-way step toward an ‘it’ — something about which I make claims, but not to whom one makes claims, or who makes claims on me. The other as ‘he’ is not yet party to contract. Instead, there is a relation between I and you, and this relation does not sublate but does bind us together. Moreover, the ‘I’ of self-consciousness is seen to belong with a ‘you’, and indeed, we might say simply that self-consciousness arises because I and you speak to each other, make claims upon each other. 11c) But right here lies the greatest advance; that I cannot think I without thinking you. Thus in self-consciousness the other has as it were transformed into the dual of the I. If self-consciousness is to mean the singleness of the will, then it must build the unity of I and you.

The climax is remarkable: there is no way to think I alone, but it must always be thought with you. The triumph of the dual form, that obsolete grammatical choice that only survives in the pairs of glasses and pants, is indeed the very key to understanding ethical self-consciousness. Contract, that is, legal claims that are made from one to another, provides the means of BUILDING THE UNITY OF I AND YOU. Dialogic philosophy offers the model of consciousness that provides the solution to the fundamental separation of law and ethics in Kant — for contract is only possible if the ‘I’ and ‘you’ are united in addressing claims. But the possi-

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bility of moral action, then, depends not on an internal freedom, nor on coercion as a protection against coercion, but on relations to others as I and you.

2. Law and the State If Cohen reconfigured the relation of law and ethics to make jurisprudence the organon for ethics, then the relation of the law and the state produces a deeper resonance with Kant and also a deeper problem for Cohen. Cohen will interpret the legal relation to others through the production of legal persons — in the first instance cooperatives and then the state, while Kant must negotiate the need for the state to make the claims of private right secure. In both cases, the state is central to their interpretation of right, indeed, central is too weak an image. Only the state can provide for legality, but that means for Cohen, that ethics, too, depends emphatically on the state — a conclusion that Kant resists. 12a) Cohen, Ethik 256: Here lies the force of the state in its ethical meaning, as the task of self-consciousness. And as in the concept the task lies, so that it must contain the meaning of its treatment and its solution in its method, so also the state contains its task and its solution in itself. Only the state produces the self-consciousness of the human.

For Cohen, the state itself has an ETHICAL MEANING (and not just a legal or lawful meaning) and that meaning lies in the highest TASK: SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. In another context, we might pause more fully to explore the term TASK, for so much of Cohen’s thought lies in it — the imperatives of thought and action, and feeling — the imperatives also of philosophizing itself. But here we note only that the state is not an entity, nor is it, but it becomes and strives to become, and so has its task: the production of self-consciousness. What is impossible for the individual, is not merely channeled through another person, from you to I, but requires a state. But the state, for its part, is then not principally about power, nor about coercion, but about self-consciousness.

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12b) Under the direction of the state’s concept of the juristic person, I learn to understand and to practice that I cannot produce the self-consciousness of the will in my natural individuality, and also cannot attempt to widen myself in love and enthusiasm at the level of a relative community, rather only through that in which the determinacy and exactness, which only the laws makes possible, and according to the universality of which, that only the state fulfills as unity, can I renounce all selfishness, and learn to think and to will my I only in the correlation of I and you.6

The central discovery is that THE JURISTIC PERSON is a state sponsored result. That is, only with courts and a state can persons be produced, persons capable of agency and responsibility. The consciousness that acts ethically is itself produced through the creation of persons. And my own NATURAL INDIVIDUALITY, my Dasein as existent individuality, or as empirical knot of experiences is not itself self-conscious. Nor can I simply WIDEN MYSELF beyond the ego of experience by recourse either to love and sympathy, through great collective passions, or even through the romantic sensibility of belonging to a special but local community. There is no route to responsibility from I to beloved to Volk. To actually become an ethical self here is a double task: 1) to renounce all selfishness, and 2) to achieve an I-you relation. In contrast to Kant’s ethics, where a task of overcoming selfishness would be referred to inner freedom, Cohen sees only the legal state as capable of the EXACTNESS needed for the task. But also in contrast to others who might think that the I-you was precisely what lies outside or even beyond universality and law, Cohen regards only the universality and consistency afforded by the laws and a state as capable of producing either aspect of ethics. If in the last section we could see ethics revolve around the I-you, the address of contract, in this section we must begin to see why Cohen invests this relation in the realm of the state. The rigor of the demand, the duty that is not by chance or whim, the purity of the demand, cannot rest on any natural (read extant) qualification. It is not something that falls on me because I love some particular per-

6

Cf. Ethik, 283.

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son, or belong to a particular community, or even because of who I happen to be. The ethical task of self-consciousness can only be produced through the universal demands of the state. Cohen’s interpretation of the state, however leads further than simply to this claim about rigor and unity. It leads to laws (Gesetze). 13) Cohen, Ethik 261: The actions of the state consist in laws. The task must be thought and determined as laws. The will of the state bears testimony to itself in laws. The self-consciousness of the state, must therefore complete and unfurl itself in the laws, as its action. The laws are its task. In them consists the task of self-consciousness.

The theory of action in relation to SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS leads to the clear and emphatic conclusion that the state acts by legislation. LAWS, in this sense, are not simply a constitution, but are universal and positive, that is, rationally formulated and enacted by the state. If the juristic person, the person created by right/law is the agent of ethics, then the state as juristic person must have its specific mode of action: to make laws. In the relation to everyone in the state, those laws display the self-consciousness, the awareness of itself as the state of everyone, and so testify to its own all-inclusive unity. Thus while laws in Kant, according to Cohen, are impugned precisely through their relation to coercion; the laws in Cohen are the condition for self-consciousness. What Kant had seen but shied away from, that moral freedom depended on legality and lawfulness (even in the inner realm), is for Cohen championed in relation to the state’s laws. This path to a state only through which self-consciousness is possible is not the path we seek for ethics. Our exploration of Cohen can lead us beyond inner freedom to the relation to the other as the source of ethical responsibility, but we must re-examine Kant’s thought to find a stronger qualification on the relation of law and the state. For Kant the state as the condition for law is parallel, although not all of right and nothing of ethics hang upon the state. I look back to Kant here in part to show the simple consonance: that right (and law) is only really possible under a state. In part, however, I wish to show that Kant envisioned rights to property, contract, and domestic responsibility prior to the state — provisional right. For us, the stakes of that

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provisional right are the question of whether there is such a thing as private right, and indeed, whether Cohen’s argument for juristic persons and the I-you relation might be located within the context of private right, and not simply in derivation from the state’s laws. Kant distinguishes the provisional right I may have to property, to contract, and even to people from that which would be found in civil society. He holds that we all have a right, even a duty to join a society governed by laws, ruled by the state. He reinterprets the familiar language of the social contract, and the state of nature, which I will make more distinct by translating as ‘the natural condition.’ Thus the two conditions are distinguished by the presence of the state and its laws, and the general interest understood as distributive justice. 14a) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 306: An un-lawful condition, that is, one in which there is not distributive justice, is called the natural condition (status naturalis).

For Kant, the natural condition lacks right or justice, or we might say legality. With no reciprocal and fair distribution of rights, we are all left to our own force to defend the three private rights: our property and others’ promises and our dependents’ welfare. Whatever provisional rights we may claim; we have no true right, for there is no court before which to bring the claim. 14b) It is not opposed to the social condition (as Achenwall thinks), which could be called an artificial condition (status artificialis), rather the civil condition (status civilis) of a society standing under distributive justice. For in the natural condition there can also be lawful societies (e.g. conjugal, paternal, household in general and whatever other ones), of which there can be said to be no a priori law that holds ‘you shall enter into this condition’: as there is indeed about the lawful condition, that all people who would come into legal relations with one another (even involuntarily) should enter into this condition.

Such a condition need not have isolated individuals: it is not in contrast to a SOCIAL CONDITION. Kant distinguishes legal institutions, a state, with the natural condition. In that condition there may be societal institutions of various sorts (families, nuclear and extended, and other groupings), but they do not remove one

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from nature — for there is no law binding one to join such families. On the contrary, despite the lawfulness of such familial social institutions, the legal relation depends on a much stricter universality, and indeed, in parallel to Cohen’s insistence on the state (in opposition to particularisms individual and communal) Kant notes that the obligation to enter the state is a priori, universal, and involuntary. Thus to secure the lawfulness of familial relations, as to secure those of property and contract, we require public right — state law. We require, or we should say, it is required or bounden upon us and upon all others. Here Kant seems most committed to the state as making the rights within which we can exercise these lawful or rightful relations, even for the most lawful of pre-state institutions (familial ones). However, the relation of the state to the rights that arise in private right, in the natural condition, is a bit more complex. 15a) Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten 312-313: If one would recognize as right no acquisition, even a provisional sort, prior to the entry into the civil condition, then that condition itself would not be possible. For the form of the laws of mine and yours in the natural condition have just the same contents as those which are prescribed in the civil condition, in so far as this is thought according to pure concepts of reason. 7

Kant regularly describes the rights in the natural condition as PROVISIONAL, but he also requires the possibility of provisional rights if the state is to secure rights at all. Indeed, in the strongest form: without provisional acquisition, the civil condition WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. Of course, the question of what Kant means by PRIOR TO is a difficult question, because the natural condition is not an historical epoch, but a construct. Right, in the guise of provisional, however, is not only possible without a state, but its possibility is required for any state. There is a strict equality in the form of the laws in relation to the rights of property, contract, and associations in the two conditions. Entering under a state does not yield me new rights of acquisition, indeed, it merely underscores or shall we say, repeats, the rights that I had independently of the state.

7

Cf. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 256-257.

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15b) Only that in the latter condition the determinations under which the practice of these obtains (in keeping with distributive justice) are specified. — Thus, if there were in the natural condition not even provisionally an external mine and yours, there would also be no legal duty in regard to them, and thus no command to leave that natural condition.

The difference is only that the state makes explicit conditions for exercising those rights — for the civil condition takes heed of the question of distributive justice — assuring each their external freedom and the right to its exercise in relation to everyone else. The difference is the justification for the state, and indeed, for the requirement to leave the natural condition. Or so it seems. But that legal duty, that is, the duty that is lawful and also the duty that produces law, the coercible duty to leave the natural condition, also depends on the provisional rights. Here a gap opens between Kant and Cohen, and indeed, a gap that is very important for the question of coercion and the monopoly of coercion in the state. Kant holds that the external freedom that acquires rights, in relation to other people (for even the right of property is defined by Kant as a right in relation to other people, particularly in the natural condition), is not only ahead of itself (provisional in relation to the secured right in the civil condition), but is also somehow behind itself: that is, the secured right depends on the provisional one as its reason or justification. Were we unable to give our word, to portion out goods, to take responsibility for our households, we would have no duty to join the civil condition and secure those rights. Indeed, those rights would seem to arise prior to the coercion of the state, precisely because the justification for the fundamental coercion of the state — the coercion to enter the state — depends on these prior, if provisional private rights. Private law, therefore, provides the most important justification for the coercive power of the state — the need to secure what is only provisional in our nonstate-ruled relations. This implies, as Cohen had seen, that coercion even in Kant is not the essence of right, but it also opens a space that is foreclosed in Cohen: a space for lawful relations that are not logically dependent on the state. Thus in the first section we saw the I-you as the center of the law, reorienting law by the address from the other person that represents the core of the ethics of responsibility. But in the second section we recover

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the possibility of private right as disrupting the claim that the state is essential to all legality—that law (or right) must in some way precede or even stand independent of state laws and their form of power. It remains for the third and final section to see in what form of society we could find laws without a state.

3. Law and Religion The space for law without the state, but law that is also bound to ethics, is made more explicit for different reasons in each philosopher when they turn their gaze towards religion. For Kant, religion requires an ethical commonwealth, complete with laws and constitution, but one free of all coercion, a parallel or at least counterpart to the legal-civil commonwealth. For Cohen, religion has a set of tasks for developing both social and individual uniqueness and also the peace that lies beyond the bounds of the state. In both cases, we find laws and social organization, but the contrast of the two religions on our basic issue of the relation of ethics and law pushes the two apart again. Perhaps this third part of the paper is most surprising, for many Kantians would either discredit the possibility of another moral institution, or would prefer simply to ignore it. And yet for the Jewish readers of Cohen, on the other hand, the arguments of the Ethik are more likely to be foreign, and so the need for religion and its law (and jurisprudence) is not so odd. The transition to religion in Kant is surprising (and not just to contemporary Kant scholars) because the realm of internal freedom seems to be necessarily removed from the effects of public interaction. That Kant might need an idea or postulate of God to shore up his moral psychology is one sort of problem; that he might need a regulative ideal for science and interpreting the world, another; but that he can even imagine a society that has as its business the cultivation of inner freedom, of ethical responsibility, seems in principle excluded. His interpretation of religion in his later work, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen

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der blossen Vernunft,8 is itself a complex negotiation of reason and Christian doctrine and history. The methodology of that negotiation would offer a fascinating contrast with Cohen’s own methodology in his Jewish relation to reason and religion in his own later work, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, but our interest is not in Kant’s re-interpretation of original sin (‘radical evil’) or of Christology (‘the moral ideal’ as teacher), but rather with his ecclesiology (‘the ethical commonwealth’). Still, the need for such a society is articulated in the work as a needed means for battling against the evil principle (which is radical evil), in order to achieve victory in the moral struggle. 16a) Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen 129/86: As far as we can see, the sovereignty of the good principle, in so far as human beings can realize it, can be achieved no other way than through the founding and expansion of a society according to laws of virtue and for the sake of those laws; a society that through reason is set the task and the duty to include the whole of the human race in its compass. — For only thus can there be hope for a victory of the Good principle over the evil.

The struggle in each person’s soul between a propensity toward evil and the moral ideal is exacerbated by an innate predisposition to compare myself with other people. As long as we live in proximity with others, adherence to legality will prevent me from infringing on their right, but the act of comparison, essential in exchange, will precipitate an ethical danger for me. Thus Kant requires a second form of society: one FOUNDED ACCORDING TO LAWS OF VIRTUE. Of course, it will not attempt to coerce or function in the realm of external freedom (see below), but here its foundation becomes not just a task but rather a duty, precisely so that we can become ethical. Even ethical duty (in contrast to legal duty) now needs a social dimension, indeed, an institution. And while Kant refrained from demanding a world-wide state, this ethical commonwealth indeed must be truly universal, ENCOM8 I have translated all texts myself and cite the text as Religion innerhalb der Grenzen and have used the German edition, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, of Karl Vorländer (Hamburg, 1903) with consultation of the English translation Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, of Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (Harper, 1960), references are to the pagination of the German edition/English translation.

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PASSING THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE. Because the power of the evil principle (the temptation of vanity, or of incitement to radical evil), depends on our social condition, our social condition itself must be remedied beyond the demands of legality.

16b) The moral-law-giving reason, beyond the laws to which it prescribes for each individually, also unfurls a flag of virtue as a unifying place for everyone who loves the good, in order to gather themselves under it and so at the very start gain the upper hand over restless attacking evil.

As Cohen noted, even in Kant’s realm of ethics, reason functions by giving laws, and though they are characterized as such by universality, they bind me individually — and not reciprocally as in the laws of external freedom. But reason in its relation to internal freedom now gains a remarkable task: to fly THE FLAG OF VIRTUE: to claim a place for all those who would adhere to the good, to the ethical, to gather and so support each other. Reason itself raises this flag, demands the formation of a society wherein each individual can find support in the battle with sin/evil. In a vocabulary translated out of theological language: we need a society where we can encourage each other in our struggle to be ethical. We cannot be ethical for each other, nor can others make me will ethically — for I must do it for myself, in Kant. But seeing others individually join the struggle to overcome the lure of vanity and competition with each other boosts my own hope to overcome my own propensity to see others as mere competitors. Indeed, one can notice that society has again the effect of negating a negation — for just as the juridical commonwealth used coercion against coercion, so here the goal of the ethical commonwealth is to negate the temptation to competition. And in neither case does the relation with others contribute in a simple positive sense to our moral life. To make clear the relation of the moral law-making to the state’s law-making, Kant produces a second natural condition, an ethical one from which, as from the political one, one has a duty to depart and enter a rational society.

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17) Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen 102/87: In an already existing political commonwealth, all the political citizens as such find themselves in the ethical natural condition and have the right to stay in it; because the citizens of an ethical commonwealth should be forced to enter it would be a contradiction (in adjecta); because it bears in its concept the freedom from coercion.

That ETHICAL NATURAL CONDITION exists within the civil condition. We are all bound by legality, but in our own ethical struggle, we are riven and lack the ethical society. Of course, through reason, we can discover a duty to join an ethical commonwealth, but it is an ethical duty and so is not understood in parallel to the political duty to join the state. That state, for Kant, was defined by the legitimation of coercion in forcing everyone to join. But an ethical commonwealth is in principle that society that is voluntary — and thus defined by FREEDOM FROM COERCION. The implications are vast for our sociality, and for law. But one simple point is made more clear, that the state and its laws regarding external freedom create a space that is not opposed to a society that furthers ethics, but they also are not permitted to further ethics. The state and coercion are again tightly bound together, and the promise of ethical societies is fundamentally no business of the state (which can only make coercive laws addressing external freedom). 18a) Kant Religion innerhalb der Grenzen 129/86 One can call an association of people under merely moral laws in accordance with the provision of this idea ethical, and in that these laws are public, an ethical-civil (in opposition to the juridico-civil) society, or an ethical common-wealth.

Thus Kant clearly frames two terms to name these two societies: ethical and juridical (rechtlich). It seems, in his own way, that he is excluding law from the realm of this ethical society. It may follow moral laws (Gesetze), and have as its goal this association for encouragement of individuals, but it deals exclusively with virtue, with ethics. It lacks Recht because it lacks coercion, and lacks the fundamental coercion: the coercion to enforce the duty to join. But the duty to join an ethical commonwealth arises only when one has already been coercively bound in a political commonwealth.

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But just as there is no compulsion to enter, there is also a more complex relation, in its own interesting way parallel to the problem of provisional right. For such an ethical society can, at first, occur WITHIN a state, to the point of including every citizen. Not that Kant proposes an establishment church (that the state would have its denomination), but the opposite, that the church would have its nationality. Of course, the central principle for the ethical society is that it should be universal, and world-wide. But, at least it can include everyone living in a given state. Minority religions are not needed. But the parenthesis turns this point sharply around: there is no possibility of an ethical commonwealth without a state. Only through the ground or base of political order, and specific state laws, can an ethical commonwealth be formed. Were Kant only speaking about the condition that one can only live in the ethical condition on the basis of having left the political natural condition, on the basis of having secured external right and so the freedom to commit to contract and so on, then we might see a certain sense of the instability of any ethical society in the political natural condition. But, his point is more focused, because he is not writing of conditions but of societies and commonwealths. Of course, even in the political natural condition one is bound to be ethical — ethical duties are independent of political circumstance. But the possibility of a religious society is foreclosed until a state is established. While the state cannot force you to join the church, and the church is not part, therefore, of the state legal order, Kant holds that the existence of the state, the rule of law and coercion, is needed for a religious society, a church, to exist. 18c) This one has, however, a specific and characteristic principle of union (virtue) and hence a form and constitution, which distinguishes it essentially from the other. Nonetheless there is a certain analogy between them both, as treating of two commonwealths in general, in view of which the first can be called also an ethical state, that is a kingdom of virtue (of the good principle), which has its completely well-grounded objective reality from the idea in the human reason (as duty, to join

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such a state), even if subjectively it could not be hoped that from the good will of human beings would ever be resolved the harmony to work towards this goal.

The contrast continues, although even Kant begins to see how closely analogous they are. For while this ethical commonwealth has its own PRINCIPLE, CONSTITUTION and so on, the analogy can be pushed until the ethical commonwealth can be called A STATE, and even compared to a KINGDOM. The voluntariness, moreover, seems to lose some of its laxity, for the duty to join the now ethical state is reiterated as an OBJECTIVE and RATIONAL DUTY. Moreover, there is a subjective reason not to expect a world-wide church and virtuous harmony any time soon. But if we recognize this tension between our rational duty and subjective insight in relation to ethical state, what is the implication for the political state? The assumption that everything depends on the role of coercion might indeed not bear the burden that is being assigned to it. Lawful societies seem to be a broader category at this point — duties to join, constitutions, and so on, which Kant carefully draws as analogies might, on the contrary, point out that the characteristics that make the political state just and right draw also on other sources beyond the limitations against coercion by the state’s just coercion. For his part, however, Cohen emphatically rejects this analogy between the religious society and the political state. Moreover, he boldly claims that the Jewish religion has abandoned what for Kant must be a ground, a political state. Indeed, the argument in Cohen’s Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums9 moves sharply against or at least in tension with that of his Ethik, whose argument held emphatically for the state. The situation of the Jews, according to Cohen — who was no Zionist — was that they had abandoned the dependency on the state in biblical times. That they maintained a society without the state depended on a different institution, one that Cohen calls the congregation

9 All translations of quotations are mine. English translation by Simon Kaplan as Religion of Reason Out Of the Sources Of Judaism (New York, 1971). References are to the pagination of the German edition/English translation.

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(Gemeinde), which is a German rendering of the Hebrew kahal. But such an institution is not a Church, which is analogous to the state. 19a) Cohen, Religion der Vernunft 229-30/197: Without the state no church can arise. Thus the congregation arose, as the uniquely adequate unity for the unique task of religion. And as religion arrived at this point, where the individual arose, so is it to be understood for the individual, as the adequate public institution, which is needed for the completion of punishment as confession. 10

Cohen accepts Kant’s claim: no state, then no founding of a CHURCH. But the CONGREGATION arises without a state. Much as he inserted the cooperative between the individual and the state, requiring a transformation of Kant’s sociology, now he places a third society alongside church and state. The specific function of this congregation is to be a place where individuals can support each other in their task of self-creation—a task performed by CONFESSION and taking on suffering for my own sins. The ‘I’ is created in this performance, created in its uniqueness. The community does not create the ‘I’, nor can the ‘I’ create itself alone, but it depends on the congregation gathered in order to confess — for repentance and self-creation require actions that lead us into the public, into a legally constructed space. There are analogies to criminal procedure in Cohen’s treatment of the punishment and confession, but this generation of an individual human, of an ‘I’, is here linked to a particular kind of society. 19b) For it is not the state, nor also the analogue to the state, the church, rather it can be only the new institution of the congregation, which has its model only in the city-community. This however has as its presupposition nothing less than the individual, in a pregnant way in opposition to the symbolic members of the state.

It cannot be the state, not simply because there was a destruction of the Jewish state, but rather because this task of becoming an ‘I’ is linked to a messianism and a demand for the formation of humanity itself. Moreover, and here the issue is framed more sharply, to speak of a unique ‘I’ is to recognize that each mem10

Cf. Ethik, 496.

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ber of the congregation is determined to be an individual and not merely a member of a class. Cohen argues here that in the state an individual appears merely through what unites him or her to all others. Hence citizenship is only SYMBOLIC MEMBERSHIP, but belonging to the congregation depends on each one struggling to create his or her own unique self. One might see in this an imitation of Kant’s ethical commonwealth, the place where each struggles to be ethical in the company of others. The issue, however, for Cohen, is whether any social form based on the state can encourage the multiplicity of its members. Kant, Cohen could say, was attuned to what was needed for the individual’s struggle to re-create himself — a society in which to do it, but by linking the ethical commonwealth so closely to the political one, Kant lost the very individuality he sought. 20a) Cohen, Religion der Vernunft 17/14-15: While it might suffice for the single human, that he would only become conscious and certain of his own individuality in the humanity that is mediated through the state, he still needs another mediation than only that one which is exacted between the I and humanity.

Just as Cohen’s Ethik revolved around the goal of the state’s selfconsciousness, so his Religion, struggles to develop the self-consciousness of the unique individual. Without overcoming or even displacing ethics, religion arises in a much keener sense of the need not only for a different society, but more importantly, a different way of linking my self to humanity. Alas, says, Cohen, the way from the empirical self to the state, to discover self-consciousness in the state is not the only mediation between the ‘I’ and humanity, and indeed, in its focus on humanity shortchanges the uniqueness of the individual. Thus Cohen returns to the question of pronouns, to the address to the other person to clarify what lies beyond the state. 20b) Next to the I and in distinction from the it, the he arises. Is he only the other example of the I, the thought of whom would be coposited already through the I? Language already protects us from this mistake: it posits the You before the He. Is the you also only another example for the I, and wouldn’t it need its own discovery of the You, even when I have already become aware of my I? Perhaps the opposite ob-

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The ‘I’ is collected in a set with the ‘it’, the ‘he’, and the ‘you’. Human beings are not ‘its’, but the ‘he’ seems to be merely the same as the ‘I’, another example of a general class. Thus the state, on this model, seems to reduce the I-you, to an I-he, a relation that only recognizes the fundamental equality and similarity, and even interchangability of me and the other person. But the ‘you’, at least in this text, appears to be prior in consciousness to the ‘I’ of self-consciousness. Indeed, the relation of I and You here makes a claim that is in some tension with the contractual model, where you and I emerge in the contract, at the same moment. Here, and throughout the Religion, the ‘you’ precedes the ‘I’. The uniqueness of the ‘I’ turns on the difference from the ‘you’, and on the priority of the ‘you’ to the discovery of the ‘I’. That difference is marked most of all in terms of poverty and in a relation of rational compassion wherein I recognize the other person as my responsibility, prior to creating myself in repentance. While ethics, in thinking legal contract and the creation of the juristic person, seemed to do an adequate job of producing a difference between the ‘it’ and the ‘I’ and ‘you’, Cohen pauses here to think through more carefully the asymmetry of I and you, and in the process discovers that the ‘I’ comes to relate to itself through a relation to the other that is not reciprocal. Moreover, while the pragmatics of language, particularly in the play of address and claim, had already been invoked in the Ethik, in order to make the classifications here discussed we need more focused reflection on the pragmatics of the indexicals — on the way that these pronouns signify. For Cohen, the question becomes whether the motion to the state can accommodate the specificity of these indexicals, and in particular, the priority (and not equality) of the ‘you’ before the ‘I.’ Cohen’s rational religion redeems the validity of individuality in a richly pluralistic manner.

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We have two more steps to take, however, to complete this analysis of ethics and law. For while Kant had clearly complicated his view of ethics by exploring rational religion, he did not produce an interpretation so clearly in tension with ethics by so doing. On the contrary, his religion envisaged a series of radical complications on the way to the exercise of internal freedom, the resolution of which was a second form of society. That society, however, did not challenge the most basic division of internal and external duties — even though it did qualify it in ways we have already explored. But we must raise the question of whether the congregations, with their enhanced individuality, do not thwart any hope of universality and of messianic humanity for Cohen. The logic and practice of prayer in the congregation can then prepare for the final topic: the role of law in this religious society. 21a) Cohen, Religion der Vernunft 449/386: The congregation is the unavoidable preliminary stage for messianic time. The prayer of the individual must accordingly become the prayer of the congregation. Mysticism and pietism move in dangerous ways if they isolate the individual in prayer. Solitude can be only a transitory condition for the human heart.

While Kant had bound individuals externally into the juridical state and internally into the ethical state/commonwealth; Cohen invests the very plurality and indexicality of the individuals in a rational religion that must not culminate in individuals alone. Their need of a congregation is more marked than Kant’s individuals who struggle for the victory of the good principle. Despite all of the analysis of humanity and messianism in his book called the Ethik, Cohen makes a simple and bald claim that the congregation (and not the state) is the necessary PRELIMINARY STAGE for messianic time. There can be no messianic age on the basis of the justice and totality of the state — rather only on the basis of the individuality cultivated through the congregation can messianic justice and peace arise. But just this highly individualized and indexical task leads not to a privacy or isolation. Prayer is not usually solitary in Judaism, and it ought not to be. The relation to the ‘you’ is not passed beyond in the self-creation of repentance and atonement. Cohen directs a word against certain

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kinds of MYSTICISM AND PIETISM. And indeed, one wonders if the opponent here is the Jewish Hasid, or perhaps Kant himself. Kant had severely limited public prayer, and reduced oral prayer to inner wish directed only toward myself. One joined under the flag of religion to encourage each other, but the struggle did not involve others, indeed, it was primarily to neutralize the temptation of competition that one joined an ethical commonwealth. Solitude could be the best condition for Kant, a condition in which one had no family and, beyond mere legality in relations with others, gained no serious benefit from religion. Or at least, such a tendency to solitude is curbed by Cohen’s insistence on the congregation. 21b) A human is the bearer of humanity. For this purpose however, he must first join together into a congregation. The totality of humanity must first lead to the unity of plurality. Humanity is the totality. The unity of plurality is the congregation.

Thus we return to the basic position, but with a subtle twist: the individual bears the universal — not as a specification of the universal, but as representative for the universal. We see a need for plurality and the kind of unity that maintains difference more vigorously (not merely as a moment overcome in universality). Rather, the possibility of the plurality in the congregation is the model for the unity which maintains the uniqueness of each that the messianic promises. Such a uniqueness points decisively to my (and then our) representative responsibility for others: I for you, we for the other communities. Instead of a level playing field, the promise of plurality is the intensive and indexed responsibilities that fall upon me and upon us. The individuality that is thus intrinsic to plurality is precisely differentiated by its asymmetry and increase of responsibility. In the congregation, we form a unity that not only preserves my sense of my responsibility for the others, but also is the place where we discover the task of becoming responsible for the whole world. Thus this turn to religion is not to a personal or private redemption, or even a solitary self-creation, but produces an intensification of responsibility, responsibility that must be found in a different form of society and then directed to humanity. But has Cohen merely repeated Kant? Is this religious society with its

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higher task free of law? The need for a political state with its laws seems to yield a real but limited sphere to the state, in order to reserve a more demanding and ideal sphere to religion. Is Cohen’s Ethik to his Religion merely a repetition of Kant’s Rechtslehre to his Religion? The answer, on the contrary, is that Judaism has always championed law and indeed laws, as the center of rational religion. The contrast between the Pietist’s devotion and the Jewish commandments is in many ways the fundamental cause of all of the complications of this paper. In the Religion, Cohen redevelops the point made above about Paul and the rejection of law. He also re-examines Kant in this respect, praising him for thinking about the moral law, but criticizing the lingering dependence on Paul. The ideal of law in the Jewish congregation is indeed, for Cohen, not a state law, but in some ways is itself the ideal even for state law. Just what sort of authority Cohen would grant to the community or its religious leaders in the matter of determining or enforcing law is a difficult matter. While reserving an extensive treatment of Jewish law in Cohen’s Religion for another occasion, I offer one last quotation to help frame his basic position: 22a) Cohen, Religion der Vernunft 425/366: For us the law comes into question in its concept. This concept of the law, however, has its measure, in particular in the preservation and development of religion. The statutes and ordinance are recapitulated by the superior concept of the Torah. The law consists, rather, of laws. The unity of the laws, however, is the teaching, the religion. And this alone can be the question of the value of the law: its relation, materially as well as historically, for the continuation of the religion.

Cohen recognizes that Jewish thought has explored the relation of law and ethics in great depth. His concern, as usual, is about the CONCEPT of the law, which is not so much opposed to the details of laws, but offers a viewpoint. The point of the laws is religious, for the Jews, and so however law is interpreted, the relation to the continuation or to the future of the religion provides the measure. The difference lies between the function of law for the state as its self-consciousness in action, and law as continuity and development of the religion. Perhaps the ironic inflection here is that the purpose of religion itself is the exposure to suf-

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fering in bearing witness to monotheism. To try to preserve that exposure is the opposite of a Spinozist conatus essendi of the state (which is not even the purpose of law in the state, according to Cohen). The religion that needs preservation is precisely that religion which has abandoned the security of the state, and offers itself as responsible for the world. 22b) The continuation of the religion of Jewish monotheism is bound to the continuation of the law, its concepts — and not the details of the laws. The law makes possible that isolation which seems indispensable for the care and the continuation of what is its own as the eternal.

And so the continuation of Judaism depends on law. Law as LAWS, but dependent on law as teaching and not as specific detailed regulations. Cohen slides back and forth on the question of details, not obviously a liberal for that but at least seeing that ‘legalism’ in a Jewish inflection will need to see the concepts which laws embody. Law must be ramified as laws, laws which cover the details of everyday life while the concept of such ramification is more important than the specific details themselves. His insight into the preservation of the religion, however, revolves around ISOLATION. The separation of the Jews from the other peoples of the world is not understood as a physical separation simply (occupying their own territory), nor a local segregation (as in a ghetto), but a separation in prayer and in the congregation. The function of preservation, in the first instance, as here, is negative and is as a symbol of the religion. But throughout the discussion of the community and of virtues, Cohen re-inscribes the more positive upbuilding functions of law. Cohen focuses on the future development of the Jewish laws, on the task of raising children and students in the law. But in keeping with that futurity, he is reluctant to base his account on the specificities of Jewish legal practice in the rational religion. Rather, he offers the sense that the concept of everyday life governed by the laws of Jewish religion will hold open a future, one determined in relation to justice, to holiness, and to messianic humanism. In further research, Cohen’s specific interpretation of biblical, Rabbinic, and contemporary Jewish legal practice could produce a richer model for interpreting the way that law and ethics interrelate. Indeed, I hope to undertake just such researches

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drawing on Cohen’s work and looking to his as a model for wider researches. But for this essay, I would conclude only that in place of some Pauline Law, Cohen has articulated a model of Jewish laws that contributes to the redemptive work of proclaiming monotheism and working towards messianic humanism. What appears in this third section is a more complex relation of particularity and universality, for even as religion emerges in both thinkers as a non-coercive community, it also advances a richer logic of universality. Kant recognizes this, and Cohen takes the issue of individuality, indeed of uniqueness, and allows a deepening of uniqueness to correspond with a greater form of community. A community that can preserve the richest plurality is one that must understand its own isolation or distinction as itself a mode of responsibility. Just as the community forms to enhance my responsibility for others, so the laws of a rational religion also enhance our community’s responsibility for other communities, indeed for the world. The logic of representation, of one responsible for the others, arises in Cohen’s work and points in a direction of deeper responsibility in law. For if law’s essential characteristic is not coercion (see section one), but lies in the address from the other to me, and if law is not exclusively possible in the state (see section two), then here we begin to see that law might originate in, or at least bear within it, a possibility for embodying the universality of representation. The heightened responsibility of an ‘I’ in Cohen’s religion cannot be simply coerced, and perhaps is not best found in state law, but it may still admit of appearing within law. The question, then, becomes not whether law can admit of such an extreme ethics of responsibility, but rather to what extent the end of law is not exactly to be a medium for such extreme ethics, an end from which law retreats to reciprocal and coordinate justice in the state at some risk. Such a vision of a law beyond state law is itself still a law with laws, and therein might best appear the features that define law. To glimpse such a vision has required a specific reading of both Kant and Cohen in this paper. That Kant would find such an ethics simply beyond law is without doubt, despite the traces of a view closer to these ultimate reflections. But as a reading of Cohen, the tension between the argument for the Rechtsstaat and the model of the rational religion cannot only intimate the view offered here, but indeed impels me towards it. Precisely through

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reflection on the jurisprudence of both state and religious law, both purified by rational critique, we may see our clearest view of a new relation of law and ethics.

HERMANN COHEN’S THEORY OF VIRTUE PETER A. SCHMID, ZÜRICH

Cohen’s ethical theory of virtue, comprising the last seven chapters of the Ethik des reinen Willens, has long been neglected in the discussion of Cohen’s practical philosophy. This has changed in recent years with the revival of theories of virtue as a whole. However, whereas these new attempts at a theory of virtue can largely be seen as a critique of a universalist ethics based on principles, Cohen’s theory of virtue should be read from the outset as supplementing his ethics of principles. He therefore holds a weak theory of virtue, i.e. one which emphasizes the orientation of ethics to principles, but also makes it clear that without a discourse on human virtue this ethics is meaningless. Like Kant in his theory of virtue, Cohen is concerned to lay bare the motivational grounds of good action. He is therefore concerned to discover the conditions for individual moral action.1 Yet this is not enough. Going far beyond Kant’s theory of virtue, Cohen’s theory also contains a historical-philosophical dimension, a dimension ultimately connected with Cohen’s messianic conception of the ideal. This historical-philosophical dimension of Cohen’s ethics is pre-eminently expressed in his theory of virtue, which examines the subjective side of historical-philosophical optimism. Because the theory of virtue reveals the subjective basis of certainty for the progress of morality, a basis missed by many interpreters, the problem of the application of ethics is completely solved. In the virtues Cohen discovers a necessary condition for individual moral action. They help to enable and stabilize the other condition: the need to adopt a moral position. In what follows I will discuss Cohen’s theory of virtue in three sections. Starting from

1 His first attempts to do so are found in the 1877 exposition of Kant’s ethics, which concludes with an analysis of the ‘application of moral law to man’s psychological nature’. Cf. H. Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ethik (18771), 272-328.

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Cohen’s principle-based ethics, the first section will discuss the specific function of the virtues. I will then go on to look at the individual virtues. A final section on the shift in the structure of Cohen’s later work on philosophy of religion will be preceded by a brief excursus which will try to place Cohen’s theory of virtue in the current debate on the virtues.

1. The function of the virtues in Cohen Cohen founds his ethics as a principle-based science of law and state. To achieve this, he applies the scientific or transcendentalphilosophical method, which he developed in his Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, to ethics as well. Legal ethics requires the scientific method, for only it can teach ‘in what methodical way ethics should seek and establish laws’.2 By transferring the hypothetical method developed in the principle-based part of the Logik, Cohen succeeds in setting up ethics as the theory of principles for the science of constitutional law.3 Pure ethics proves to be philosophy of law, which conducts an analysis of law and state oriented to the transcendental method and identifies these two concepts as conditions for the possibility of ‘self-consciousness’. The ethical concept of self-consciousness is thus freed of any naturalist and psychological connotations and is fully taken up in the legal-ethical analysis of law and state. Moral selfconsciousness here is seen mainly in the context of the theme of autonomy, for it is only by self-legislation that the moral being can arrive at consciousness of himself. ‘The self must come about in legislation; only in this way does it come about.’4 By means of this conception of autonomy as moral selfconsciousness Cohen believes that he has solved the ancient

2

Logik, 607. For a discussion of ethics as philosophy of law, cf. E. Winter, Ethik und Rechtswissenschaft. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zur Ethik-Konzeption des Marburger Neukantianismus im Werke Hermann Cohens (Berlin, 1980), and P. A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik. Systematische Untersuchungen zu Hermann Cohens Rechts- und Tugendlehre (Würzburg, 1995). 4 Ethik, 339. 3

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ethical problem of freedom. The issue is no longer the origin of action and so the subject who acts in absolute freedom but rather the ‘origin of the laws’5 of morality. The problem faced in the second part of the Ethik is that the subject of discussion in the legal-ethical analysis of autonomy is not actually man but the legal person. This is adequate for Cohen in the principle-based part of ethics. Indeed, it is necessary to keep the foundation of ethics free of naturalist connotations and to show, by way of the pure concept of the legal person, the possibility of autonomous self-consciousness. But this pure foundation leaves open the question of real freedom, i.e. the real freedom of individual human beings. This question becomes urgent when we ask to whom these determinations of the autonomous man can and should apply: what subject must be the vehicle of the pure determinations of selflegislation? With this question Cohen’s ethics enter a new area in which new problems and new interests arise. The starting-point for reflection in this new area of pure ethics is the question: ‘Is man’s kingdom of this world?’6 This question casts doubt on all the results of ethical foundation, for if ‘this’ man, i.e. pure universal man qua legal person, as set out in the foundational part of the Ethik, is not of this world, i.e. of the phenomenal world, the pure foundation of ethics must remain a solely abstract product without concrete value. If this problem is not satisfactorily solved, all the analyses of law, state, and man conducted in the first part of the Ethik remain irrelevant and merely speculative to living human beings. To some extent, however, Cohen had already solved the problem of the relationship between homo phaenomonen and homo noumenon in the part dealing with foundations. His protest against contemptuous talk of the ‘mere idea’ is indicative: properly speaking the idea is determined only by its relationship with reality. Only this understanding of the idea corresponds to that of idealism.

5 6

Ethik, 319. Ethik, 390.

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PETER A. SCHMID True enough, real idealism makes itself not dependent on but entirely independent of reality and of experience. But it is all the more energetic and thorough in taking cognizance of the connection with experience. It does not want to speculate in cloud-cuckoo-land, but with the sense of reality proper to true idealism it wants to embrace reality in order to tame it, master it, change it. The deepest meaning of purity lies in its application, in the production of being, as an application of the pure concept. The application of purity is to reality; but purity thereby changes reality.7

This reveals a threefold structure of idealism, which Cohen clearly sets out in the Ethik via the concept of the ideal. The ethical ideal, which represents the specific reality of morality, has the following three moments: (1) The ideal means perfection. It is the ‘image of perfection’8 which provides the model on all levels of moral reality. The ideal is, so to speak, the sum of all levels of moral perfection. (2) The ideal is the attempt at perfection. It is not an abstract construct contrasting with the individual levels of morality, but is ‘itself the attempt at a work based on that example’.9 The ethical ideal is realized in the works of moral activity. These works are levels of perfection, i.e. levels of the ideal. They are not just symbols but realizations of the ideal. In them eternity as the infinity of morality arrives at its reality, at its existence. (3) Because perfection can never be fully realized, the ethical ideal also contains the moment of imperfection. The moral ideal cannot achieve an adequate reality. It always remains an attempt. ‘The work of morality is attended by the defect of imperfection.’.10 The perfecting of the ideal, which must give the ideal its reality, thus moves in the area of tension between perfection and imperfection, or, as Cohen puts it, ‘between heaven and earth’.11 Surprisingly, Cohen puts an entirely positive value on the insight into the imperfection of the ideal’s realization. The tension between perfection and imperfection of the ideal gives rise to an eternal task, a constant task which must be taken up. It is the task 7 8 9 10 11

Ethik, 391. Ethik, 423 Ethik, 423. Ethik, 424. Ethik, 424.

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to produce the ideal, i.e. to bring the ideal to its highest possible realization. The tension in the ideal drives the will to produce the ideal moral existence, which Cohen sees in the humanitarian, social ideals of a human society. Only the will to the ideal can arouse true enthusiasm for mankind’s task in world history: the enthusiasm to produce the highest existence, the ideal of eternity and of mankind in an eternal process of work. Now the theory of virtue must produce and stabilize the enthusiasm which is necessary to realize the moral ideal. It has ‘world-historical’ significance, in that it supports the attitude which believes in the progress of morality and the ‘victory of the good’.12 To this extent it describes the messianic ethos which reverberates throughout Cohen’s ethics, but particularly in the part dealing with its application. The special feature of this ethos is its optimism about the realization of morality on earth.13 This optimism is also a theme of the theory of virtue, inasmuch as it has the task of introducing into ethics the subjective, intuitive aspect, the absence of which was already criticized by Natorp.14 The theory of virtue is not subsumed in description here, but rather must produce and stabilize the enthusiasm necessary to realize the moral ideal. As so often, Cohen’s conceptual determination of virtue takes its starting-point in Greek philosophy.15 He derives his understanding of virtue in a debate with the Socratic and Aristotelian concepts of virtue. Socrates closely connects his concept of virtue with that of knowledge. For him virtue is mainly the virtue of knowledge, and specifically knowledge of the good. By taking virtue as knowledge, Socrates can hold that moral knowledge alone is a sufficient condition for morality. For Cohen this concept of virtue is problematic because it makes interiority the essence of virtue. This becomes

12

Ethik, 452. For messianism, see P. A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 190-203. 14 Cf. P. Natorp, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität. Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Sozialpädagogik, zweite, durchgesehene und um ein Nachwort vermehrte Auflage (Tübingen, 1908), 121-125. 15 For an extensive history of the concept, cf. the article ‘Tugend’ in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 10 (Basel, 1998), columns 1532-1570. 13

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clear in Kant, who takes the Socratic concept of virtue to its extreme by interpreting virtue merely as moral disposition. Consequently, the active aspect of virtue is lost. Without cancelling the analytically valuable distinction between act and disposition,16 Cohen also calls in the active aspect for the concept of virtue. Knowledge and disposition do not exhaust the concept of virtue. It must also entail virtuous activity. Underlying this insight is Aristotle’s famous dictum that we do not practice ethics to know what ethics is but to become virtuous.17 This also applies to Cohen’s theory of virtue. Its aim is likewise to make the reader of ethics a virtuous person. Cohen links up with the Aristotelian concept of hexis. Hexis in Aristotle means virtue as a practised, learnt skill or habit. For Aristotle the ethical virtues are not naturally given but must be acquired through constant activity. This clearly brings out the difference between the Aristotelian and Socratic notion of virtue. Knowledge of morality is not enough for Aristotle. The known morality must be practised and thus become a skill. It is important to realize that the practising never ends. It never becomes something completely acquired, but needs constant application, constant renewal, because ultimately the virtues are always under threat. Cohen opts neither for the Socratic nor for the Aristotelian concept of virtue. Rather he occupies an intermediate position in seeing virtue both as knowledge of principles and as practice of this knowledge.18 The virtues, as is to be expected, are only a means to achieve goals recognized in principle to be moral. They do not bring anything of their own to the content of morality, but only facilitate its progress by guaranteeing the continuity and lastingness of moral work. In this respect Cohen’s concept of virtue differs crucially from Aristotle’s, which inter16

Ultimately the basis of Kant’s distinction between law and morality. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II, 2,1. Modern theories of virtue put great emphasis on this. 18 So to some extent Cohen tries to connect Aristotle’s insight into the need for a theory of virtue with the conception of Kant’s ethics. Cf. more recently the attempt to link Kant and Aristotle in O. Höffe, ‘Aristoteles’ universalistische Tugendlehre’, in Tugendethik, hg. von K. P. Rippe und P. Schaber (Stuttgart, 1998), 42-68. 17

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prets morality on the basis of practised virtues and thus awards the virtues a constitutive function for morality. In Cohen the virtues are only aids which ‘maintain the direction of action against all attempts to shift and confuse it’19 and also stabilize the achieved moral level of action as the starting-point of every new action. This double function of the virtues enables the continuity and lastingness of moral actions. This definition clearly shows that for Cohen a theory of virtue is above all necessitated by knowledge of the constant threat posed to morality. It is not enough to have recognized the pure principles of morality. The virtues, too, are necessary, so that moral ability can be translated into moral action. But they are also needed, in Cohen’s view, to protect the moral will from confusions and keep it firmly on the path of the moral ideal. These somewhat pathetic formulations by Cohen are wholly embedded in their time, as is shown by the examples which he adduces to illustrate the decline or absence of virtue. The focus is on the problem of anti-Semitism. In Cohen’s view, the antiSemite contradicts all virtues because he fails both to respect Jews as fellow citizens and to love them as fellow human beings, i.e. as others. He thus prevents the Jew from becoming a human being and a person, that is, he prevents him from realizing his ‘self-consciousness’. But in doing so he himself becomes a barbarian, because in his racial or religious delusion his view is trained not on mankind but only on his own race or faith. The anti-Semite thus disqualifies not only the Jews but also himself in that, blinded by the false ideal of naturalist racism or religious arrogance, he errs from the path of virtue, i.e. from the path of moral self-perfection. Anti-Semitism — more generally xenophobia — thus becomes a negative indicator of virtue or, to use a more modern word, of social civilization.

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Ethik, 573.

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2. Virtues in the Ethik des reinen Willens Cohen distinguishes two types of virtues, which supplement each other: the virtues of love and the virtues of honour. The virtues of honour or dignity have reference to the generality. Honour is the affect of virtue. For if morality is the essence of man, it reveals this essence, this soul of man with complete certainty. There is no other symbol which can be regarded so immediately and decisively as an attribute of the human substance. If virtue is the signpost to constant morality, honour is the foundation of its real affect. For just as love springs forth from ‘I’, so honour springs forth from ‘thou’. And in this way, by virtue of ‘thou’, it cements ‘we’.20

Honour is thus the affect which forms ‘we’, specifically general ‘we’. The virtues which express this affect are therefore the stateforming virtues, for the state is the adequate expression of this general ‘we’. By contrast, the virtues of love relate to the majority, i.e. family, community, etc. Love is community-forming, because it ‘leads from “I” to the community’.21 To this extent love can be designated as the community-forming affect, though it can only form relative communities. Hence it cannot function as the primary fundamental affect of the theory of virtue. But it proves adequate as a secondary fundamental affect, as an affect of the second-degree virtues. These second-degree virtues must always remain oriented to the first-degree virtues, for the community has its moral value to the extent that it remains oriented to the generality. Love must therefore remain oriented to the affect of the first virtues, to honour. The two affects form a correlation and supplement and limit each other: honour gives love its universal framework, while love introduces honour into the limited space of the community. Once again this correlative definition of love and honour goes back to an Aristotelian idea, namely the definition of virtue as ‘the middle between two extremes’.22 Only through the correlation of love and honour does morality

20 21 22

Ethik, 492f. Ethik, 482. Ethik, 487.

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become possible. The relationship between first and second virtues is defined in a similar way. Every first-degree virtue is accompanied by a second-degree virtue, which mitigates the extreme position of the first virtue and brings it down to a moral level. Conversely, the first-degree virtue raises the second-degree virtue to a moral level by relating it to the moral generality. Cohen recognizes three pairs of virtues, which supplement each other: truthfulness and modesty, courage and loyalty, justice and humanity. As the first virtue of the first degree Cohen discusses the virtue of truthfulness. With Socrates he recognizes knowledge itself, taken in the sense of a subjective practise of knowledge, as a virtue. This is eminently clear in the case of ethical knowledge. Self-consciousness is self-knowledge. And because virtue is knowing, knowledge, we can refer to this thesis for our understanding of virtue; it is not necessary to take virtue in the Socratic sense as just synonymous with morality. Virtue is knowledge; but the principal content of knowledge is the self. Thus virtue is the signpost to self-consciousness. And this virtue, this signpost is self-knowledge.23

The highest principle of moral self-consciousness is the principle of truth. It must have a corresponding virtue. This function is performed by the virtue of truthfulness as the subjective side of the basic law of truth. Truthfulness is the first virtue of honour. As the virtue of self-knowledge it is oriented to the universality of self-consciousness, both to that of the individual and to that of the state. To this extent truthfulness is the virtue which honours the ideal of self-consciousness in humanity and in the individual and tries to achieve it, i.e. to recognize it. Alongside truthfulness we find the second-degree virtue of modesty. This addition is necessary because truthfulness in itself contains totalitarian, unworldly tendencies, inasmuch as it honours only the pure, universal, and ideal part of human beings or humanity. It does not take human weaknesses into account, so that in the virtue of truthfulness there is danger of ‘overstrain and arrogance’24 of self-consciousness. Cohen is 23 24

Ethik, 500. Ethik, 531.

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particularly thinking of the superman and hero mythology fashionable in his time. This mythology appeals only to an unrestrained, radical pathos of the virtue of truthfulness which fails to take into account the limits of self-knowledge. The superman is contrasted by Cohen with Socrates.25 He becomes ‘the character image of virtue when he shows the shortcomings which cannot be separated from all human wisdom.’26 This is the crucial point: human shortcomings which are allowed for by the virtue of modesty. To this extent the virtue of modesty is the virtue which leads to tolerance towards oneself and towards others. The second complex of virtues comprises courage, a virtue of honour, and loyalty, a virtue of love. In Cohen, in accordance with the classical definition, courage is the moral attitude which allows a person to pursue and apply goals and means recognized to be proper, even if this is connected with dangers and possible obstacles to external goods conducive to happiness, such as pleasure, property, or social status. Cohen attaches great value here to the tension between sensuality (external goods conducive to happiness) and morality. In courage, therefore, the human body becomes the focus of consideration. ‘Man’s sensual nature with its pleasures and excitations has traditionally been regarded as the obstacle to morality’.27 However, not just the pleasures and excitations but also the fears of sensuality pose an obstacle to morality. The virtue of courage is directed against these temptations of sensuality. It must offer protection from the momentary ‘violence of sensual excitations and pleasures’.28 A decisive point for Cohen in connection with courage is that morality should not be overemphasized at the expense of sensuality. Though the temptations of sensuality should be resisted, they cannot be entirely ignored. Sensuality has a value of its own, which should not be relinquished for morality. Consequently, Cohen rejects any ethics of courage which is too

25

Nietzsche, too, sets Socrates against superman. For Nietzsche he is the enemy of Apollonian-Dionysian culture and so the opposite of his hero. 26 Ethik, 530. 27 Ethik, 552. 28 Ethik, 553.

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rigorous and hostile to the senses. Rather human sensuality should be taken into account and seen as a positive moment of morality. In this sense courage does not have the task of fighting and overcoming sensuality, but should make it serviceable to morality and thus raise it to a higher level. The pre-eminent medium for this elevation is culture. Culture is nothing but the human rebellion against human sensuality. The starting-point of culture is this original insight that nature must be subjugated. As the subjugation of nature, however, culture is necessarily bound up with alienation from nature and precisely this alienation entails morally relevant suffering.29 ‘Suffering is the fate of man. His distorted relationship with nature in general is recognized in the concept of suffering.’30 The virtue of courage acquires its function with a view to this suffering. For Cohen it is the virtue which allows human beings to bear alienation and to develop further towards the moral ideal. Cohen conceives of this process as cultural work. It erects the ideal image of humanity for the suffering individual, ‘who by virtue of this work forms his moral self-consciousness, his universal self. In this way the individual is liberated from himself, to experience the higher self in humanity.’.31 The virtue of courage is thus the power by which the individual can liberate himself from his suffering and solve the problem of suffering. For this reason Cohen does not put a negative value on suffering, but rather sees it as the driving force of cultural work and thus as an altogether positive moment in the history of human civilization.32 This revaluation of suffering leads to an optimistic view of world history in Cohen. ‘The courage in suffering and in work, in the suffering of work offers the solution to the tragic conflict in human existence.’33

29

Cohen thus adopts a similar position to Freud with his thesis of the necessary anxiety in culture. 30 Ethik, 556. 31 Ethik, 557. 32 Cohen differs radically here from Freud, who conducted his research not least to ‘put paid to the enthusiastic preconception that our culture is the most valuable thing that we possess or can acquire, and that its path must necessarily lead to heights of unimagined perfection.’, S. Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, in Studienausgabe, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), 269. 33 Ethik, 558.

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Suffering or the work of culture which it sets in motion raises man from his purely sensual nature to his moral destiny. Only through suffering is moral progress possible. Hence it is necessary to recognize in courage, in which tragic suffering takes place, ‘the historical virtue, as the virtue of world history.’34 The virtue of courage is supplemented by loyalty. As a virtue of love it has the function of guaranteeing continuity in moral work. For all courage is useless if the moral ideal is not continually held up as a goal. Courage and loyalty are supplementary inasmuch as loyalty shows courage the way with a view to the moral aim. It ‘is consideration of the generality, at the prompting of love, so consideration of the relative communities, which must be able to be formed under the highest leadership of the generality, for which continuity is required.’35 These basic definitions clearly show the role which Cohen is trying to assign to loyalty in the debate on virtue. Loyalty is the basic power which stabilizes the social forms of organization which stand between individuals and the state. It is also the basic power which preserves relative communities as primary loci of socialization. In Cohen’s view, man is a social being, he seeks other people. The expression of this essential goal is language, as ‘the desire for communication, both passive and active, which motivates man both spiritually and morally.’36 This urge, ‘not only to communicate and receive, but also to connect with and come close to the other’,37 is the basis of socialization.38 Such natural socialization has a neutral moral value for Cohen. Only loyalty introduces the element of morality. The pre-eminent locus of this moralization of the urge to socialize is friendship. ‘The proof that morality governs friendship is provided by loyalty. The virtue of loyalty extends primarily to it; and in the power of 34

Ethik, 558. Ethik, 570. 36 Ethik, 573. 37 Ethik, 575. 38 The language, unusually naturalistic for the Ethik, clearly shows again that the theme in the theory of virtue, but especially in connection with the virtues of love, is sensual man in his orientation to morality. In this sense the theory of virtue is Cohen’s specific anthropology, involving, as in Kant, an anthropology with a practical aim. 35

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loyalty friendship demonstrates its moral nature.’39 In friendship the initially casual relationship between ‘I’ and ‘thou’ becomes a socially fundamental moral connection. In this way friendship acquires a decisive function for society and the state. The lasting connection of people in friendship guarantees the lastingness of society and state. It is the social cement which effectively enables and preserves society and state. The third pair of virtues is justice and humanity. They are not simply equal alongside the other four virtues, but comprehend them and are therefore the highest positions of virtue. Cohen also introduces a hierarchy between justice and humanity, assigning the highest status of all to the latter. It is related to all the other virtues, comprehends them, and places them in a harmonic structure. The classical theory of virtue gives pride of place not to humanity but to justice. Plato, for instance, defines justice as the quality of doing one’s best and not striving too far.40 He sees this virtue as summing up all the other virtues. However, he differentiates justice according to its individual or personal and its institutional, political content. In doing so Plato opens a statetheoretical discourse on justice which was to form part of a moral critique of power through to the nineteenth century. In this tradition the concept of justice is the central concept in a philosophical ethics of law and state. As an ‘institutional virtue’ justice in this tradition is, generally speaking, the fundamental normative principle of society, which is above all meant to regulate law and state, i.e. legislation, jurisdiction, and executive power. Important representatives of this tradition of justice are Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Kant, and also Marx. Cohen places his own concept of justice in this tradition too. The individual perspective of justice is not his concern. He is interested only in the effects of justice on law and state.41 39

Ethik, 574. Cf. The Republic, 433a ff. 41 Today this is once again a subject of intensive debate. Höffe talks in this connection about a revaluation of the discourse on justice, which should ultimately lead to a new critical philosophy of law and state from the perspective of justice, cf. O. Höffe, Politische Gerechtigkeit. Grundlegung einer kritischen Philoso40

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Consequently, justice for him is ‘the virtue of the law and of the state’.42 Cohen goes on to develop a theory of distributive justice, in which justice is not measured by the actions or the needs of the individual human being but by his humanity. This equality of human beings is the foundation of the virtue of the state. In Cohen’s view, the state has the task of bringing about equality and so justice, because it develops its law on the basis of this aim. Thus justice signposts the progress of law. Alongside the virtue of justice, which remains primarily oriented to the general structure of society, Cohen places the virtue of humanity. Only in humanity does justice become individually comprehensible. Humanity softens the ideal rigour of justice and allows just, i.e. human, treatment in individual cases, for the other human being with his needs appears here in the discourse on justice. With a view to justice this means that, to treat another justly, I must take account of his situation and treat him accordingly. In this way Cohen transforms the notion of justice itself. In relation to the virtue of justice he proposed a concept of justice which generally depended on human dignity. Every person should be treated according to his worth as a human being in general. From the perspective of humanity, however, the criterion of justice is seen to shift. The measure of justice is no longer man as a rational being but man as a human being with needs. He needs more than to be treated with strict justice. He needs to be treated lovingly. In this way humanity, virtue of love, is a liberation from self-justice andfrom the narrowness of the pedantic perspective of virtue ... This restores a free scope to moral self-consciousness; it becomes the determinative principle for man’s real task. For this task is not to judge the other, but principally and solely to treat him, to perform a moral action in relation to him.43

phie von Recht und Staat (Frankfurt am Main, 1989). Whereas Höffe leaves the concept of virtue out of consideration in his attempt to reintroduce the perspective of justice into the discussion on philosophy of state and law, Rawls develops justice as the supreme virtue of social institutions, cf. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 19992). 42 Ethik, 597. 43 Ethik, 624.

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By introducing humanity as the regulating principle of the ideal virtues, Cohen softens the rigorous nature of idealistic ethics. Against Kant’s harsh conception of virtue he proposes a principle of humanity and human love. He supplements idealistic ethics with the principle of benevolentia foregrounded by Hutcheson, a principle without which social order is impossible.44 In contrast to Hutcheson, Cohen does not make benevolence a moral principle but only a guideline for action. The morality of an action is not determined by how benevolently we act, but only by the unconditional moral principle, i.e. by the principle of moral self-consciousness. However, the virtue of humanity as benevolence is necessary in that it provides the affective basis for moral action. ‘Humanity makes human duty human emotion, and human emotion human duty.’45 The virtue of humanity is mainly determined by its orientation to the individual.46 For Cohen it thus becomes sophrosyne in a more comprehensive sense than in the other virtues of love, modesty and loyalty. Sophrosyne here means not simply the virtue of moderation and self-control but a comprehensive characterrelated definition: sophrosyne ‘is the holiness of the heart [...]; the whole in its inviolateness; unity in its invulnerability and unassailability. It is more than wisdom and more than virtue. It is the unity of the spiritual-moral essence.’47 This is the scope of the virtue of humanity. It also shows why Cohen chooses the concept of humanity. After all, humanity in the classical sense does not signify a virtue, but the idea of what it means to be truly human, not in a descriptive but in a normative sense. Humanitas is the notion of the sum of spiritual norms and practical rules of conduct which make human beings human. Humanity thus refers to the ideal notion of man, the notion of what it means to be truly human. This comprehensive, normative idea is also 44

Cf. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), reprint (New York, 1971), passim. 45 Ethik, 626. 46 One can add that Cohen also talks about the humane state, i.e. a state which champions the virtue of humanity. Specifically he takes this to be the state which stands up for minorities and the weak and thus becomes the ‘defender of minorities’ (Ethik, 629). 47 Ethik, 630.

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found in sophrosyne, inasmuch as it means the holiness and unity of the human heart. The virtue of humanity goes back to this comprehensive definition of what it means to be human. Cohen therefore calls it ‘the virtue of character’48 or more precisely ‘the virtue of the character-task’.49 As a virtue of character it comprehends all other virtues and unites them in a harmonious whole. ‘Understood in this way, humanity becomes the virtue which makes the harmony of self-consciousness a guide.’50 The truly human person is someone who can determine his moral actions in the spirit of this harmony of virtues. In this way humanity forms the harmonizing power for all the melodies of the moral spirit. And just as music depends on the fundamental law of harmony, so humanity must form the basic attitude for every moral activity. For all that every moral direction should develop independently and freely, it must always remain aware and make itself aware that humanity is the fundamental law of moral harmony.51

3. Excursus: Cohen’s theory of virtue and the current debate on virtues As I already mentioned, the revival of interest in Cohen’s theory of virtue is due to the current debate on the virtues.52 The aim of this excursus is therefore not to describe the current debate, but to show that Cohen’s work contains elements which can help to disarm the criticism which current virtue ethics aims at principleoriented ethics. Cohen’s theory of virtue can be reduced to a fundamental criticism of universalist, principle-based ethics, but can also be read from the outset as a supplementation of principle-based ethics. This means that, as in current virtue

48

Ethik, 630. Ethik 631. 50 Ethik, 631. 51 Ethik, 632. 52 An important modern attempt to reintroduce this type of virtue into moral philosophy is made by A. MacIntyre, After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory (Indiana, 1981). For the current American debate on the concept of virtue, cf. the collection of essays in Nomos XXXIV, ed. by J.W. Chapman and W.A. Galston (New York, 1992). Cf. also recently R. Crisp and M. Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics (Oxford, 1997) and D. Stratman (ed.), Virtue Ethics (Washington, 1997). 49

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ethics, Cohen recognizes problems in pure principle-based ethics which it cannot solve by itself. For him, however, this is no reason to give up principle-based ethics. Rather he is trying to supplement it in an appropriate way, in order to remove the motivational and also educational shortcomings of principleoriented ethics. He therefore supports a weak theory of virtue, i.e. a theory of virtue which emphasizes the orientation of ethics to principles, but also makes it clear that without a discourse on human virtue this ethics cannot become significant.53 Present-day virtue ethics takes its starting-point in the criticism of a universalist, principle-based ethics of the Kantian type.54 It appeals to Aristotle against such an ethics and assert an ethics which is based on actual customs, tradition, or models of judgement and action in specific communities. It doubts whether a universalist ethics can be valid for individual human beings and communities and introduces instead a particularist position which takes into account the social constraints of the moral system.55 Especially MacIntyre points out that principleoriented ethics fails to consider the social context and the historical dimension of the moral system.56 The absence of social context leads to considerable concrete problems. Thus principle-based ethics, its critics say, cannot convincingly answer the question how man becomes a moral being. They rightly point out that the reference to principles does not explain how the individual becomes a moral agent, since people orient themselves less to principles than to concrete examples and models.57 The historical and social context is therefore central to the adoption of moral models of action. A simple reference to principles is inadequate here. 53

For a modern attempt to develop a weak theory of virtue, cf. Michael Slote, From Morality to Virtue (New York, 1992), or even more clearly O. O’Neill, Towards justice and virtue. A constructive account of practical reasoning (Cambridge, 1996). 54 Important representatives of this criticism are Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and Bernard Williams, to name but a few. 55 A valuable survey of the criticism which virtue ethics urges against principlebased ethics but also against utilitarianism can be found in O’Neill, Towards justice and virtue, chapter 1. 56 A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 60f. 57 Cf. M. Slote, Virtue Ethics, 258ff.

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As Onora O’Neill makes clear, the criticism of virtue ethics applies to principle-based ethics in a limited sense only, because many ethical concepts which appeal to principles certainly consider the problems mentioned above. This is also true of Cohen’s ethics. Many of the objections of current virtue ethics to principle-based ethics are disarmed by Cohen in his discussions of the virtues. In particular his virtue ethics solves the problem of the motivation of moral actions. Again we must remember here that his reflections on the virtues supplement and do not replace the principle-based theory. This becomes especially clear in Cohen’s discussions of the concept of the virtues. As we saw, he chooses an intermediate position between Aristotle on the one hand and Socrates and Plato on the other. In doing so he does not decide for one or the other. Rather Cohen makes it clear that only consideration of the two positions together can lead to an adequate ethics. The ethics of above all Plato and then of course Kant are geared to principles, and these remain central. But they must be realized in the world, in the social context, on which Aristotle bases himself. Without this realization a principle-oriented ethics remains an ethics for an Arcadian world. The key to an understanding here is Cohen’s historicalphilosophical conception. In his view, the particular social organization of the moral system can only be understood in relation to the universal development of ethics in the historical context. The social context by itself is not enough, and, as in Hegel, should be understood in its development towards a universal ethics. This becomes very clear in the Jewish theory of virtue, which I will discuss in the fourth section. Here Cohen explicitly appeals to a historically developed religion and its canon of virtues. However, the crucial point is that this appeal is an appeal — as is already shown by the title of his posthumous work on philosophy of religion — to the sources. The sources are the historical and social context in which the rational principles must be laid bare. These principles can therefore only be demonstrated from the historical material by studying the rationality of this material. Cohen makes this very clear in the introduction to his Religion der Vernunft, when he writes; ‘Only reason raises historical reality to necessity, the point of which is the cancellation of coinci-

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dence.’58 Cohen therefore does not confine himself to the sources, but studies them by means of philosophical criticism to discover their rationality and necessity. Only the demonstration of the rationality of developed moral systems legitimizes these in a philosophical sense. Specifically this means that, in Cohen’s view, the historically developed community can only be understood in relation to universal humanity. A limitation to the particularism of the historical community, as current virtue ethics would have it, is not only philosophically inadequate but also dangerous. For this limitation legitimizes separatist tendencies of these communities. Specifically, for example, the exclusion of Jews from civil rights. Only an appeal to the fundamental principles of equality of all human beings provides the critical argument for criticizing such exclusions. Precisely in this sense Cohen as a Jew appeals to Kant and the Enlightenment, who by introducing universal principles laid the foundation which enables all people, including the Jews, to become citizens in the fullest sense. A particularist ethics, as supported by modern virtue ethics, does not provide an argument for such progress because it appeals to the given social context. As a virtue ethicist too, therefore, Cohen remains a principle-oriented universalist, since only this position can guarantee that all people are ultimately treated in an equal way, and only this position can supply the critical point of view from which prevalent norms can be judged to be illegitimate. But Cohen’s incorporation of the virtues shows that he champions a weak absolutism of principles. Principles and virtues belong together, for without principles the virtues have no goal and without virtues the principles have no significance in the social world.

4. Virtues in the Religion der Vernunft After this excursus I would like to talk about the virtues in the Religion der Vernunft. The theory of virtue in the Ethik ends with the prospect of the ideal, truly human person. But it remains 58

Religion der Vernunft, 7.

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only a prospect. The harmony of love and honour is not realized. Rather the virtues of honour keep their privileged position in relation to those of love. The perspective of justice remains dominant in the Ethik. The virtues of love are and remain only regulatory in this perspective. In Cohen’s late philosophy of religion this relationship changes fundamentally. The virtues of love come to the fore here and acquire a separate function. I would like to discuss this shift in the composition of the virtues in this fourth section. Here, too, a religious virtue will take central focus, namely the virtue of peace, which, like the virtue of humanity, comprehends all other virtues. The shift is based on Cohen’s more profound consideration of the question of the individual and above all on his more profound inquiry into the subjective dimension of the theory of virtue already set out in the Ethik. Philosophy of religion provides a new definition of the individual, which completes the definitions of ethics. This completion is ultimately necessary for the realization of morality itself. To this extent the discussions in philosophy of religion always remain oriented to ethics. Cohen states in Der Begriff der Religion that ethics can only reveal man as humanity, but not as an individual. By contrast, religion reveals man as man in the suffering and sinful individual. This assessment is only relatively true. Ethics is well acquainted with man as an individual. In particular this applies to the theory of virtue and specifically to the virtues of love, which bring weak, suffering, and doubting man into focus. But what does religion add? The sinful individual in his correlation with the saving and forgiving God. In the individual, says Cohen, orientation to the generality, a constant feature of ethics, is abandoned. The individual is thrown back on his own sinfulness here. Only sin itself reveals the individual as he is fully determined.59 At the same time this concept of the individual as sinful also remains oriented to the majority and the generality, as developed in the Ethik. But the important difference is that the sinful individual can no longer be cancelled out in the generality, for he must ‘remain an individual in the generality

59

Cf. Begriff der Religion, 56.

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too’.60 Thus Cohen finally recognizes that, although the individual must remain oriented to the generality, he cannot overcome his physical and psychic reality in this generality: the individual is and remains sinful. This new concept of man as a sinful individual makes ethics complete. This individual, as Cohen puts it in Der Begriff der Religion, is ‘the yeast for the generality, for its development and continuation’, which ‘must always remain contained in it’.61 The religious individual is thus the necessary base of the moral individual. As a sinner he is the point where the moral individual germinates. The recognition of sinfulness is where the ‘self-transformation in the generality’62 occurs, in which the individual is preserved. This self-transformation is conceived of in religion as salvation and forgiveness. We have thus arrived at the correlative concept of the sinful individual, the saving God. The personal God guarantees the success of the efforts of morality. In this success lies the salvation and reconciliation which God champions. This God of religion promises salvation to the individual who acknowledges his sinfulness and dedicates himself to morality. In this way ‘the God of salvation also becomes, in the psychological sense, the saviour of the individual, the deliverer of his self-consciousness.’63 The God of religion guarantees the possibility of repentance of sins in penance and prayer and affirms that the individual can achieve repentance of sins, that the ‘progression to reconciliation’64 and so to morality can succeed. Reconciliation begins with insight into sinfulness. It is the starting-point for the ‘self-production of morality’.65 This selfproduction must precede the self-knowledge of personal sinfulness. The personal God is needed so that people can take this road towards morality, for the ‘road from sin to virtue’66 is long and difficult. Only ‘trust in God’67 allows the self-production of 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

Begriff der Religion, 56. Begriff der Religion, 56. Begriff der Religion, 56. Religion der Vernunft, 440. Religion der Vernunft, 437. Religion der Vernunft, 23. Religion der Vernunft, 23. Religion der Vernunft, 462.

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morality and thus salvation to be achieved. The God of religion is therefore a necessary completion of the ethical idealization of man, for only trust in the personal God can lead to and ensure the repentance of human beings. Religion leads to repentance by creating a new heart or unity of the heart.68 This unification of the heart takes place in prayer, in the work of penance.69 Prayer also overcomes the problem of pessimism and resignation about injustice in the world. The correlation between sinful individual and saving God, which is experienced in prayer, affords comfort to the suffering individual and so provides a theodicy to some extent. As a result, prayer becomes ‘the fundamental power of religious idealization, which brings about and confirms, time and again, the world of the community of God and man required by their correlation’.70 Religion’s theory of virtue is crucial to this community, for the virtues, being attributes of God, are paths to God. Thus understood, the attributes of God become the ‘archetypal image of human morality’.71 The virtues, as Cohen explains, begin with the recognition of sinfulness. But what does sin consist in and how can the road from sin to virtue be followed? As Benzion Kellermann rightly remarked, Cohen attaches vital importance to social suffering in religion too.72 This social suffering is the sin of every single individual. It means that no individual can free himself from the burden of social sin and regard himself as being without sin. But the individual human being can gain salvation from sin by seeing himself as the cause of social sin and making the suffering of the other his own suffering. He can suffer with the other. This consciousness of sin, which Cohen also calls a new heart, can arouse the social forces needed to overcome social suffering. Cohen identifies social sin with the crisis and guilt of modern 68

Cf. H. Cohen, ‘Der Sabbat in seiner kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung’, in: Jüdische Schriften II, 66. 69 Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 441. 70 Religion der Vernunft, 463. 71 Religion der Vernunft, 481. 72 Cf. B. Kellermann, ‘Die religionsphilosophische Bedeutung Hermann Cohens’, in Neue Jüdische Monatshefte 2 (1918), no. 15/16 (= special issue on Hermann Cohen), 369-374.

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times, which consists ‘in social inequality’ and the fact that the ‘theoretical insight’ into this unequal distribution has not yet become ‘the mainspring of our common moral thought and will both for judging and for improving social conditions’.73 In his late philosophy Cohen himself tries to find such a mainspring, which can help to overcome social inequality or, more concretely, social poverty. The mainspring for overcoming social inequality, i.e. social suffering, lies in a new relationship with our suffering fellow men; a relationship which is nourished by love.74 In philosophy of religion love becomes the ‘fundamental impulse for the social community’.75 Good, i.e. loving, will is necessary for the humanization of society. It creates the ‘new heart’ and the ‘new spirit’ which only can bring social justice on earth. But the starting-point for this new heart is the recognition of social suffering, social sin. The goal of virtue to which we must direct our efforts is still the human goal of justice and equality. But in Cohen’s late philosophy of religion the path towards it leads from the individual’s ‘consciousness of sin’. This new path is an internalization of the moral principles which Cohen insists are the foundation of ethics. By appealing to consciousness of sin, he is calling for the socio-ethical disposition without which morality is impossible. Only an interiorization of the age’s problems and of ideal principles can create a moral world. This — and it is the great insight of his late philosophy of religion — requires a consideration of the poor as the other. By focusing on the poor as the other, religion discovers him as a fellow human being. In the horizon of suffering it discovers ‘thou’. This discovery is a productive process which creates man as one who is to be loved in his suffering. With regard to the individual, suffering as sin becomes the starting-point for personal salvation from sin. With 73

H. Cohen, ‘Die soziale Erbsünde’, in: Hamburgischer Correspondent, 185th year, no. 402, 9 August 1915, evening edition, 3, now also in: H. Cohen, Werke, vol. 16 (Hildesheim, 1997), 565-571. 74 Love also plays a crucial role in modern virtue ethics. Cf. e.g. M. Stocker, ‘Die Schizophrenie moderner ethischer Theorien’, in: Tugendethik, 19-41. On the modern debate on love in connection with philosophy of religion, cf. P. Ricoeur, Liebe und Gerechtigkeit (Tübingen, 1990). 75 Begriff der Religion, 83.

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regard to the community, to ‘I’ and ‘thou’, suffering becomes the starting-point for personal salvation from poverty. The ‘heart’s burden of sin’ allows us to carry out the great social tasks made visible in social poverty. The consciousness of sin becomes a stimulus to eradicate social sins. Recognition of necessary and constant sinfulness leads the way out of resignation thanks to the knowledge of salvation by God and gives us the strength to overcome social sin, i.e. poverty, in the world. The wherewithal to do so is love of human beings, viewed as compassion. Love acquires a primary social function, because as compassion it opens up a perspective on the suffering ‘thou’.76 The result of this affective approach to the suffering ‘thou’ is the creation of a social force which can realize the moral goals. Cohen calls this force the ‘fundamental impulse of true morality’.77 Compassion, which is the necessary precondition of morality, should not be taken as mere pity, which flatters the ego. Rather compassion is nourished by a recognition of the social injustice in this world. It is compassion in the sense that the individual acknowledges that he is a contributory cause of this social suffering. The individual thus takes co-responsibility for social suffering. This gives him the strength to fight social suffering. Only the individual’s recognition that he is a cause of social suffering brings about the right disposition and the right feeling ‘which alone makes morality and religion genuine.’78 This feeling is the source of Cohen’s hope and trust. Only if it becomes a feeling of community can the problems of the age be solved, he believes. With much pathos he appeals for the social feeling of love. If it becomes the new society’s feeling of community, ‘the lower classes will meet the higher classes halfway and with all their heart. Only then will political peace become a national peace. For without harmony among the classes, to the extent that it comes about on the basis of such a social disposition, the unity of the nation is without the blessing of the

76

The role which compassion can play in modern ethics is discussed by A. Leist in his essay ‘Mitleid und universelle Ethik’, in: Zur Philosophie der Gefühle, hg. von H. Fink-Eitel und G. Lohmann (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 157-187. 77 ‘Soziale Erbsünde’, 570. 78 ‘Soziale Erbsünde’, 571.

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truth and the real foundation of reality.’79 In his late philosophy of religion Cohen discovers the religious feeling of love as a necessary condition for social peace. Peace is the final virtue dealt with in the Religion der Vernunft and can be seen as analogous with the virtue of humanity in the Ethik. Alongside the other religious virtues — truthfulness, courage, loyalty, justice, and humility — peace represents the highest virtue, because it allows man to achieve the true ‘unity of the heart’80 and thus peace of soul in self-perfection.81 Whereas humility, justice, courage, and loyalty represent both special attributes of God and ways to God, all these ways come together in the virtue of peace. Peace is the ‘quintessence of the divine attributes’, the ‘symbol of the messianic era’ and ‘the sum of all morality’.82 Peace is the harmony of the powers of soul and as such the ‘crown of life’.83 For this very purpose Cohen developed the virtue of humanity in the Ethik, mainly in relation to the individual. The virtue of peace in philosophy of religion goes further here. For peace is not only the harmony of the individual himself, but also signifies the ‘harmony of the individual and the perfection of the human race’.84 Peace is the aim of reason in general, both for the single individual and for humanity. The covenant of God will bring peace as salvation of the soul and total deliverance, for God himself is peace. The virtue of peace leads to perfection in God. In Cohen’s view, peace is both ‘the fundamental power of the human soul’ and the ‘goal of human history’.85 This double definition forms the basis for the idea of the harmony of the individual and humanity. But it also shows that the goal of human history depends on individuals practising the virtue of peace. This is clearly shown in Cohen’s strong rejection of hate. The unity of the heart, which goes together with peace, no 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

‘Soziale Erbsünde’, 571. Religion der Vernunft, 520. Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 518. Religion der Vernunft, 516. Religion der Vernunft, 531. Religion der Vernunft, 516. Religion der Vernunft, 525.

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longer admits of hate. Hate itself is eradicated. Under the conditions of peace and reason hate is incomprehensible or, as the Talmud puts its, groundless. All hate is vain and groundless when the virtuous way of peace is followed. All hate is futile. I deny hate in the human heart. I therefore deny that I have an enemy, that a human being could hate me. I deny this with the same clarity of consciousness with which I deny for my part that I have an enemy, that I could hate a human being. What is hate? I deny its possibility. It is a futile word that wishes to signify such a concept.86

This is not an argument but an adjuration. Cohen’s aim is not the falsification of hate as a basic human emotion, but the ‘overcoming, [...] exclusion of hate from the inventory of the soul’s powers’ and the ‘peace of soul’87 which this brings. Hate as a threatening emotion should not have a place in the human heart and so it has none for Cohen. The crucial issue here, too, is the true moral point of view. Someone who decides for moral humanity cannot hate, for in the light of reason both individual hate and racial hatred are incomprehensible. Correspondingly, for Cohen, the virtue of peace, which overcomes hate, is also ‘grace, which outshines justice’.88 In the light of peace, reconciliation with the other is possible thanks to tolerance and understanding. This conciliatoriness of peace forms the mediation of this virtue with the fundamental being of religion, which is formed by man’s reconciliation with God, which however has its precondition in the reconciliation between man and man, and which has its final result in the reconciliation of man with himself. Without peace, which I make with my fellow man, I cannot hope for reconciliation with God, nor equally for peace in my own inner self.89

So individual peace is reached via reconciliation with fellow human beings. This means the exclusion of hatred, for hatred makes understanding and grace impossible. Precisely the indi-

86 87 88 89

Religion der Vernunft, 522. Religion der Vernunft, 522. Religion der Vernunft, 526. Religion der Vernunft, 526.

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vidual confession against hate shows how the peace of reason can and must arrive in the world. The personal declaration is the only way that reason can appear in the world, where hate still rules. This is pointed out by Dieter Adelmann when he states that the personal declaration is Cohen’s adequate reply to antiSemitism. In the context of his life’s work, this declaration is the only possible reply to hatred of the Jews. Adelmann also makes it clear that Cohen’s lifework as an individual is completed by this declaration. He now represents humanity and shows by the example of his life that there can be no hate and therefore no enemy. In this way he makes ‘reason possible for society’, explains and, as it were, offers it to society.90 Cohen himself thus brings reason to the fore in his declaration. He speaks for the fundamental power of peace and for peace as the goal of human history. Thus Cohen, both at the end of the Religion der Vernunft and at the end of his individual life, represents humanity from the perspective of its final phase. In this declaration against the possibility of hate he becomes a symbol of the possibility of peace. He himself has found peace of soul and, at the end of his life, as an individual, advocates the peace of all human beings and their reconciliation with each other and thus with God.

90

D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewusstseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Heidelberg, 1968), 226.

HERMANN COHEN ON STATE AND NATION: A Contemporary Review DAVID NOVAK, TORONTO

1. The Contemporary Jewish Difficulty with Hermann Cohen Contemporary Jewish thinkers are engaged in the ongoing attempt to retrieve as much of past Jewish thought as is possible. Without that ongoing attempt, a Jewish thinker is in constant danger of thinking with himself or herself alone, or of thinking with his or her current circle alone. The real danger of this type of myopia could very well lead future Jewish thinkers to see the thought of such present Jewish thinkers as being Jewishly irrelevant. One who thinks within a tradition is responsible both for its past and its future. One hopes to be included in Jewish conversations in the future as much as one seeks to remember Jewish discussions of the past. The vertical dimension of Jewish discourse is just as important as its horizontal dimension. To be concerned with questions of no concern to one’s Jewish contemporaries is to hide in the past or to escape into the future; only to be concerned with present questions is perverse, atemporal self-importance. Furthermore, even when Jewish thinkers are talking with non-Jews about other Jewish thinkers on Judaism, they are talking about them to other Jews first. In the case of those who attempt to think Judaism philosophically, that attempt requires the philosophically cogent process of retrieving as much of the thought of past Jewish philosophers as is possible. Such retrieval, though, is always selective. That is, we begin with our own questions and then search for past Jewish philosophers who seem to have also been concerned with these same questions.1 Yet there are many questions about which one 1

Thus we begin our re-search having thought out the question and the approach to the question for ourselves. As Hermann Cohen himself says, ‘Sources remain mute and blind if I do not approach them with a concept, which I myself lay out as a foundation in order to be instructed by them and

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has to conclude that certain Jewish philosophers in the past were not concerned and we must, therefore, bracket their thought for the time being in the process of our own enquiry. Moreover, even when we are convinced that a past Jewish philosopher is truly concerned with our question, we must decide whether we can continue his or her thought on this question by positive retrieval, or whether we must discontinue his or her thought on this question by negative rejection. Needless to say, we spend much more time with a thinker whom we have positively retrieved for our current discourse than we do with a thinker whom we have rejected from it, even when that rejection needs to be repeated more than once. One of the important questions facing contemporary Jewish thinkers is the question of the relation between traditional, religious, Jewish communities and the modern, secular societies within which such communities must now function in the world, since that is where almost all Jews now live and have to live. Despite certain specific differences, it is a question that is generically quite similar both for Jews living in the State of Israel and for Jews living in the Diaspora inasmuch as both groups of Jews are living in societies politically constituted as secular. And despite certain texts in classical Jewish sources that can provide some distant potential for actual discussion of this question here and now, the question itself can better be seen as peculiarly modern in essence. For that reason, it would seem best to search for some modern precedents for our contemporary discussion first before we finally have to go back to the biblical and rabbinic sources of Judaism for the sake of full authenticity. In the case of a philosophical discussion of the relation of the religious and the secular, we need to look to those few Jewish philosophers who seem to have addressed the question with philosophical conclusiveness. The list of those Jews dealing philosophically with what could be called the ‘theological-political’ question is not long. In fact, one could limit it to three names: Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, and Hermann Cohen. In the case of Spinoza, not simply guided by their authority.’, Religion der Vernunft, 4-5; Religion of Reason, 4.

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though, one could well object that his view of the theological-political question is not Jewish since he voluntarily left the Jewish community, and since the polity he envisions does not depend on the presence of Jews and Judaism at all.2 For all intents and purposes, then, that leaves us with Mendelssohn and Cohen. Even though Mendelssohn (d. 1786) is earlier than Cohen (d. 1918), and even though Cohen respected Mendelssohn’s cultural influence on both Jews and Germans, there are good reasons to go straight to Cohen in our attempted retrieval of precedents for the question of the relation of the religious and the secular for contemporary Jewish philosophers.3 First, one could well say that as a philosopher Cohen was far superior to Mendelssohn and, indeed, he philosophically developed some points made by Mendelssohn more rhetorically. Second, the key theological-political question for modern Jews is how traditional, religious Judaism can survive, let alone flourish, in the context of a secular society, which quickly becomes the more profound question of why it should survive there. On this question, though, Mendelssohn does not give what could be considered a genuinely philosophical answer. He simply says that the Jews have a revealed law that is to be maintained because it is revealed and has not been revoked (contrary to some Christian claims), hence continued, separate Jewish religious identity is mandated.4 Mendelssohn’s answer is not philosophical since it does not philosophically constitute what revelation is and why it is to be perpetually obeyed. In fact, it is not even theological, not having been connected to a wider systematic vision of Judaism. As such, Mendelssohn seems to make rational arguments to the gentiles as to why they should include Jews as citizens in their new nation-states, but to the Jews he can only offer a surd-like dogma as to why they should survive as a distinct community. Is it any wonder that Mendelssohn offered little noetic content for those who attempted to work against the tide

2

See his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chapter 18; also, S. M. Nadler, Spinoza (Cambridge, 1999), 153-54. 3 For Cohen’s respectful ambivalence toward Mendelssohn, see his ‘Deutschtum und Judentum’ (I), in: Jüdische Schriften II, 266-68. 4 See his Jerusalem, transl. A. Arkush (Hanover, N.H, 1983), 89-90.

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of Jewish assimilation into the emerging German polity, which began in Mendelssohn’s lifetime and which directly swept up even most of his own children? Cohen, on the other hand, had both a systematic philosophy and a systematic Jewish theology. And, although Franz Rosenzweig, his most famous and brilliant student, asserted that Cohen’s theology (which was enunciated in his last years) was a break with his earlier systematic philosophy, it is much more plausible to assume that no such break ever occurred.5 Cohen’s Jewish theology must, then, be taken as a part — indeed the crowning part — of his entire philosophical project. And, even though Cohen devoted most of his work to ontological, epistemological, and ethical questions, there is enough reflection on the theological-political question there, especially in his last work devoted exclusively to Judaism, to include very seriously his voice in any contemporary Jewish philosophical reflection on this question. This, then, assures the gravitas of our encounter with Cohen on this question. However, it would seem that the encounter is a negative one of rejection rather than a positive one of retrieval, for Cohen is judged retrospectively to have been profoundly wrong on the two political realities with which almost all contemporary Jewish political thought is concerned: the Holocaust, and the State of Israel. Indeed, for a number of contemporary Jewish thinkers, the few who have actually read him and the larger number who have merely heard about him, Hermann Cohen seems to be the very embodiment of what might be called the ‘yeke-phobia’ of Jews today.6 By ‘yeke-phobia’ (‘yeke’ being a 5 See A. Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, transl. J. Denton (Albany, N.Y., 1997), 157-69. 6 This comes out quite strongly in an essay by Jacques Derrida, ‘Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German’, New Literary History 22 (1991), 39-95. There Derrida seems to reduce Cohen to his unfortunate naiveté in uncritically endorsing German militarism in World War I. But, in his treatment of Cohen’s essential Gestalt for us, Derrida confines himself to Cohen’s two wartime essays ‘Deutschtum und Judentum’ (Jüdische Schriften II, 237-318). These essays from 1915-16, along with a 1915 appeal to American Jews to influence their government not to enter the war against Germany on the side of England, France, and, especially, Russia (Jüdische Schriften II, 229-236), are clearly works of propaganda, only employing philosophy whenever useful.

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derogatory term for German Jews coined by rival East-European Jews) I mean the suspicion that it is no accident that the Holocaust began with the persecution of the seemingly self-delusional German Jews, and that the State of Israel exists in spite of the German-Jewish solution to the theological-political predicament of Jews in the modern world. Hermann Cohen embodies this historical hindsight by his well known German patriotism and his well known anti-Zionism.7 Because of the colossal failure of the whole German-Jewish project, and the equally colossal success of the Zionist project, it seems to many that history has made Cohen’s retrieval for any Jewish thought, even for Jewish philosophy, both impossible and undesirable. And even though the nearly rhapsodic author of the essays on Deutschtum und Judentum cannot be held personally accountable for the historical events that happened long after his death, like any political thinker who advocates a vision of polity, he had to have been aware that his intellectual fate lies on a horizon beyond his own ability to argue further for his own cause, let alone change it. That being the case, why should we attempt to retrieve Hermann Cohen’s voice in a discussion that most Jews today have excluded him from? The answer to this challenge lies in a deeper appreciation of Cohen as a Jewish philosopher. If Cohen were merely a German-Jewish ideologue, someone who rationalized the pan-German policies of the leaders of pre-1918 German Jewry — in other words, if he had only been a propagandist — we could dismiss him as such. But Cohen was much more than this. Indeed, Derrida seems to be so fixated on this aspect of Cohen’s thought that he even suggests it might be analogous to Heidegger’s evil endorsement of the Nazi regime in his infamous Rektorat Rede at the University of Freiburg in 1933 (81). Nevertheless, was it not irresponsible of Derrida not to seriously engage Cohen’s truly philosophical and theological works, viz., his philosophical-theological system, to see how his more disciplined insights might well transcend his propaganda? Cf. D. Novak, Jewish Social Ethics (New York, 1992), 242, n. 42; The Election of Israel (Cambridge, 1995), 71, n. 72. Furthermore, isn’t there a difference between one philosopher’s political naiveté and another philosopher’s enthusiasm for a regime that never made any pretense to even rationalize its evil program, an enthusiasm which Heidegger never recanted, even after the horrendous atrocities of the Nazi regime were fully revealed after its defeat in 1945? 7 See his ‘Religion und Zionismus’, in: Jüdische Schriften II, 319-27.

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He was a philosopher who enunciated principles in a systematic way, principles which he then applied in some of his political judgments. Nevertheless, the judgments are made via an historical schematism, one which mediates between the principles and the political situations to which they were applied. A true philosopher, certainly by Cohen’s criteria, does not simply abstract his principles from history; instead, he or she has a transcendental vision of the truth, and then employs that vision to explain the political realities within which he or she lives.8 But, being mediated by something as inexact as historical schematism makes the political judgments derived from these principles tentative at best, but hardly totally conclusive. As such, one can retrieve at least some of these principles and apply them to the political situations in which we find ourselves here and now. Furthermore, one can do this without having to accept the whole system in which the philosopher being retrieved himself embedded these principles, that is, we need not become his devoted disciples. We can do much more with him than simply comment on him. That assumes that the truth of principles discovered by one philosopher can be rediscovered by another philosopher without having to simultaneously adopt the same method whereby the first philosopher arrived at them. Truth ought to transcend the thinker who discovers it.9 Only a variety of methods for the discovery of any truth will assure us that it has been discovered because it is discoverable by others instead of being the idiosyncratic invention of a solitary thinker.10 Since Hermann Cohen was, arguably, the greatest modern Jewish philosopher, we should try to separate his philosophical principles from his political judgments we can no longer possibly accept, even when he himself connected those judgments to these philosophical principles. To keep Cohen’s voice in any contemporary Jewish philosophical discussion is well worth the political 8

This can be based on the priority Cohen assigns to mathematical deduction over empirical induction in the natural sciences. See e.g. Logik, 74, 520-21, 57274. 9 Note Maimonides’saying: ‘Accept the truth (ha-emet) from whomever said it’, in his Commentary on the Mishnah, Avot, introduction [Shmonah Peraqim, beg.], ed. Y. Kafih (Jerusalem, 1965), 247. 10 See D. Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge, 1998), 137-42.

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chance one takes thereby, and well worth the intellectual effort as well — even if one’s reading of him might be labeled ‘deconstructive’. Finally, the voice of Cohen, like the voice of Mendelssohn, should be retrieved because of his passionate and intelligent love of the Jewish people and of Judaism. Whether or not we agree with his various political stands mediated by his historical judgments, he sincerely desired and intelligently advocated what he thought best for the ongoing life of the Jewish people and their tradition. Neither Mendelssohn, who achieved moderate philosophical success in late eighteenth century Germany, nor Cohen, who achieved much greater philosophical success in early twentieth century Germany, ever succumbed to the ready temptation to turn his back on his people and their tradition for the sake of higher status or influence. As such, how could one not try very hard to include such rare passionate and intelligent voices in any discussion of those issues in which they were so deeply concerned? Even without any assurance of success, indeed with the chance of failure more likely, Hermann Cohen is worth our trying.

2. The Jewish Nation Hermann Cohen’s main philosophical work was conducted during the time (between 1888 and 1918) when the most politically and culturally significant community of Jews in the world lived in Germany. Although the Jewish populations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire were each larger than Germany Jewry, the largest number of these populations (especially in Poland and in Russia) were still living under what were medieval conditions. That is, they were living as second-class citizens of one type or another and they were culturally marginalized for the most part. As for French and British Jewries, they enjoyed the same political advantages as German Jewry, but it was to German Jewry that they looked for intellectual and cultural leadership. (Italian Jewry could be seen as an exception to this Germano-centrism of modern Jewry and modern Judaism, but by the time of Cohen it was too small and too culturally placid to

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be taken very seriously in and of itself.) As for American Jewry, who enjoyed the greatest political advantages, it was still too new at that time to have developed a distinctive cultural life and intellectual stance of its own. Its biggest problem was the most basic political and economic integration of the huge number of immigrants arriving there on an almost daily basis, and this problem made much cultural or intellectual development seem premature at the time. It was only after the First World War, with Germany’s humiliating defeat, that the centrality of Germany for modern Jewry and modern Judaism began to decline rapidly. But, by that time, Hermann Cohen was already dead. So, we could certainly see Cohen’s thoughts on the role of the Jewish people in modern Germany as being paradigmatic for all modern Judaism, perhaps even to this day. That is because the basic theological-political question posed to the Jews by modernity is essentially the same as it was when Cohen lived and thought. It was Cohen, more than anybody else, who worked out a coherent alternative to the two self-defeating options that were proposed in his time and which are still being proposed today. No one thought out a better alternative to what might be termed ‘assimilationism’ and ‘isolationism’ than did Cohen. With the political emancipation of the Jews of Germany being a fait accompli by the time of the final unification of the German State under Bismarck in 1871, and the cultural integration of the Jews in German life seemingly progressing at a steady pace, many modern Jews (and prototypically, many German Jews) saw their task to be assimilation into the larger culture that seemed to be making room for them. For many, that involved leaving behind any distinctive Jewish cultural identity, especially the religious roots of Jewish cultural identity. For some of them, that even meant conversion to Christianity, most often as a cultural statement rather than as a strictly religious commitment. (In the atmosphere of what came to be known in Germany as Kulturprotestantismus, that was not very difficult.) Even though conversion to Christianity for reasons of assimilation had also been a possibility in pre-modern, Christian Europe, it seems that many Jews preferred conversion to what in effect was a post-Christian, secular, modern culture. After all, it is easier to convert from a

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stronger to a lesser religious commitment than from one strong religious commitment to another. (Kulturprotestantismus did not seem to maintain an office of Inquisition, like pre-modern Spanish Catholicism, to make sure that ‘new Christians’ — Jewish conversos — were really faithful to their new faith.) Hermann Cohen was opposed to the religious assimilation of the Jews even into German culture.11 In his own life, he showed his existential commitment to his own Jewish identity by being the first Jew in Germany to attain a major professorship in philosophy without converting to Christianity. That decision caused him considerable hardship in his youth, especially at a time and place when philosophy was much more culturally important than it is anywhere in the West today. And, although Cohen was a German Jew, educated in the first modern (that is, academically structured) rabbinical seminary in Europe, he was familiar enough with East European Jewish culture to be aware of the isolationist Jewish response to modernity very much present there. That response was epitomized by the slogan of the influential Hungarian rabbi, Moses Schreiber (d. 1839): ‘what is new is forbidden by the Torah’ (hadash asur min ha-torah).12 In stark contrast to both of these extremes, one can see Hermann Cohen’s project to be the persuasion of the Jews to embrace modernity, especially the idea of modern secular polity, as a uniquely Jewish task. One can see how he brought the full weight of his philosophical system to the explication of this Jewish task.13 Although Cohen was a strong proponent of the ‘return to Kant’, from what he considered to be the historical triumphalism of Hegel, whenever he deals with actual history, he seems to be closer to Hegel than he is to Kant.14 That is because Kant was very quick to propose the establishment of a rational state without the slow historical mediation of the process whereby one moves from a traditional community (Gemeinschaft) to a society (Gesellschaft), whose final expression is that of a state constituted

11 12 13 14

See, esp., Religion der Vernunft, 452-454; Eng. transl., 389-91. See Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 15, columns 77-79, s.v. ‘Sofer, Moses’. See Religion der Vernunft, 143-144; Eng. transl., 123-24. See Derrida, ‘Interpretations at War,’ 92; Novak, The Election of Israel, 69-70.

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by the idea of universally binding law (das Recht des Staates).15 Following Hegel, Cohen wanted to emphasize how the elements of traditional community are to be broken down and sublated at the higher level of the state. Thus he writes: [I]n Hegel’s notion of a world-spirit (Weltgeist) […] the ‘national’ was changed to mean the ‘political.’ What mattered was the founding of a state […] The state was to be founded on a nation; the nation became the natural means to the end of the state. Hence, the Jewish community […] desired everywhere to be a community of believers, and never strove for a state within a state.16

Nevertheless, Cohen also wanted to show how certain key elements of the traditional community are not to be absorbed into the state as it exists within history here and now, for the state — that is, the modern European nation-state — is by no means the epitome of ideal universalism. So, although the traditional community participates in the state as a religious community or ‘nationality’, it still nurtures the vision of a united humanity that the state cannot possibly achieve on it own. Thus he writes: There is general consent that culture as a whole has no fixed center in God […] only the unique God of Jewish monotheism can form this firm center, which bestows on culture a steady balance for the plurality of its interests. Therefore, isolation is indispensable, for its concept as well as for its cultural work. Consequently, the isolation of its believers in their nationality is also unavoidable.17

Because of the generality of his language, Cohen could be speaking of any of the religious communities that became constituents as it were of the newly unified German state of his day. This reflects the political strategy of the organized Jewish community in Germany, which very much wanted to be ‘one among many’, especially as was the case of the Protestant churches. Jews were to be ‘Germans of the Mosaic persuasion’. For most German Jews, that goal, more or less achieved politically, but still on the cultur15

See Cohen, Ethik, 240-54. For a good discussion of Cohen’s use of Staat in distinction from Volk, see H. Wiedebach, Die Bedeutung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen (Hildesheim and New York, 1997), 101-108. 16 Religion der Vernunft, 418-19; Eng. transl., 360. 17 Religion der Vernunft, 426; Eng. transl., 366-367.

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al horizon, was sufficient. But for Hermann Cohen, such self-satisfaction showed that most German Jews needed to be taught — primarily by Cohen himself as the leading German Jewish intellectual — that their view of the value of the state was excessively naive and their view of the role of Judaism in and for the state was defective and self-defeating. So, although Cohen could have been speaking about any ‘religious community’, in fact he was speaking only about the Jewish community. In the same way, he spoke about a ‘religion of reason’ only drawing on Jewish sources ostensibly for some of his examples, when in fact only Judaism could have possibly been any such example for him.18 Judaism as a religion seems to best teach and exemplify the true universal. This explains Cohen’s vehement opposition to Zionism. Unlike the assimilationists, Cohen did not oppose Zionism because of its attempt to constitute Jewish nationhood outside of the nation-states of Europe. Cohen himself did not see the nation-state, even the German nation-state, as an end in itself. And unlike the isolationists, Cohen did not regard secularization as a threat to Jewish integrity. For Cohen, Zionism was a betrayal of what he saw as the true universalism of Judaism.19 Indeed, very much like the isolationists (that is, almost all the Orthodox, who were also opposed to Zionism), he considered Zionism to be a threat to the religious integrity of the Jewish people. Nevertheless, he did not see that integrity being served by a cultural, let alone political, retreat from the secularity of the modern world and the modern European state. Zionism attempted to reduce Jewish nationhood to the historical possibility of a nation-state of its own instead of saving itself for something higher than politicized nationhood: the universal messianic future. Zionism was the attempt to fixate the national identity of the Jewish people at the level of a nation-state like any other. Instead, the task of the Jewish people, for Cohen, was to participate politically in a state wider than its own national boundaries in order to save its national identity for a universality that clearly transcends the quasi-universality — or better, proto18 19

See Religion der Vernunft, 35-36; Eng. transl., 30-32. See Religion der Vernunft, 421; Eng. transl., 362.

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universality — of a state based on reason not race. The only way the Jewish people could possibly do that was to remain a religious community affirming the present political sovereignty of the secular state while simultaneously anticipating the future sovereignty of the Messianic Age, when all the nations of the world would be truly united in a final universality beyond which none greater could be conceived. This is the very ideality of Jewish existence in the pre-messianic world, and it is the only philosophically justifiable understanding of the election of Israel as the chosen people of God.20

3. Translating Cohen for a Post-Zionist Age Cohen’s opposition to Zionism was formulated at a time when Zionism was a vision of the Jewish future. And, while on the one hand there was the pragmatic Zionism of Herzl (d. 1904) and his followers, which only saw the Jewish state as the solution to the present political predicament of the Jews of Europe, on the other hand there was the cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha’Am (d. 1927) and his followers, which saw the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel as part of an overall messianic project. For the latter, Jews could best be the ‘light to the nations’ when they had political control of their own lives.21 Only then could they develop a culture of their own, one which could have universal implications and even influence. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and its remarkable political (and economic) success thereafter, history would seem to have vindicated Herzl’s Zionism at the expense of Hermann Cohen’s anti-Zionism. The State of Israel is a fait accompli. Almost no Jew today would argue any longer whether it is to exist, but only what it is to be. Yet, although Herzl’s Zionism answered the question of whether conclusively, it did not answer the question of what, let alone the question of why. These two

20

See Religion der Vernunft, 422, 427-428; Eng. transl., 363, 368. Cf. Novak, The Election of Israel, 72-77. 21 See Ahad Ha’Am, ‘Priest and Prophet’, in: Selected Essays, transl. L. Simon (Philadelphia, 1912), 137.

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questions are at the core of Jewish questioning today, both in the State of Israel and in the Diaspora, in which the vast majority of Jews look to Israeli Jewry for cultural leadership. Only politically speaking can it be said that Herzl’s agenda has been completed and that we are in a post-Zionist age. At the deeper cultural level, with its philosophical and theological presuppositions, the question of Zionism is still on the agenda, both present and future. As for Ahad Ha’Am’s Zionism, it has an inspiring agenda, but all one has to do is read Ahad Ha’Am’s writings, which show how thin he was philosophically and how vague he was theologically. He was thin philosophically because he never dealt with the ontological question underlying the political question of the relation of the Jewish people to the world, which is the question of the relation of the one and the many (best formulated by Plato, the philosopher who most deeply influenced Cohen, and Kant before him, and Maimonides before him).22 Ahad Ha’Am never gave us a philosophically compelling reason why Jews should be concerned with the outside world at all. It seems that for him, since the Jews are asking the outside world to allow them to have their own national-political sovereignty (although the timid Ahad Ha’Am never could get himself to actually propose a fully sovereign Jewish nation-state), they should aspire to give the world something in return. But that agenda could be seen as merely self-serving political rhetoric. And as for theology, Ahad Ha’Am has been well described as an ‘agnostic rabbi’, that is, he was notoriously circumspect in dealing with the religious foundations of the Jewish ethics he so loved and which he saw at the heart of Judaism and its message for the world.23 What I want to propose now is that we take the philosophical and theological strengths of Cohen’s political thought and use them to give the agenda of cultural Zionism an intellectual focus and conviction it might never have had before. I think this can 22 For Cohen’s acknowledgment of Plato’s influence on his own thought, see Logik, 144-48; ‘Das Soziale Ideal bei Platon und den Propheten’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 306-30; Religion der Vernunft, 339; Eng. transl., 291. For Plato’s most concentrated discussion of the question of the one and the many, see Parmenides, 141C-143C. 23 See The Zionist Idea, ed. A. Hertzberg (New York, 1971), 250.

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be done by a careful historical translation of Cohen’s terms: nationality, state, and law. By ‘nationality’ I propose we now mean the Jewish religious community (qehillah datit), that is, the community of Jews who are fully committed to revelation and its tradition and the law that emerges therefrom (halakhah). By ‘state’ I propose we now mean the present State of Israel, which is secular (medinah hilonit) since it does not presuppose a commitment to revelation, and since it allows non-Jews to become citizens with full political rights and obligations. By ‘law’ I propose we now mean what is called mishpat ivri, which is the body of Jewish law dealing with interhuman relations, and which is considered by its proponents to be fully capable of providing a jurisprudential basis for a state both Jewish and secular. Mishpat ivri is very much a form of cultural Zionism, with all its philosophical and theological inadequacies, yet with all its promise as well.24 In constituting the relation of these three ideas along the lines of the ontological relation of the one and the many, I propose that ‘the one’ here is the religiously conceived nation (what Cohen saw as the idea of ‘nationality’), ‘the many’ is the secularly conceived state, and the mediating idea between the two is ‘law’. In a somewhat Hegelian manner, we can see the one becoming the many, yet retaining enough of its uniqueness to contribute to a higher unity by going through the many and then, and only then, beyond it.25

24

See Novak, Natural Law in Judaism, 185. Note Logik, 60-61: ‘Die Sonderung muss der Vereinigung voraufgehen; vielmehr sie ist selbst ein Art der Einigung […] Die Sonderung muss ebenso sehr und ebenso bestimmt als Vereinigung gedacht werden. Ohne diese Korrelation kommt die Tätigkeit des reinen Denkens nicht zu durchsichtiger Bestimmtheit. […] Die Synthesis der Einheit ist ebenso Sonderung, wie Vereinigung.’ See Logik, 144-45; also, Wiedebach, Die Bedeutung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen, 61-68. Cf. Hegel, The Encylopaedia Logic, no. 96, transl. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting. H. S. Harris (Indianapolis, 1991), 154.

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4. Jewish Jurisprudence Mishpat ivri has long been a matter of great debate in Israel and even among Jews elsewhere, who are concerned with the centrality of law in Judaism itself.26 On the one hand, many Jewish secularists have been suspicious of the whole project of mishpat ivri because it seems to them a way of bringing the Jewish religious tradition in through the back door of a secular state that has in effect barred it from coming in the front door. To them, it looks like the beachhead of a religious coup d’êtat, one that would force the Torah (and with it a dictatorship of clerics) on all the Jewish people. On the other hand, many religious Jews have been just as suspicious, seeing mishpat ivri as part of a process of the secularization of Judaism itself, in which the religious foundations and character of Judaism, in which law is so central, will be swallowed up in a state whose very non-religious status de jure makes it anti-religious de facto.27 So, whereas for its secularist opponents, the secularity of the State of Israel is too good for mishpat ivri, for its religious opponents, the secularity of the State of Israel is too bad for mishpat ivri. Moreover, both opponents seem to agree that religion and the state need to be protected from each other. For the religious, it is saving the one at the expense of the many; for the secularists, it is saving the many at the expense of the one. It is very much part of the current debate everywhere in the West (and Israel is very much a Western state) over ‘pluralism’ and ‘multiculturalism.’ Along these lines though, many of the secularists and many of the religious seem to agree that the State of Israel cannot be both Jewish and secular with any real coherence. Such thinking on both sides well

26 See Menachem Elon, Jewish Law 4, transl. B. Auerbach and M. J. Sykes (Philadelphia and Jerusalem, 1994), chap. 45. (The original Hebrew work is entitled Ha-Mishpat Ha’Ivri, 2 vols., Jerusalem, 1978.) See, also, Moshe Silberg, Talmudic Law and the Modern State, transl. B. Z. Bokser (New York, 1973), 14550. The late Justice Silberg, like Elon a former member of the Israeli Supreme Court, is considered by many to be the founder of mishpat ivri in Israel, even before the establishment of the State in 1948. 27 See I. Englard, ‘The Problem of Jewish Law in a Jewish State’, Jewish Law in Ancient and Modern Israel, ed. H. H. Cohn (New York, 1971), 143-67.

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characterizes the present Kulturkampf in Israel. Yet most thinking Jews today would not want to leave the matter at this impasse of extremes. The question is how to move beyond it intelligently. Mishpat ivri, although capable of retrieving major portions of Jewish civil and criminal law, is still incapable of giving itself philosophically cogent formulation and normative justification. For that reason, I propose to turn to the philosophical principles of Hermann Cohen’s political thought. Conversely, Hermann Cohen’s political thought needs a contemporary locus for its application. And, moreover, since Cohen’s anti-Zionism is not a necessary conclusion from his ontology but only a temporal application of it, one can historically reapply his philosophical principles differently than he himself did without distorting them in the process. Thus they are retrievable with intellectual integrity, which can be distinguished from literal recollection. So, I propose that we bring these principles to the philosophical dilemma of mishpat ivri. With the political success of Zionism assured by the establishment and continuity of the State of Israel, the religious community has had four choices, it seems. First of all, it could remove itself from the secular state altogether by either refusing to live in the land of Israel until the coming of the Messiah, or by living there as if under foreign rule. This has been the choice of much of that segment of Orthodoxy known as the haredim (literally ‘the tremblers’ because of their religious fervor). Secondly, it could participate in the secular state as a special interest group, only taking responsibility for its own adherents by trying to get as much for them and their projects from the state as is possible through political maneuvering. This has been the choice of much of Orthodoxy known as the datiim (literally ‘the religious ones’). Thirdly, it could propose a nationalistic program for the whole Jewish people, which advocates the conquest of as much of the historic land of Israel as is possible, including the subjugation of whatever non-Jews (usually Palestinian Arabs) live under Jewish rule. This has been the choice of the nationalistic Orthodoxy of Gush Emunim (literally ‘the bloc of the faithful’). The fourth choice, one that has hardly any religious supporters yet,

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can only be appreciated when one sees why the other three choices are inadequate in the light of Hermann Cohen’s philosophical principles. The first choice is inadequate because it refuses to engage the inevitable secularity of the modern world at all. As such, it not only is living a romantic fantasy, it is also prevented from bringing the riches of Jewish ethics into the only world where interhuman relations can be realistically considered today, which is a secular world: the world of politics and economics. The second choice is inadequate because it basically considers the religious community to be a state within a state, bringing to it no theological vision for the whole people, but only its own self-serving, partisan manipulation. Its very program, therefore, seems destined to cause antagonism against religion on the part of the secular majority. The third choice is inadequate because Cohen would consider it a retreat into racist exclusivity, an attempt to religiously justify nationalistic expansionism (epitomized by the slogan erets yisrael ha-shelemah, ‘the complete land of Israel’), a regression into conquest, subjugation, and even terror.28 Such a choice is the most radical rejection of any true Jewish universalism. Whether it is a religious justification of nationalism or a nationalistic rationalization of religion is hard to tell. The fourth choice would be the attempt to see secularity as the opportunity to bring the Jewish ethical vision of justice for all into the world as it has never been brought into the world before. It should begin by bringing that vision into the workings of the Jewish secular state in the land of Israel. Such a program would begin a process of universalization of Judaism itself, first by showing how its teachings apply to all Jews, even those who are not considered ‘religious.’ Next, it would show how those teachings apply to the non-Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. Then it would show how those teachings apply to non-Jewish communities within the land of Israel who do not want to live under Jewish political rule at all (‘Palestinians’ as distinct from ‘Israeli Arabs’), but who do want to live in peace with the Jewish state. Finally, it would apply to the whole world by striving for the construction of a truly just society, whose ethical vision stems 28

See Religion der Vernunft, 421; Eng. transl., 362.

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from the Jewish tradition itself, and which cannot help but be an example for other societies in the world. Such an ethical vision would have to take the form of law since that is where most of Jewish ethics has been thought, and that is where ethics functions as mathematics functions for physics, as Cohen himself put it.29 Such a program would require those who know Jewish law best, who are almost always religiously practicing Jews, to turn as much of traditional Jewish law (halakhah), that is, the Jewish law governing interhuman relations, into mishpat ivri as is possible. That would mean some radical reinterpretation inasmuch as most of Jewish civil and criminal law has been formulated under what might be termed ‘speculative’ conditions, that is, this law has been formulated for situations of political power and responsibility of which the rabbis who formulated it had no real experience.30 That, no doubt, means taking a chance, but the alternatives, as we have seen, are obscurantism, political opportunism, or turning the Jewish people into a subjugating nation (a Herrenvolk as it were). If Zionism has any true messianic meaning, then it must lead to at least the attempt to construct a state to which ‘many peoples will go and say ‘let us go and ascend the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, for He will instruct us by His ways and we will walk in His paths’. For the norm (torah) will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 2:3). And that vision will be one of peace not war. ‘And He shall judge between the nations and admonish many peoples; […] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall not learn warfare (milhamah) anymore’ (Isaiah 2:4). Needless to say, that is a tall order. Now, of course, most secularists, who can only advocate a program of Realpolitik, could easily see this type of vision as being utopian and thus dismiss it. But since this vision is messianic, and

29

Ethik, 65. See e.g. Mishnah, Makkot 1.10, where two leading Rabbis discuss capital punishment, but admitting that they never had the opportunity, much less the political power, to adjudicate capital cases. See, also, Palestinian Talmud, Sanhedrin 1.1/18a; Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 30a-b.

30

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since messianism is an integral part of Judaism, religious Zionists cannot be as dismissive. (Hermann Cohen would see this as the essential difference between what is idealistic and what is only utopian. The idea of the Messiah is, for him, the point where Judaism makes its greatest contribution to ultimately philosophical Idealism.)31 If they do not agree with this type of Jewish messianism, they can only argue against it theologically. That they can do, and many have done it. Yet the question remains: Which version of Jewish messianism, any of which must now accept the existence and validity of the State of Israel in order to be politically significant for the vast majority of Jews, which version can present the best theological justification for its program? And that means which version can best appeal to the ethical component of classical Jewish theology, for it is only an ethical vision that can truly inspire Jews to wait for the Messiah, and even work for the coming of the Age of the Messiah. Moreover, since such a program cannot be effected except by the politically strong Jewish people, religious messianists of this type can well argue from the Jewish tradition that such a program presupposes the material needs of the Jewish people as its first and perpetual consideration, but that this consideration is a necessary not the sufficient condition of Jewish existence. When the body is maintained for the soul, its needs are met too. But when the soul is maintained for the body, the soul withers, and even the body itself loses its proper direction. The fear of the religious community for such a program of ethical idealism, which we have seen in the reservations about the program of mishpat ivri, is that such a venture into the secular world will quickly lead to its subordination to the secular world and its eventual assimilation into its realm altogether. Cohen himself had to answer the same fear when formulating his notion of the relation of nation and state. Indeed, the fear in his own generation of the assimilation of the Jews into secular society and culture, which seemed to have accepted them as anonymous individuals, was a far greater and more realistic Jewish fear than the present fear of religious Jews in the State of Israel that the secular society there will swallow them up if they do not keep 31

See Ethik, 500; Religion der Vernunft, 290-291; Eng. transl., 249.

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as much distance from it as is possible. His answer to the question born of such fear can be applied to the theological-political dilemma of religious Jews today. Cohen saw the secular state, in which the religious community participates and to which it even contributes an ethical vision, as only pre-messianic or penultimate. To assume otherwise is to engage in pseudo-messianism. The religious community, which is the form the nation prior to the state takes for itself, can only preserve itself in this present historical-political location by maintaining a universal vision higher and deeper than that which the state can possibly maintain. That vision is higher because it intends all humankind (Menschtum) unified into a true humanity (Menschheit).32 It begins that vision by intending the whole Jewish people, and not just those who live in the State of Israel and not just those who are religious. And this vision is deeper because it sees God as the true sovereign of that unified people and then that unified humanity and not just as the object of separate religious devotion as is the case now. Such has never been the case heretofore. That is why it is idealistic; that is why it is messianic. The messianic vision is that God will finally be the God of ethics and not just the God of religion. For Cohen, ethics includes religion.33 The religious community can only preserve that truly universal vision when it lives its religious life separate from the state and its political control. As such, its very life involves a powerful testimony against the pretensions of the state to see itself as existentially sufficient in what some would call along with Emmanuel Levinas an immoral, ‘totalizing’ philosophical and political program.34 Furthermore, the religious community can only preserve that universal vision when it interprets the Torah as being a vision of the fulfillment of universal human nature. This requires the retrieval of the theological project of the medieval Jewish rationalists like Maimonides (Hermann Cohen’s favourite Jewish theologian), a key part of which was the explication of ‘the reasons of the commandments’ (ta’amei ha-mitswot). This project 32 33 34

See Ethik des reinen Willens, 434; Religion der Vernunft, 298; Eng. transl., 255. See esp. Religion der Vernunft, 38; Eng. transl., 33. See his Totality and Infinity, transl. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, 1969), preface.

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was meant to show how the commandments of the Torah, which Jews practice here and now, are the immediate fulfillment of basic human needs.35 The most basic interhuman need is for protection from violence.36 Thus, even leaving the question of whether or not Jews can and should proselytize other human beings, the religious community would have to be concerned enough with humanity per se to rationally reflect on how and why Judaism is the most adequate way for any human being to live in the world. The very unworldliness of such a vision here and now, namely, its political improbability, requires that its full intention be messianic or eschatological. That is why the religious community must maintain all its religious particularity here and now for the sake of the true universalism yet-to-come (what in Hebrew is called atid la-vo). The task of Jewish thinkers, certainly those who are themselves philosophers, is to seek the truth always and apply it whenever and wherever they can. Their success is not measured by how many people they convince here and now, but how faithfully they testify to the truth they have been privileged to see and understand.37 In the end, all truth will be verified, and all those who witnessed it and proclaimed it will be vindicated. Moreover, while waiting for the end with its objective verification and subjective vindication, Jewish thinkers should seek as much company in the present and from the past as is possible. That will help them clarify their vision of the truth and better bear the responsibility its testimony requires. On the question of nation and state, Jewish thinkers can be greatly helped by Hermann Cohen’s intelligence in knowing the truth and his courage in speaking it. The final victory of truth, though, is neither his nor ours.

35 36 37

See Novak, Natural Law in Judaism, chap. 4. See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws Concerning Murder, 4.9. See Mishnah, Peah 4.1.

ÄSTHETIK

THE PORTRAIT IN HERMANN COHEN’S AESTHETICS ANDREA POMA, TORINO

Cohen’s discourse on art in his Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls is formulated according to strict philosophical and systematic requirements. Art is considered by Cohen in the light of the philosophical principles of his system: his concern, in short, is not to elaborate theoretical principles starting from artistic creation or enjoyment, but to find in works of art the philosophical principles of his own aesthetics. Cohen’s Ästhetik is not in any way the work of an artist or an art-lover who theorizes about the criteria and the rules of a poetics from the experience of his own activity; instead, it is strictly the work of a philosopher who projects into works of art his own philosophical criteria, which are then found to be exemplified and realized in them. In short, Cohen’s approach is executed programmatically and conditioned explicitly by philosophical prejudices. Inevitably, this makes it an extrinsic approach. Of course, this should not be taken to indicate an artistic insensitivity on Cohen’s part; it does not mean that Cohen was personally incapable of understanding the intrinsic meaning of works of art, nor that it had no influence on his aesthetic conception. Indeed, it is clear, historically speaking, that Cohen was a man sensitive to art, perhaps more to music than to painting, but in any case capable of enjoying the authentic fruits of art in all its forms. But this belongs to his biography, even if the experience of artistic fruition influenced his aesthetic ideas (and this is certainly the case), this concerns his biography. It may also be a useful historico-biographical element for understanding the origin of some features of his aesthetic theories, but has no importance in the relationship between Cohen’s aesthetic principles and aesthetic approach to works of art. From this point of view the relationship is unambiguous: Cohen finds in works of art the

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realization and exemplification of his own aesthetic principles, because he examines them in the light of these principles. He finds in works of art what he himself has put into them. In reality this attitude, far from being exceptional or perverse, is the normal and constitutional attitude of philosophy to works of art: the extraneity of the perspective can be more or less emphasized, but is in any case constitutive. Strictly speaking, such extraneity limits every perspective on the work of art, and the case of paintings represents it in the most radical manner, because not just the viewer of the painting but the painter himself is and remains outside the work. However, such a limit, though insuperable, is not negative, it does not limit the possibility of grasping the meaning of the work, but on the contrary is the condition for the multiform richness of its meanings to reveal itself. However, in the case of the philosophical perspective (as in other but perhaps not all cases), the extraneity is not confined to exteriority: it is also heterogeneity. The conceptual language within which philosophy moves is irreducibly different from the symbolic or figurative language of art. For this reason every philosophical interpretation is strongly allegorical compared with the strictly tautegorical meaning of the artistic work. This constitutes a decisive problem for the interdisciplinary relation between philosophy and art. The following considerations on Cohen’s approach to painting may, I hope, help to shed some light on this problem, but only if it is clear from the outset that such an approach is extrinsic and conditioned by philosophical prejudice, not just for the particular formulation of Cohen’s aesthetics, but more generally for the constitutive attitude of philosophy to art. Any attempt to remove the extraneity, of which there are also examples in the history of philosophy, is to be rejected, from the viewpoint both of method and of content. As regards method, in fact, such attempts cannot but lead to an undifferentiated confusion between the method of artistic creation and the method of philosophical reflection, in the alternate search for a reduction of art to philosophy or of philosophy to

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art, the fruits of which are a sterile intellectualistic art1 or an obscure oracular philosophy. As regards content, the result is the same, with the aggravating circumstance that in such a confusion art and philosophy suffer from the illusion that they can find a common content in mysticism and both are thereby transformed into a caricature of the latter. For these reasons it is a good idea, before commenting on Cohen’s approach to some examples of the pictorial realization of the portrait theme, to set out briefly some principles of his aesthetics, essential to an understanding of how he reads paintings.

Nature of man and man of nature Nature and man as a moral being, the contents of logic and ethics respectively, seem to constitute the two only possible directions of the productive activity of consciousness, as thought and as will, and so seem to exhaust the system. If aesthetics is to find a systematic place, it must be able to find a new, specific direction of consciousness, though it cannot disregard the two contents indicated above. It must therefore be able to found artistic activity as a direction of pure reason which, without dissociating itself from the two contents of the science of nature and of the sciences of the spirit, i.e. nature and man, yet produces from these a new content by means of a new direction of pure consciousness. This is precisely the peculiarity of art, of which philosophical aesthetics lays the foundation in ‘pure feeling’. Every productive act of consciousness, whether thought or will, is accompanied by feeling. In the preceding parts of the system, especially in the Ethik des reinen Willens,2 Cohen had already developed this theme of feeling as a ‘suffix’ of thought and the will in the production of their contents. However, the peculiarity of art consists in the fact that feeling in it does not have a value

1

Obviously this is not to deny an artistic value to any poetics which contains an intellectual, also programmatic contribution, but only to those in which the poetic method is reduced to a philosophical method. 2 Ethik, 196, 488.

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merely relative to the logical and ethical directions of the productive activity of consciousness, but becomes autonomous, becomes itself productive of a content. This content is love, as aesthetic feeling, which therefore, unlike the relative character of the feelings which accompany the theoretical activity of thought and the ethical activity of the will, is itself autonomously productive, is pure feeling. As such, aesthetic love cannot be reduced to the naturalistic meaning of biological love nor to the ethical meaning of moral love: certainly it implies these two meanings as its conditions, but it goes beyond these, constituting itself as a new and particular form of feeling, capable of producing by itself its own content. This peculiarity also manifests itself in the peculiarity of the artistic object. Logic and ethics, to safeguard the fundamental methodological principle of truth, that is, of the system, must keep rigorously distinct the two areas which they found, i.e. being and what ought to be, nature, as object of theoretical knowledge, and man, as subject-object of moral action. If they were to fail to meet this fundamental methodological prescription, they would commit the fundamental philosophical error which Cohen sometimes designates, according to the manifestations in which it historically presents itself, as naturalism, philosophy of identity, or pantheism. At the same time the obligation of logic and ethics to remain strictly faithful to this methodological distinction does not mean that it is impossible or inadmissible to think the unity of man and nature: indeed, this is the regulative horizon which is always present and without which the systematic unity, and so the truth of philosophy, would disappear too. Thinking the distinction between nature and man in the horizon of their unity, without therefore reducing the distinction to identity, is what Cohen means by the notion of ‘correlation’, and is the unrelinquishable systematic rule of logic and ethics. For these two first parts of the system, therefore, the unity of nature and man is the infinite task to which every reality and every realization tends, without ever being able to achieve it fully. Pure feeling, in the production of the artistic work, is capable of giving ‘completion’ to this idea in the production of its own partic-

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ular content: the nature of man and the man of nature. This completion is realized in the production of the artistic work as a ‘figure’ (Gestalt). Cohen writes: How does art realize this unity? Precisely in this, plastic art is so instructive: it produces this unity in the figure of man. The figure is not just his body, just as it is not simply his soul. The figure is the unity of soul and body. In this way pure feeling reveals itself as production. This becomes immediately clear in the content of an object. And this object, in all its interiority, is pre-eminently the figure […]. Production goes in search of the object; pure feeling goes in search of the subject. If the soul of the figure must become the content of production, then the subject must become immanent in the object.3

In this way pure feeling produces, in the figure, a new content, which is neither the nature of scientific consciousness, nor the man of moral conscience, nor the juxtaposition or the sum of the two. A new content is involved, constituted by the achieved unity of man and nature: in the work of art the idea of man is effectively and completely realized in the figure and, at the same time, the natural character of bodies is completely idealized through the ideal meaning with which art imbues them. This is the meaning of the aesthetic notion of ‘ideal’, in the sense clearly defined by Kant, to whom Cohen evidently refers. In the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in fact, Kant had designated the ideal as ‘the idea not simply in concreto, but in individuo, i.e. as a particular thing, determinable or even determined solely by means of the idea’,4 adducing as an example the Stoic moral ideal of the sage: Virtue and with it human wisdom, in all their purity, are ideas. But the (Stoic) sage is an ideal, that is, a man who exists only in thought, but fully corresponds to the idea of the sage. Just as the idea gives the rule, so the ideal, in such a case, serves as a model for the perfect determination of the copy […]. These ideals, though real objectivity (existence) cannot be attributed to them, are not therefore to be considered

3 4

Ästhetik I, 191f. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 596.

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If, however, in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft Kant hastens to emphasize, immediately after this exemplification, the non-realizability of this ideal, in the Kritik der Urteilskraft he underlines the possibility of producing it offered to art: ‘that prototype of taste which certainly rests on the indefinite idea of a maximum provided by reason, and which cannot be represented by concepts, but only in an individual production, would be better called the ideal of the beautiful; an ideal which, if we do not possess it, we strive to produce it in us’.6 And a few pages further on Kant makes precise reference to the ‘human figure’ as the ideal of the beautiful.7 The success of this aesthetic notion in German culture is enormous. One need think only, by way of example, of its resplendent appearance in the final apotheosis of Goethe’s Faust: ‘The impossible is achieved here… Here, the ineffable is reality’.8 Cohen is thus heir to a great tradition, which he develops further. The work of art, as ideal, is therefore the completion of the unity between man and nature, the nature of man and the man of nature, which logic and ethics can only think as a regulative horizon, as an infinite task. In art the task achieves completion: it is completed in the production of the work. The work, in actual fact, as the concrete product of artistic activity, does not in itself alone constitute the object of art: the true object is the subject itself, as individual, which in the individuality of the work is realized as the individuality of the genius. The correlation between man and nature therefore achieves completion in the work of art also in the sense that the production of the object and the production of the subject, which remain distinct in logic

5

Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 597. Kritik der Urteilskraft, 232. 7 Cf. Kritik der Urteilskraft, 235. 8 J.W. Goethe, Faust, in: Goethe, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, hrsg. von E. Beutler, vol. 5 (Zürich/Stuttgart, 19622), 526. 6

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and ethics, are realized in a united manner in aesthetics, inasmuch as the work is the objective realization of the subject itself and the latter is the only true content of the work. A further specification of the character of artistic production is nevertheless still necessary, so as not to run the risk of misunderstanding the meaning of the ‘completion’ achieved in the work of art. In Cohen’s critical idealism, in fact, the pure activity of reason, in all its directions, in aesthetics as well as in logic and ethics, is the foundation and, correlatively, the infinite task: without the infinity and inexhaustibility of the task, the activity of reason would lose its idealistic character and so its foundational value as well. The artistic task, too, cannot dispense with this infinite dimension, which is therefore not lost but takes a particular form in the completeness of the artistic work. Infinity of the task, its realization in finite forms, the non-definitive character of such realizations are the terms of a dynamic correlation between infinite task and finite realization, present in all directions of the system. In the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis Cohen clearly indicates, for example, the dynamics of this correlation in connection with the concept: The concept is a question and remains a question, nothing but a question. The answer which it contains must also be a new question, it must raise a new question. This is precisely the intimate methodological relation which exists between question and answer: that every question must itself be an answer; therefore every answer also can and must be a question. It is a new type of reciprocal conditioning, of reciprocal action, which is realized in the system of the concept: the reciprocal action between question and answer. No solution can be regarded as definitive. The concept is not an absolute totality.9

In the Ethik des reinen Willens, too, Cohen emphasizes this correlation, for example in connection with the ethical ideal: ‘The ethical ideal contains three moments: perfection, perfecting, the imperfection of perfecting’.10 Art also proceeds according to the same correlation between the infinity of the task and the finiteness of the realization. The difference, compared with logic and ethics, is that in aesthetics, 9 10

Logik, 378. Ethik, 424.

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while the correlation remains substantially valid, the emphases on various moments are put in a different way. In a manner corresponding to the peculiarity of art, which, as we have seen, produces the unity of man and nature in the figure, in the concreteness and individuality of the work, the emphasis of the correlation is mainly put on the task, which is then designated as non-definitive and inexhaustive, thus opening up room for the ulteriority and infinity of the task, by virtue of which no work of art is the last one and artistic production continues from work to work. We are dealing here with two different systematic perspectives on the same correlation: while for logic and ethics the opening to the infinite task is always immanent in natural reality and in the historical realization, for aesthetics, in the work of art, the realization of the task is always immanent in the task itself: In science the concept can never assume the value of an absolute solution; but the work of art, in accordance with its concept of task, must be thought and valued as such. Therefore the foundation, as task, inasmuch as the solution is immanent in it, is the correct principle for pure feeling. The idea of the beautiful means the task of the beautiful […]. The foundation is only task, in which the solution is nevertheless immanent.11

The sublime and humour This correlation between infinite task and its realization in the finite, not in the generic sense in which it applies to every direction of consciousness, but in the particular configuration which it assumes in aesthetics, is what constitutes the content of aesthetic feeling: the beautiful. In an alternative, constantly pursued and consciously elaborated, to the tendency of Romantic aesthetics to reduce the beautiful to the sublime, Cohen develops a doctrine of the beautiful as a correlation between the two ‘subordinate concepts’12 of the sublime and humour. In an accurate analysis, which I omit here for the sake of brevity,13 Cohen criti11 12 13

Ästhetik I, 247f. Cf. Ästhetik I, 249, passim. Cf. Ästhetik I, 100ff., 250f.

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cizes Kantian aesthetics for emphasizing, on the one hand, the intellectualistic character of the beautiful, and then rescuing, on the other, art’s connection with morality in a doctrine of the sublime which is not satisfactorily integrated with the preceding doctrine of the beautiful and is therefore exposed to confusion between the aesthetic ideal and the ethical ideal. The Kantian position clears the way for the restriction and misrepresentation of the content of aesthetics, which also implies the reduction of aesthetics to ethics: this confusion cancels the autonomy of aesthetics and, at the same time, misinterprets ethics, which is falsified in the direction of metaphysical pantheism and mysticism.14 Against all this Cohen sets a concept of the beautiful which remains authentically that: it comprehends the sublime as a necessary but not exclusive moment, always integrated by the correlative concept of humour. A work is beautiful because it is a realization of the straining towards the infinite. Both these aspects: the straining towards the infinite and its concrete realization in the individuality of the artistic work must together be present in the feeling of the beautiful; if either is lacking, the beautiful itself falls short. Cohen’s dissociation from a unilateral aesthetics of the sublime then takes a further step: the rejection of a reduction of the meaning of the sublime to ethics. Knowledge and morality, i.e. the contents of the two preceding parts of the system, of logic and ethics are, as we have seen, unavoidable conditions of aesthetic feeling, because there are no other contents of thought besides nature and man. But pure feeling, in art, refers to these two contents in their unity: the nature of man and the man of nature. Always, in every moment, the beautiful is therefore a realized unity of knowledge and morality, of nature and man; but this unity is the dynamic result of a continual oscillation between the prevalence of an impulse towards knowledge and the prevalence of an impulse towards morality.15 Now, in the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, — unlike his position in Kants Begründung der Ästhetik,16 in which Cohen, still aligned to the traditional Kantian view, assigns to the prevalence of an impulse towards the 14 15 16

Cf. Ästhetik I, 9ff., 125f., 255. Cf. Ästhetik I, 257. Cf. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 280f.

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infinite, proper to the sublime, a mainly theoretical connotation17 — the prevalence of the ethical impulse is recognized in humour, as the feeling of realization, of the task, of peace.18 The important moment of humour integrates the sublime by stopping it from transforming itself into the aspiration to overcome the finite, in scornful irony for the finiteness of every figure. In this critical function humour delimits the sublime in its authentic meaning of the elevation of the finite to the infinite: humour, in contrast to irony and scepticism, is the ability to love the finite, seeing in it the realization, certainly not definitive, but real, of the infinite. For this reason, among others, Cohen’s aesthetics is capable of dealing with the subject of the ‘ugly’, not in the sense of a vulgar pleasure in the defect, which renounces the aspiration to the infinity of perfection, but in the sense of a loving consideration of finiteness and limitation, which is able to see in it the presence of the infinite and thus idealizes the ugly, elevates it to the dignified form of the presence and manifestation of the beautiful: The ugly a problem of the beautiful? Humour gives and founds the answer. The ugly does not remain ugly: it becomes a moment of the beautiful, is a moment of the beautiful. The beautiful is not in itself an object of art; it is only an idea, only the general requirement and faith, the methodological task of pure feeling. This task is fulfilled in the first place by the sublime; but in a just as necessary way by humour. Because man’s nature reveals itself broadly and compellingly in the ugly. Love would not be true if it did not also wish to embrace the ugly. Love embraces, transforms it: it makes it a moment of the beautiful. Love comprehends the ugly, permeating it with its power. Thus the satyr becomes eros. Love ennobles the animal by making it a man.19

Art, then, is the realization of the infinite task in the finiteness of the concrete and individual work of art. Straining towards the infinite and calm realization, ‘infinite work’ and ‘end of the struggle in victory and in peace’20 are not in contradiction but in profitable correlation, that is, in a dynamic relation in which the two

17 18 19 20

Cf. Ästhetik I, 254ff. Cf. Ästhetik I, 274ff. Ästhetik I, 288f. Cf. Ästhetik I, 275.

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moments do not neutralize but strengthen each other reciprocally: ‘the genius should not just aspire to heaven but conquer heaven in the work of art’.21 What characterizes Cohen’s aesthetics from this point of view (and is, moreover, in various forms, an important feature of Cohen’s thought as a whole) is an awareness, profound and precious, that straining towards the infinite becomes empty and turns into scepticism if it is incapable of accepting its own finite realizations as authentic, just as, on the other hand, satisfaction in the finite is nothing but vulgarity and renunciation of the idea if it does not consist in the elevation and idealization of the finite itself in the light of the ideal’s infinity. The sublime and humour are the two integral and inseparable parts of the beautiful; if separated, they turn into the opposite of the beautiful, into the scepticism of irony or the scepticism of vulgarity. Nevertheless, without prejudice to this inseparable correlation, humour, on account of the prevalence of the ethical impulse in it, has a particularly important function and, so to speak, a primacy in art, precisely because of art’s peculiarity of being the realization (never definitive) of the infinite task in the finiteness of the concrete and individual work. Cohen in fact writes: Just as there is no fixed state of consciousness which corresponds to the sublime or to humour, so there is not even a single sublime work of art nor an isolated work of humour. Both concepts, being only moments of the beautiful, are also only moments of the artistic work, impulses in the oscillation of creation and experience, but not directions which have become stable. We are considering here only the advantage of this conception for the concept of the aesthetic Self. Therefore it also needs to be said expressly that we must attribute this result more to humour than to the sublime. For humour is preponderant for morality. It therefore gravitates more towards objectification of the Self as Self, while the sublime, since the direction towards knowledge is more predominant for it, must objectify the I more in the concept. The will, however, leads to self-consciousness, and this is closer to self-feeling than the consciousness of the I proper to the concept. In this way humour has a more evident part in clarifying pure feeling as unity of consciousness, in that it is thought in abstraction from any conceptual content.22

21 22

Ästhetik I, 274. Ästhetik II, 421.

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The portrait This pre-eminent function of humour is particularly evident, among the figurative arts, in painting. We said, in fact, that the object of art is the unity of nature and man: the nature of man and the man of nature. This means, with regard to the first part of the formula, that the artistic representation of man must show the profound and complete unity between the natural aspect of man, the body, and his ethical and spiritual aspect, the soul. However, this unity should not appear in any way as a reduction of one dimension to another. This is the error of the naturalistic conception of art, which aims to express the beauty of the soul as a result of the beauty of the body. In this way naturalistic art reduces the soul to the body, neutralizes it, and, in the final analysis, nullifies it. ‘Therefore naturalism cannot avoid not just showing what is animal in human nature, but even bringing it to the fore […]. Its concept of man’s nature is not the concept of a correlation between body and soul in this human nature; in its view, there is no correlation but at most an involution of the soul in the body’.23 For authentic art, however, the soul, understood as man’s moral dimension, his participation in the idea of humanity, and therefore his dignity24, is the ‘central force’,25 ‘the fire, the central point of the radiation which constitutes the body, as the body of the soul’.26 The nature of man, thus understood as a profound unity of soul and body, is the content both of the sublime and of humour, because if some or other artistic feeling were unable to grasp this unity, it could not be an integral part of the beautiful. Yet the sublime and humour produce this unity in different ways. For the sublime (Cohen is thinking for instance of classical Greek statuary) the body as figure remains the primary element in which the soul ‘dwells’: the body is foundation, the soul con-

23 24 25 26

Ästhetik I, 298. Cf. Ästhetik I, 299. Cf. Ästhetik I, 298. Ästhetik I, 297.

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sequence. Only humour is capable of grasping this unity in the fullness of its meaning: ‘in the art of humour the greatest task appears in the fact that this unity is represented starting from the soul in the direction of the body’.27 This is fully realized by painting in the portrait. For this reason the ‘problem of the portrait’ is not only a problem of painting but ‘the problem of painting’,28 in fact: In what else does the peculiarity of the portrait consist among the tasks of painting if not in the predominance of the soul, as the centre and point of departure of production? Sure enough, everywhere, also in the landscape, the soul must enter into it effectively from the beginning; but in the portrait every direction starts exclusively from it. And therefore the theme, too, is clearly more profound and perhaps also the artistic technique is greater when this starting-point of the soul does not fit the face and the figure of the soul to the type of beauty, but comes from the horizon of humour.29

The portrait therefore borders on the caricature, but without being reduced to it. Cohen adopts a Kantian position here. Kant, as is well-known, placed the human figure as the ideal of the beautiful, as ‘the visible expression of the moral ideas which prevail in man’s heart’, between the type, i.e. the ‘normal idea’, which ‘cannot contain anything specifically characteristic’, and the caricature, i.e. ‘the characteristic of this [human] species when it is exaggerated, i.e. when it detracts from the normal idea itself (i.e. from the effectiveness of the species)’.30 Analogously, Cohen places the portrait, a product of the prevalence of humour in the beautiful, between the ‘type of beauty’ and the ‘caricature’, which ‘is in itself a violation of the conventional lines of beauty, not just an absence, an avoidance of these’.31 In the portrait humour does not stop at conventional and abstract beauty, but raises what is ugly in man’s naturality, animality, to beauty, idealizes it in the love for man’s nature:

27 28 29 30 31

Ästhetik I, 295. Cf. Ästhetik II, 347. Cf. Ästhetik I, 296. Cf. Kritik der Urteilskraft, 235. Ästhetik I, 296.

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ANDREA POMA no portrait without ideality, […] no portrait without humour. Under the sign of the sublime no true portrait can be realized. Here the portrait ceases and plastic art takes over. But plastic art therefore transforms man into a god. What else is Michelangelo’s Moses if not a Zeus? For the portrait, by contrast, man would become a caricature, without possibility of salvation; he would have to assume a rhetorical pose; he would become an abstraction, a schematic figure; he could not be the object of a creative human love — if it were not for humour.32

Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Rembrandt’s Hendrikje Stoffels The theme of the portrait, then, takes on a central meaning for Cohen, not just for painting but for art and aesthetics in general. The portrait realizes in a particularly meaningful way the aesthetic ideal of the nature of man, as the profound irradiant unity of the soul in the body; this ideal is realized in the concreteness of the human figure and in the peculiar characteristics of an individual, which humour elevates to the idea, transforming the apparent canonical typology of the sublime into a corresponding ideal which constitutes beauty. Among the many pictures which Cohen considers in connection with the theme of the portrait, we will now, by way of example, dwell on two paintings which are particularly significant for Cohen, in order to observe the way in which he applies his own aesthetic principles to the effective commentary on individual works of art. The paintings in question are two well-known masterpieces, the portrait of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci and the portrait of Hendrikje Stoffels by Rembrandt, both exhibited in the Louvre. In contemplating the portrait of Mona Lisa, Cohen’s attention is mainly focused on the celebrated ‘smile’, which, in the words of Cohen, ‘is the most profound meaning of the mystery of the Mona Lisa’.33 The theme is clearly conventional, but Cohen’s reading goes far beyond the commonplace. The smile is pre-eminently a fleeting, indeed momentary, expressive feature, whose instability seems to meet only the portraitist’s need to grasp the peculiar becoming of a face rather than the

32 33

Ästhetik I, 297. Ästhetik I, 306; cf. Ästhetik II, 347.

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fixity of a type.34 With its instability he also seems to suggest the aleatory nature of the spiritual state which it expresses: that of friendliness.35 But Cohen goes beyond this first appearance to grasp a more profound sense of the smile: it is the realization, of which only art is capable, of the solution to a profound contradiction between the transcendence of the good and man’s participation in it. Can man be good? Only God is good, indeed he is the Good. Yet what would man be if he did not in some way reflect the divine good?36 This antinomy threatens to plunge man into scepticism, into irony, into self-mockery. True enough, art has been able to find a solution by expressing the goodness of the human figure and at the same time raising this figure to represent the divine in classical mythological themes or in Christian representations of Jesus, who is also God, and of Maria, who is the mother of God. But Leonardo’s portrait represents a woman who is purely human and yet in her smile reveals a sign of the good. Mona Lisa’s smile, also in the transitory character which it shows as a psychological trait, indeed precisely through it, expresses a sense of profound ethical stability: ‘Only when the mystery of goodness radiates from the human face, only in this way is every change in man’s being overcome in unity. Now not just the mouth and the eyes smile, but the soul reveals itself. Now man’s soul is not just allegorically described as virtue, but this virtue is not an abstraction: it is the most concrete life which can exist in the world. This is the life which the portrait realizes. This realization in an ideal fulfilment is Mona Lisa’.37 What Leonardo has admirably achieved in the portrait of Mona Lisa is the artistic work of humour, which, preventing the sublime from betraying the ideal of man by escaping into the dream of superman, and raising, on the other hand, the narrowness and defectiveness of man’s naturality through idealization, effectively realizes the aesthetic idea of man’s nature and thus erects a defensive bulwark against scepticism and irony:

34 35 36 37

Cf. Ästhetik II, 344f. Cf. Ästhetik II, 344f. Cf. Ästhetik I, 305. Ästhetik II, 346.

298

ANDREA POMA This is Leonardo’s humour: on this borderline between man’s paradise and hell, between his disposition to morality, which leads him to heaven, and the egoism in him, which not only becomes a torment to him, but also the peril of blindness, of vain presumption and self-deification, on this crossroads to the most profound ugliness, the ugliness of the soul, he needs mercy, which only great art can obtain for him. Humour transforms the laugh into a celestial smile, in which one cannot lose faith, in which only he loses faith who fails to understand that he is called upon here to take on a new artistic task: that of learning to believe, of having to believe in the appearance of the good in man’s eye, on man’s lips. Does art in this way perhaps become an edifying moral sermon? Absolutely not: this is its normal task, to which it gives only a particular direction here, love for man’s nature.38

Even more than in Leonardo, Cohen sees a significant presence of humour in Rembrandt, going so far as to affirm: ‘Rembrandt is the painter of humour’39, and: ‘Rembrandt became the painter of the ugly’.40 What does Cohen mean by these judgements, which far from agree with the accepted understanding and image of the meaning of Rembrandt’s painting? Cohen sees in Rembrandt the painter who, more than others, was capable of taking, in a precise sense, the ugly as a moment of the beautiful. Undoubtedly remembering Kant’s considerations on the difference between the aesthetic ideal and the ‘normal idea’, i.e. the aesthetic canon,41 Cohen develops some considerations in general and on Rembrandt in particular. If these two notions are confused, the history of art assumes the form of a tiresome competition between artists to reproduce exactly canonical beauty and, if this ‘normal idea’ of beauty were finally to be achieved in some or other work, ‘the history of art would thus be completed’.42 But the ideal cannot be reduced, in fact, to the normal idea of the beautiful. The ideal surpasses the normal idea and, paradoxically, surpasses it precisely because it never achieves it. The ideal is an infinite task and this infinite character is given to it by its eternal movement away from the canonical model. Now, every work of art, inasmuch as it never completely realizes the canoni38 39 40 41 42

Ästhetik I, 306. Ästhetik II, 382. Ästhetik II, 384. Cf. Ästhetik II, 233ff. Ästhetik II, 383.

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cal idea of the beautiful, has something deficient, something lacking in regard to this canon: something ugly. The function of humour in general, and its supreme realization in Rembrandt in particular, consists in the inversion of this negative meaning of the ugly into a positive meaning, in that it regards the ugly not as that which contradicts the beautiful, but as a moment of opposition in it, and in seeing precisely in this dynamics, which does not permit resignation to the definitive realization of the intellectualistic canon of beauty, another type of realization of beauty, based not on the illusory stasis of the realized concept but on peace, on interior calmness, on indulgence to the partial and yet effective realization of an infinite task. In this sense humour elevates the ugly from the meaning of an opposition to the beautiful, which would exclude it from art and aesthetics, to the meaning of an opposition within the beautiful, which makes it instead an essential moment of art and aesthetics.43 According to Cohen, Rembrandt is precisely the painter capable of treating the ugly in this sense. He does not take pleasure in the ugly as such, nor, on the other hand, does he uncritically adapt to the canons of the beautiful. Rather, precisely because he seeks to realize the good, he goes in search of those differences, those deficiencies, which distinguish the ideal of the beautiful from its canon and which, far from impoverishing the meaning of the work, give it a relative value and a participation in the ideal: It is always an incompleteness, a deficiency, which constitutes his [Rembrandt’s] theme […]. One could perhaps even say that it is not at all the ugly which he wants and attempts to represent. Yet there is no doubt that his type differs from the ideal type, that his type is marked by a defect with respect to classical beauty. Why is it so hard for us to admit this to ourselves? Why do we think that what Rembrandt paints is also beautiful, that, as regards content, it is just as beautiful as the beauty of Raphael? […] It is humour which makes the difference, but which also gives Rembrandt’s paintings the right to beauty […]. For him it is enough to consider the ugly by itself in its connection with the completeness that the history of art declares to be beauty. He sees man’s nature in the absence of this historical beauty; he perceives it in the features which are not framed in accordance with this canon.44

43 44

Cf. Ästhetik II, 383. Ästhetik I, 293f.

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Humour shows the ‘preponderance’45 of the ethical moment in pure feeling, just as the sublime shows the preponderance of the theoretical moment. This principle needs to be correctly understood if one wishes to avoid seriously misunderstanding the correct conception of art. On the one hand, such an assertion does not conflict with the unrelinquishable autonomy of art. Humour is not the reduction of art to extrinsic moral meanings; as was said above, it is a moment of pure feeling and, as such, it should not be confused with theoretical thought or with ethical action. But because both, too, are always the ‘conditions’ of aesthetic love, humour is not an illegitimate introduction of ethics into art, but an emphasizing of ethical contents in the feeling of the beautiful, which always remains pure and disinterested feeling. On the other hand, if, as we saw in considering the ugly, humour is an irreducible opposition to the reduction of the beautiful to its canonical task, one could ask whether this is not in contradiction to the correlative functions of the sublime and human in general, as set out above. It was said, in fact, that the sublime represents, in the beautiful, the moment of yearning for the infinite and humour the moment of realization and peace. However, as I already indicated, in idealizing the ugly, humour opposes the completeness of canonical beauty, which is an illusory, external, and intellectualistic completeness, in order to reveal another type of completeness, of a moral, internal, authentic origin: quiet acceptance of the finite, which comes from the capacity to perceive and love, in its concrete narrowness and deficiency, the presence of the infinite, which is real and authentic too. As regards the human figure, human nature, it is a question, as was said, not of suggesting the spiritual power of the soul through the perfect and harmonic proportion of the canonical forms of the body, but, on the contrary, of showing the ideal transfiguration of the body in its natural defective and even ugly reality through the radiation from within of the soul’s power and meaning. This is in general the task to be realized by art, to which painting, and the portrait in particular, offers a special contribution. By virtue of the excellent results achieved by Rembrandt in 45

Cf. Ästhetik II, 421.

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this ‘penetration of soul and body, he is one of the supreme geniuses of his art’.46 For Cohen, more than any other among Rembrandt’s works, the portrait of Hendrikje Stoffels, ‘the crowning glory of his portraits’,47 documents this brilliance of Rembrandt. He compares this portrait with Leonardo’s Mona Lisa to stress the different directions in which humour realizes its own meanings. If there it is the smile which illuminates the face and shows the radiation of the soul’s goodness through the features and the figure, here ‘the moist eyes are steeped in sadness; here humour shines as the pure spiritual force of participating feeling, of compassion for the fate of humanity’.48 This love for suffering humanity, this participating acceptance of ugly human actions, has nothing dramatic let alone rebellious in Hendrikje’s expression. On the contrary, ‘this compassion for the ugly has the force of a theodicy’.49 As in the Jewish faces which Rembrandt likes to portray in so many of his paintings, so in Hendrikje’s face and expression there is a sadness […] which is neither grief nor lament, but radiates only an inner spiritual peace. One could think that there is a transcendence of aesthetic beauty here, that the love of man, which is not normally equated with artistic production, has achieved here the skilful expression of superiority with regard to every work and every human act’50

‘This painting in the Louvre’ — writes Cohen — ‘is the model of Rembrandt’s beauty’.51

46

Ästhetik II, 383. Ästhetik II, 389. 48 Ästhetik II, 390. In truth, the term ‘compassion’ (Mitleid) is used here by Cohen in a sense which does not wholly accord with the meaning that he usually attributes to it. Here, in fact, he stresses the sentimental aspect which is secondary in the normal meaning: precisely for this reason Cohen normally treats ‘compassion’ as a notion of ethics and above all of religion. 49 Ästhetik II, 387. 50 Ästhetik I, 294. 51 Ästhetik II, 390. 47

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Conclusion As we said, Cohen designates the content of art by means of a complex formula: not just ‘the nature of man’ but also ‘the man of nature’. These are the two complementary aspects of the unity of man and nature which is realized in the work of art. The portrait is the theme in which painting realizes in supreme fashion this unity as ‘the nature of man’, raising finiteness and imperfection, even the ugliness of the human figure’s natural features, by manifesting and radiating the power and dignity of the soul. The ‘man of nature’ is the complementary aspect of the same unity, examined by painting especially in the theme of the landscape, in which, through the pictorial transfiguration, the nature of the environment is brought back to its profound unity in man, who, even when no human figure appears in the painting, is always present as a center and focal point from which the aesthetic meaning of the natural environment radiates, so that the painted landscape, through light and colour, is not just an object of interest to scientific knowledge, but the realization of an ulterior spiritual meaning: ‘Nature, inasmuch as it does not constitute the problem of natural science but of art, is not a thing in itself, neither in the large phenomenon nor in the smallest; on the contrary, what must always become living in it is the unitary spirit of man. Only in this does the difference of the landscape from a “herbarium” appear’.52 In modern painting, writes Cohen, ‘the landscape has become the soul of nature’.53 Cohen’s considerations on the theme of the landscape are interesting, also because it is particularly in this context that Cohen expresses all his appreciation for nineteenth-century French painting, for Millet above all, and for the Barbizon school, for the impressionists, and also for the Dutch (Jozef Israëls) and German (Leibl and Liebermann) painters who refer to it.54 I pass over here a further examination of these interesting reflections by Cohen on the pictorial theme of the landscape for the sake of brevity and because Cohen’s remarks on this theme 52 53 54

Ästhetik II, 327. Ästhetik II, 312. Cf. Ästhetik II, 399ff.

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are less ordered and univocal, are interwoven with political considerations which tend to compromise the clarity and precision of the argument and, above all, he barely stops to consider individual works (with the relative exception of some works by Millet), but elaborates his argument in comprehensive ideological terms. The theme of the portrait, by contrast, already gave us an opportunity to consider Cohen’s approach to individual works. On this material, therefore, I can set out some conclusive considerations. Above all, it seems to me, what has clearly emerged is what I advanced from the beginning as a premiss, i.e. the extrinsic character of Cohen’s aesthetic approach to the paintings considered. The questions raised by this method are many, but it is worth saying something about at least two of these: to whom can such an approach be useful? What meaning does it have and what contribution does it bring to the truth of art? As regards the first question, one has to say above all that the considerations of philosophical aesthetics (Cohen’s, but the argument fundamentally holds for any philosophical aesthetics, as I said at the start) do not seem to have any usefulness for the artist himself. This for the simple and important reason that the artist’s task is to produce work, not reflect on it. One could apply to this situation what Kant said about geometry in relation to the philosophical foundation of space: the painter has no need ‘to obtain a permit from philosophy’ which would guarantee the legitimacy of his artistic work.55 He can proceed, indeed he must proceed in sovereign autonomy, not because artistic production is anarchic, but because it is a law unto itself, it is genius. This principle of the autonomy of art from any philosophical canon,56 this negation of any direct influence of philosophical aesthetics on the artist’s activity must be established and maintained without any reduction, on penalty of the denaturalization of art. Rather we will reclaim an indirect relation of the artist with philosophical aesthetics which is integral and complementary, but in no way reductive of this fundamental principle. The mat55 56

Cf. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 120. See above, note 1.

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ter is different with regard to art criticism. The latter is also a reflection on art and an attempt analytically to understand individual works through various approaches: historical, technical, poetical, and also sociological, political, religious, etc. But all these approaches are not enough to legitimize art criticism and make it persuasive. This is not because the list lacks the philosophical approach as a further perspective among the others which is added to and completes the horizon of perspective, but rather because all these approaches lack a foundation in philosophical aesthetics. Every work of art is certainly unique, but it is not episodic: the work becomes part of a unitary meaning of art; its unicity does not consist in the absence of any relation with other works past and present, but on the contrary in its peculiar and unrepeatable meaning within the unitary context of art. The legality of genius, style, the connection between tradition and innovation, the expressive and communicative character of the artistic work can only be realized within a unitary context and thanks to this context; this context is what we call art, in which we place every individual work, designating it, in fact, as a work of art. Beyond this there is a further problem, but one no less important: the relation between art and the arts. The individual arts, also in their peculiarity, need to be fitted into a unitary system, not only in the sense of establishing operative relations between them, but even more in the sense of being able to recognize a unitary foundation which they share. All these requirements, which artistic activity is not concerned with answering, not because it regards this as useless or impossible, but because it believes that this is not part of its responsibility, must however be dealt with by art criticism. But none of the methods indicated above, neither the historical nor the technical nor any of the others can treat these problems. Only philosophy, as thought which is critical because it is foundational, can legitimize the unity of art, both in the sense of art as the unity of the arts, and in the sense of the foundation of art, in its various manifestations, in a particular direction of the productivity of consciousness, in a direction which, in its turn, has a systematic place in the unity of directions, i.e. in culture. Since philosophy is the critical foundation of the systematic unity of the spirit’s productive directions, it is philosophy of culture, and since, as

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aesthetics, it is capable of establishing and justifying a priori a unitary concept of art in relation to the philosophical system, it offers to art an awareness of its meaning and its place in culture. For these reasons, it seems to me, in considering the individual work of art, criticism, without renouncing its various methods of analysis, cannot do without a conscious reference to the foundation and horizon provided by philosophical aesthetics. And in this sense, while maintaining the principle of the artist’s independence in his work from any direct philosophical conditioning, we must nevertheless recognize an indirect relation, insofar as the artist is placed and wants to take his place in culture with his own creative activity: he wants to be rooted in it and contribute to it. In my view, this also gives us useful elements for dealing with the second question. In this connection, because we have already touched on the subject of artistic creation, we will now focus on the aspect of artistic fruition and on the criticism thereof. I believe that a broad and general consensus would be obtained if artistic enjoyment, the pleasure of the beautiful, were defined as an awareness of oneself in the work of art. But this would come down to very little if it meant only a recognition of the agreement between what the work represents and the features of natural reality, physical or psychological. Such a naive naturalistic or psychologistic realism seems very far from the authentic meaning of the pleasure of the beautiful, but seems rather a caricature of it. In fact, it seems so full of subjectivism, of relativism, and of fortuitousness as to represent rather the antithesis of authentic artistic fruition. If therefore recognition of oneself in the work of art, the awareness that it realizes a profound meaning which pertains to us, should not be attributed to the fortuitousness of the natural and psychological subject, it is rather the subject inasmuch as he participates in a universal and eternal meaning, that which recognizes itself in the work of art. The enjoyer does not take a narcissistic pleasure in the work of art as in a mirror which reflects his natural and psychological features, but as in an interlocutor in which he finds realized the meaning of himself which he is seeking. In the fruition of the artistic work the subject recognizes himself in the work, precisely inasmuch as the work reveals to him what he failed to see clearly

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introspectively, inasmuch as it raises him by revealing to him the universal and eternal meaning in which he takes part, but which he is unable to see clearly without the aid of art. This is exactly the cultural and true meaning of the work of art. Without the philosophical foundation, which provides the justification and definition of culture and of its ideal heritage, the awareness of the subject has difficulty in seeing clearly this surmounting of more trivial meanings of the empirical subject and in raising himself to the discovery in the work of art of universal and eternal meanings in which he participates and which constitute his worth and dignity.

THE STATUTE OF MUSIC IN HERMANN COHEN’S ÄSTHETIK MARC DE LAUNAY, PARIS

Even a cursory look at dominant concerns in the reception of Hermann Cohen’s thought shows that the third part of his system, aesthetics, is a neglected area compared with the discussion of his logic, of his critique of Kant’s theory of experience, and with the debates sparked by his Religion der Vernunft or by his ethics. In fact, is it not typical of philosophical reception in general to recognize aesthetics only grudgingly? Yet systematic aesthetics is a rare phenomenon in the twentieth century. Besides Lukàcs it is only really Adorno — though his is anything but an articulated system — whose aesthetics can bear true comparison with the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls. Cohen was perfectly aware of the problem inhering in this enterprise, as he declares in the preface to his Ästhetik: ‘For aesthetics has not only been attacked by the science of art, into which the history of art has begun to mature, but also by artists [...]. What would become of philosophy if only art historians or artists had the right to philosophize on art and the arts?’1 Certainly there are many reflections on art, but they avoid precisely the difficulty proper to a systematic articulation. Moreover, in contrast to Kant, Cohen was concerned to develop an aesthetics which was not afraid to cite works of art and comment on them, though it needs to be said at once that the selection of these great works — flagrantly in the case of music — goes no further than the nineteenth century. While Cohen does not hesitate to quote Einstein in his Logik, he seems in music to show reservations about contemporary works which doubtless failed to correspond to what his taste was capable of appreciating. Music was in fact a pervasive influence, originating to some degree in his earliest cultural background. His father was cantor in Breslau and Cohen’s childhood must have been 1

Ästhetik I, vii-viii.

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steeped in synagogal music. His wife, Martha Lewandowski, was the daughter of a composer and publisher of synagogal music. In Marburg Cohen was president of the Musical Society, and there are many testimonies to his pronounced taste for this art. Robert Arnold Fritzsche, for example, reports that Cohen regularly visited him in Giessen to attend concerts.2 This predilection is confirmed by many letters, which show that Cohen appreciated Mahler and that, as a young assistant in Berlin, he taught courses in literature and history of art.3 Naturally, this musical background does not necessarily determine the position accorded to music in his more systematic works. At the very least, however, it suggests that Cohen’s selection of works in the ‘historical’ part of his aesthetics is not just a reflection of his own tastes, but rather answers to his concern to bring out the great phases in a history of pure feeling4 which could rival those of mathematics and physics. This history is far from being regarded as a continual and linear progress. Nor is it a simple matter of successive geniuses surpassing each other — it would be absurd to imagine Beethoven surpassing Mozart, who in turn went beyond Bach. Still the question of genius is decisive, mainly because it is at stake in the controversy with Romanticism and Nietzscheanism. Cohen does not quote Nietzsche, but his attacks on Schopenhauer are like so many missiles directed against the exaltation of philosophy’s defeat at the hands of poetry which inspired Nietzsche while writing Zarathustra.5 Kant’s formula, ‘Art is the art of the genius’, which Cohen appropriates in 2

Cf. R.A. Fritzsche, Hermann Cohen aus persönlicher Erinnerung (Berlin, 1922),

4. 3

Briefe, 7. As Walter Kinkel remarks in Hermann Cohen (Stuttgart, 1924), 42ff., from 1869 Cohen started to place his first reflections on the poetic imagination under the head of feeling. 5 Cf. Ästhetik I, 12-15. It is this which truly constitutes the famous ‘reversal’ of Platonism: the substitution of the philosopher-king by the poet-king or the artist-king — the free ‘genius’, not superman but overman. Cohen clearly refuses to accept that a community of artists, even if they are the geniuses, can replace the ethical community of citizens. On this point and on Cohen’s critique of Romanticism, see Walter Kinkel’s contribution to the Festschrift published to celebrate Cohen’s seventieth anniversary: ‘Beiträge zur Aesthetik des reinen Gefühls’, in: Philosophische Abhandlungen, 299-314. 4

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a new sense, is ambiguous in that it could have been adopted by Schopenhauer (and Nietzsche) in the anti-Kantian perspective already found in Jacobi.6 The refutation of Schopenhauer is all the more necessary because he identifies ‘true philosophy’ with music.7

Genius and history Also, Cohen insists from the outset that art is governed by ‘law’ or at least ‘legality’, like science and ethics.8 If not, the systematic coherence which allows the integration of aesthetics in the system of philosophy would be without foundation. And the genius is primarily defined from the point of view of this ‘legality’: ‘The genius is not just a magic formula of the imagination, not just a miraculous formula of mysticism, or indeed of a human instinct [...] The art of the genius makes him a legislator of art’.9 So the artistic creation of the genius should not be set against the way in which the scientific genius invents and discovers. This would be giving in to a scepticism which, in the final analysis, destroys

6

This is patently the case in his two novels Woldemar and Allwill (‘All will’) and also in his philosophical oeuvre, which is driven by the notion of faith based on instinct (the ‘heart’): ‘I see before me a ghastly, dead sea and no spirit capable of stirring, reviving, arousing it: hence my desire for the arrival of a rising tide, whatever it may be, be it that of barbarians, to remove this horrible morass, clear it away, and to take its place, thus one day giving us back a virgin, savage sun.’, Werke, vol. 5 (Darmstadt, 1980), 93. 7 Ästhetik I, 15. It is not surprising to find a critique of Wagner in the first systematic reflection which Cohen devotes to aesthetics, Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 320-328. Far from achieving ‘total art’, Wagner merely took ‘programme music’ to its highest point, and, as can be easily deduced from the 1905 article ‘Mozarts Operntexte’ (which appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung, 31 December 1905 - 3 and 4 January 1906), it is Mozart who created the most perfect operas and who has never since been surpassed (cf. Schriften I, 490519). Also, every art should aspire to its perfection, and hence there is a history of music which corresponds to the recognized independence of strictly instrumental music. So it is not the arts in combination which could represent true progress (cf. Ästhetik II, 165). 8 Ästhetik I, 14. 9 Ästhetik I, 14.

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the rigorous nature of both logic and ethics.10 The Romantic tendency is to see art too narrowly from the perspective of the history of artists, art in general being no more than a matter of the individual artist. However, ‘the genius is nothing but the expression of reason, of legality (Gesetzlichkeit) in art’.11 Just as there is a unity of scientific work — and this is the object of logic —, a unity of moral action in the broad sense of the term — and this is the object of ethics —, so there is a unity of art: it is the problem specifically dealt with by systematic aesthetics. Cohen in fact rejects the slogan ‘art for art’s sake’12 in the name of the unity of consciousness, that is to say, in the name of culture, whose dynamics excludes the radical independence of feeling with regard to knowledge or the will. This does not mean that art, science, and morality move forward in an always perfectly coherent manner, but implies an interdependence which allows us to understand that the welltempered harpsichord cannot be imagined without the progress of arithmetic, that the recognition of a composer’s intellectual ownership is just as important as the organization of a legal system which does justice to the work’s existence, conceiving it as personal property, that the invention of a wind instrument or the process of perfecting an instrument like the piano cannot take place without the help of scientific acoustics, without the progress achieved by physics. More generally, the rejection of art for art’s sake means that the historical dimension can be applied to creations of genius and the problems which artists attempt to solve can be related to questions regarding culture, both on the level of the sciences and in the domain of law and morality. Molière’s Don Juan particularly reflects — though not, of course, exclusively — the questions of libertinism and atheism as posed in the seventeenth century while so-called natural theology believed that it could appropriate philosophical logic and use it as an arsenal of proofs in the religious sphere. Mozart’s Don Giovanni reveals rather the fermenting decadence of a feudal order

10 11 12

Ästhetik I, 9, 26. Ästhetik I, 75. Ästhetik I, 92.

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no longer capable of legitimately regulating morals by putting the question of immorality and eros in a much more general perspective.13 Yet it is necessary that the first two articulations of the system are both present and not more prevalent in the third, in aesthetics. And so Cohen holds that feeling, though remaining the creator of an art which is that of the genius, produces a new self which is no longer the ego cogito of knowledge nor the ethical self in relation to the other, but a self of which the will and knowledge are preconditions.14 The feeling of self, of self in the reflective sense, allows us to understand what creation is from the point of view of aesthetics. Every creation is a permanent movement of return to the original feeling of the individual. Love is the ‘productive force of art’,15 but it is love for the nature of man and at the same time for the man of nature. This ‘pure, exclusive, and universal’ love is love for the unity of nature in body and soul, for this unity which art is capable of producing in human beings.16 The artist’s morality is therefore love for ‘the human heart, in all its profoundness, its abysses, in all its recesses’. This human heart, where the artist does not discriminate in any way, is his ‘open book’, as nature was for Galileo, is equally present ‘in the heart of peoples, in their history, in the history of mankind’.17 At the same time this implies the impossibility of achieving such love, because the unity of body and soul is not considered capable of actual realization. For neither the nature of man nor the man of nature is a given, no more than the self, nor, more generally, concepts, as is made very clear in the Logik: ‘The concept is a question and remains a question, nothing but a question. Even the answer which it receives must be a new question, calling forth a new inquiry [...] the concept is not an 13 The idea of a historicization of aesthetic material was formulated at a very early stage in Germany, partly in reaction to Romanticism, by Carl Gustav Jochmann, who was rediscovered in the thirties by Walter Benjamin. Cf. C.G. Jochmann, Die Rückschritte der Poesie, in: Gesammelte Schriften I (Heidelberg, 1998), P. König, U. Kronauer, and H.-P. Schütt (Hrsg.). 14 Ästhetik I, 199. 15 Ästhetik I, 187. 16 Ästhetik I, 416. 17 Ästhetik I, 224.

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absolute totality.’18 And the ethical ideal as set out by Cohen in the Ethik des reinen Willens takes the same point of view: ‘The ethical ideal contains three moments: perfection, the process of perfecting, the imperfection of the process of perfecting.’19 The essential matter, then, is not the given but the movement of feeling, a movement which is a radiation of consciousness going back to itself: it is what Cohen calls pure feeling, that is to say, feeling which does not attach itself to any given object, but solely to an infinite, incomplete dynamics.20 In this way Cohen links up with what he had always asserted since the re-edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung and since Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode: there is no given prior to knowledge, reality is of an infinitesimal order. This is summed up by the formula which was to become the motto of the Marburg School: ‘The product is production’.21 The self of pure feeling is not a first foundation but a foundation in the active and dynamic sense of the term (Grundlegung). Sure enough, the objectification of the self takes place through a work of art, but this objectification is not reduced to the work of art, it is also perpetual, indefinite, impelled by a permanent movement of reflexivity. It is this which allows us to understand both the necessity of works of art and the fact that none of them marks the end of an art, no matter how brilliant and accomplished it is.22 The foundation is in fact a task — like knowledge and like morality — a fieri and not a factum, in such a way that the fulfilment of the task is immanent in the task itself, which is dictated by the system of culture as whole, and is driven by the idea of the beautiful. This idea in turn should be taken in the sense that Cohen interprets the Platonic theory of Ideas: the idea is a hypothesis and not a

18

Cf. Logik, 378. Cf. Ethik, 424. 20 Ästhetik I, 201. 21 Logik, 29. This formula is presented again in the Ästhetik I, 159: ‘Thought produces the object’. 22 Moreover, art is not only a matter of the person who creates it, but also of the person who enjoys it, and Cohen opposes a passive reception of art. The spectator’s pleasure imposes a task on him, namely that of recreating: ‘He must aspire to reduce all content in which his intuition has immersed him to this task of the self imposed by all true lived experience of art’ (Ästhetik I, 209). 19

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norm.23 However, the cultural system should not be regarded as a simply causal determinant of artistic creations. The genius is not an expression of the technique developed in a certain period. Certainly the genius inherits know-how, technique (musical, plastic, stylistic, theatrical, etc.), but this inherited technique is transformed in his hands such that it becomes the technique of a genius.24 Yet the genius cannot be interpreted from the perspective of a cultural teleology. It is true that every culture which wants to be civilization aspires, through knowledge, morality, and art, to go permanently beyond its own limits. But the presence of the genius is never necessary — many cultures do not attempt to surpass themselves and move towards civilization, and even in cultures characterized by a dynamic effort to surpass themselves, one sees both periods of stagnation and periods of regression, in which a certain tradition is forgotten and what once seemed valuable is neglected. By contrast, the presence of the genius is rare, even if it is always decisive. It intermixes and identifies precisely with this aspiration which attempts to go beyond limits, but in the exact sense that this aspiration is understood to have the infinite nature of a task. The creation of the genius brings together the transcendence of limits and the establishment of new rules, it gives rise to a new dynamics and not a stasis. The specificity of aesthetics is therefore characterized by this correlation between infinite task and the creation of artistic works which are necessarily finite — the beautiful, content of the aesthetic feeling, cannot be divorced from time, from historical duration.

The sublime and humour In Cohen’s conception the works of the genius are not the realisation of a substance; and the idea of the beautiful need not be absolutely realized in a work. But, as we have seen, the idea of the beautiful is neither an illusion, nor an objective law, nor a subjective and relative representation. The idea of the beautiful 23 24

Cf. ‘Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik’ (1878), in: Schriften I, 336-366. Ästhetik I, 253.

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is a kind of ‘archconcept’ to which two other concepts are subordinate, the sublime, which is a modification of it,25 and humour.26 In this way the beautiful is intermediate between the self as subject and the work as object. And it is because pure feeling itself is susceptible to modification due to the various orientations, in every age and in every artist, of the return to the self that ‘modification’ of the beautiful is possible. Cohen thus attempts to play down the role of the sublime, which, despite Kant, is no more than ‘a moment of the beautiful’.27 This does not mean that there is a separation between the beautiful and the sublime, but simply that Cohen underlines what he identifies to be a fault in the Kantian conception. Kant makes beauty the symbol of morality, which implies a subordination of the aesthetic a priori to the ethical a priori, and at the same time, because the beautiful is only a symbol, a loss of the distinctive value of the aesthetic content. As the symbol of morality, the beautiful is the intelligible to which taste is directed: because the intelligible is for Kant a synonym of the thing in itself, the beautiful is relegated to the level of the phenomenon of which morality is the thing in itself. Moreover, the sublime, in this view, is a subjective transposition from man to nature. But this creates the problem of reconciling the beautiful in art with the sublime. In fact, the sublime, if considered only on the subjective human level, designates the domain of excess, that of the passions, so also unchecked violence which can lead to destruction. In this way the sublime comes to be set against the idea that the content of a work of art can integrate an aspect which contradicts its beauty. And if excess must form part of the artistic work as a complement of the beautiful, the sublime would take precedence over the beautiful, which Kant rejects. Finally, ugliness also plays a role in the creation of beauty, not as pure ugliness, but in the form of that which is finite, limited, contingent, etc. However, the ‘pure creation of art is nothing but the infinite desire for the infinity of humanity which exists in man’s nature’.28 Aspiring to

25 26 27 28

Ästhetik I, 256. Ästhetik I, 256. Ästhetik I, 261. Ästhetik I, 267.

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the infinite, the sublime reflects completion, but it does so, and this is Cohen’s originality in relation to Kant, in a fictitious sense; it aspires to a kind of completion, a kind of absolute peace. However, neither the completion or the conclusion of an artistic work reduces the permanence of the return to the self from which all creation proceeds, and the sublime cannot desire precisely that which presupposes its opposite, finitude. The genius can therefore present completion as having been achieved in the goal of his labour, the work of art. But this completion remains illusory to the extent that it is in a work of art and not in an absolute sense that the genius presents a fictitious absolute. So there is another dimension of the beautiful which cannot be understood via the sublime. Cohen rejects the typical Romantic ideal of somebody like Novalis, the ideal of replacing the artist’s work by his gaze, a gaze so refined that he can therefore dispense with work altogether, the supremely ironic ideal of the genius who transforms reality merely by the way in which he contemplates it. Instead, Cohen reaffirms that the genius is dedicated to creation through labour, which is irreducibly that of the work of art. Even if the genius aspires to the heavens, it is in his work that he must conquer the heavens, and thereby fail to reduce them. As a result, the sublime cannot be the only moment of the beautiful. And it is the great originality of Cohen’s aesthetics to introduce humour alongside the sublime: ‘The beautiful cannot be absolutely reduced to the sublime [...] it equally needs humour in order to develop.’29 Like the sublime, humour is a concept subordinate to the archconcept of the beautiful. No work can be the exclusive incarnation of the sublime, no more than it can be of humour, but it cannot do without their correlation. It is to this correlation that the pure feeling of art refers, a correlation which is therefore the dynamic unity of the nature of man and the man of nature, a unity resulting from the aspiration to knowledge and the aspiration to morality.30 In The Ästhetik Cohen dissociates

29

Ästhetik I, 319ff. In fact, the section of the fifth chapter (of the first volume) dealing with the beautiful devotes some twenty pages to the sublime, but three times as many to humour. 30 Ästhetik I, 257.

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himself further from Kant — as in the first version of his ideas on aesthetics formulated in the 1889 work Kants Begründung der Ästhetik31 — by connecting the sublime to a more theoretical aspiration,32 whereas humour is related to an ethical aspiration, the human world of finitude, completion, realization.33 Humour thus has a critical function with regard to the sublime, which Cohen confines to elevation towards the infinite. Humour is the capacity to love the finite, to appreciate realization, and it is humour which gives us insight into the relationship between ugliness and beauty. ‘Is the ugly a problem of the beautiful? It is humour which gives the answer and justifies it. Ugliness does not remain ugly, it becomes a moment of the beautiful; it is an aspect of the beautiful. In itself the beautiful is not an object of art; it is only an idea, a general requirement and certainty, the task which method assigns to pure feeling. This task is accomplished in the first place by the sublime, but just as necessarily by humour. In fact, the nature of man is revealed very broadly and compellingly through ugliness. Love would be false if it refused to integrate ugliness too. But love does integrate, transform it, making it an aspect of the beautiful. Love embraces ugliness by penetrating it with its power. In this way the satyr changes into Eros. Love transforms the animal into a human being.’34 The sublime and humour are correlated in every work: ‘We do not separate [...] the two moments of the beautiful, on the contrary, and because they are moments, they must constantly tend towards each other.’35 Supposing that they were distinct, they would be transformed into opposites of the beautiful, into ironic scepticism in the manner of Novalis for the sublime, into vulgar scepticism for humour. These two moments are not contrary to each other in the work of art, but reinforce each other, and it is their dynamic correlation, specific every time in every work, which makes it simultaneously a finished object and an unlimited source of pleasure. Their correlation also explains why

31 32 33 34 35

Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 280ff. Ästhetik I, 254. Ästhetik I, 274ff. Ästhetik I, 288ff. Ästhetik I, 327.

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works of art outlive the history of their materials, which, normally, would have to render obsolete the creations of the past, for it is the material which becomes obsolete and not the works of art: Just as there is not a fixed statute of consciousness which corresponds to the sublime or to humour, so there is no single work of art which is sublime nor one particular artistic work of humour. Both concepts, because they are moments of the beautiful, are likewise only moments within the work of art, impulses in the pendulum motion which goes from creation to experience, and not orientations which, for example, have become stabilised. Let us recall once again [...] that humour is predominantly related to morality. Hence it tends more to objectification of the self considered as self, whereas the sublime, to the extent that orientation to knowledge is predominant in it, must rather objectify the self in concepts [...] In this way humour takes a more evident part in the explanation which establishes pure feeling as a unity of consciousness to the degree that the latter is understood under exclusion of all conceptual content.36

Music and musicians Since the way Cohen determines the work of art, the beautiful, pure feeling is dictated by the concern to maintain a dynamics, of which the matrix is the relationship between idea and reality,37 one might expect that, of all the arts, music would occupy a privileged position, that it would function as an illustration of the ever-present movement in the relationship of consciousness with itself, in the correlation between humour and the sublime, in the productive tension between creation and the work of art. One would in fact be right to think so as far as polyphony is concerned, which distinguishes music in the proper sense from its analogous forms, and through which music makes clear the identical nature of thought and movement, of homogeneity between the precondition of knowledge (the calculation of in36

Ästhetik II, 421. This relationship (which results from the particular interpretation of the Platonic Idea) is constitutive of the three articulations of Cohen’s system: in knowledge this involves the relationship between hypothesis and theory, in morality (in politics and in law) the relationship between ideal and action. 37

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tervals) and movement.38 What is more, music has a special statute to the extent that ‘it has in itself its own science which is immanent in it [...] in this way it surpasses all other arts’.39 Nevertheless, this privilege is not enough to make it the first among the arts: it is poetry which enjoys this status on account of its expression in language: it is the ‘second interior form of language’,40 it is the general or universal art because it is the base common to all other forms of art, more precisely it is the ‘interior form of language proper to all aesthetic thought’.41 The very close connection of music with movement depends essentially on rhythm: rhythm is a fundamental form of movement, and movement is a fundamental form of consciousness.42 But rhythm is just as essential to language and, a fortiori, to poetry. The privileged position thus accorded to poetry finds its theoretical justification in the originality of language in consciousness — and even if song may have chronologically preceded articulated speech, language, it was not contemporary with consciousness in the strictest sense. But although it cannot occupy the first position, which belongs to poetry, music is so closely connected with poetry that it can doubtless be said to take second place in the classification of the arts. In other respects Cohen does not fail to underline its distinctive nature and special rank: ‘At first sight it might seem that music is the incontestable confirmation of the productive purity of feeling [...] for its ultimate goal is nothing but the development, the production of the interiority of feeling, which, similarly elaborated, is not present anywhere else.’43 Nevertheless, despite enjoying this recognition, the pre-eminence of poetry must give precedence to music, at least as regards the connection of the first with human nature, while the second does not imitate anything and has ‘no other content, other object than the self [...] not the consciousness of the moral self, but only the aesthetic in-

38 39 40 41 42 43

Ästhetik I, 163. Ästhetik I, 269. Ästhetik I, 400. Ästhetik II, 424. Ästhetik I, 202ff. Ästhetik II, 135.

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dividuality which is the self of pure feeling’.44 In music purity achieves its fullness because nothing natural, nor for that matter the ethical world, could be a model for it. It truly creates a new world which is therefore not a given but man himself: ‘Man is the task here, that of a new man, a new task of humanity, the task of a new orientation of cultural consciousness.’45 The purity of music is therefore unique, exemplary: hence it is necessary to establish the purity of its conditions, that is to say, both that of its materials and that of its creative methods. However, because music is inconceivable without auditory sensation, the presence of sensation contradicts the purity of this art. On the other hand, because it attaches itself to feeling, music seems to have no connection with knowledge. This is to forget that, for Cohen, knowledge never directly refers to nature but to the relationship between sensation and thought. And certainly there is, in music, an intermediate relationship with nature which consists of this relationship between thought and sensation. Moreover, just as sensation goes back to nature, so music, by this roundabout way, re-enters the domain of the problem of knowledge (of nature). It is through music that Pythagoras conceived his first ideas about mathematical physics. The mathematization of the content of hearing is a first proof of the purity of the conditions of knowledge: ‘Nature is nothing but the precondition, not the product, of pure feeling’.46 Sensation is thus framed by the transcendental conditions which govern knowledge, and music can clarify logic as to the meaning of the relationship between sensation and thought. The starting-point of music, then, is not sensation, but the quantified, physical, and mathematical determination of the intervals which are calculated before being heard. They are the determinations of a form of movement based on numerical relations. In this way thought structures auditory perception to render it effective: ‘Here, too, or rather here, first, the number constitutes itself as [...] the first means of discovering and founding being.’47

44 45 46 47

Ästhetik II, 136. Ästhetik II, 136. Ästhetik II, 139. Ästhetik II, 140.

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It is true that knowledge starts from sensations, but it is necessary, precisely for there to be knowledge of something, that a differentiation takes place among the sensations. The differentiation logically presupposes the persistence in their difference of the elements which need to be distinguished: particularization, union, and preservation of union in particularization, preservation of particularization in union. It therefore not enough to perceive a temporal sequence as reduced to a linear succession which would destroy what the differentiation presupposes. If time is not succession, it is a product of anteriority: ‘Anticipation is the lever of time.’48 And knowledge, by origin, is movement. Poetry, too, refers us immediately to the question of metrics, that is to say, to time. But metre does not suffice to articulate the elements which are no longer words; we also need to recognize that ‘rhythm is the fundamental element of music’.49 Rhythm, since it is the collection and arrangement of acoustic elements from the point of view of their repetition, the original form of rhythm, is the periodical order of acoustic elements: it involves pure production in the sense that it does not imitate anything that is prior. And even if it can be inspired by analogy with a given sensation, rhythm establishes a relationship with time which is not determined by anything other than thought. The fundamental form of what, in music, has the nature of a law is precisely this anticipation, presupposed by the periodicity of rhythm. By this anticipation time becomes the condition for the purity of acoustic feeling. It is the same condition as that of knowledge of nature: it is impossible without the exercise of pure thought. And being based on anticipation, rhythm is already an activity of thought.50 48

Ästhetik II, 143. Cohen reinforces this conception of time, which agrees perfectly with all his discussions of time in connection with the infinitesimal, by formulating the same idea in a different way: ‘Time is descended from the anticipated future.’ (Ästhetik II, 143). 49 Ästhetik II, 144. 50 From the outset rhythm is recognized as the fundamental aesthetic form (Ästhetik I, 159). Cohen already sketches this line of thought in the first volume of his Aesthetics, where he rules out the idea that the aesthetic content can be derived from sensation, as it necessarily arises from the relationship of a plurality of sensations. Plurality as such is no longer of the sensible order, but depends solely on thought (Ästhetik I, 151, 155, 158).

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Of course, the quantitative aspect of rhythm cannot be denied: there can be no rhythm without the alternation of long and short sounds, i.e. without calculated fractions of time. But we can easily see that it is not quantity which produces rhythm: it is therefore the quality of anticipation which is responsible for the rhythmical quantity. Cohen sees in this the superiority of tempo to metre, and underlines that the difference in intensity (a qualitative and dynamic intensity) proper to tempo brings it closer to the purity of anticipation. In other words, if the duality of time and of language were not essential in knowledge, music would take precedence over poetry to the extent that it is based on a relationship with time, which primarily drives the permanent effusion of thought. However, just as thought would be nothing if it remained inarticulate, undifferentiated, and just as knowledge would not be what it is without expression, so poetry gives the proof of humanity, even more than music despite its superior purity in its relationship with aesthetic feeling. Harmony, which integrates perceived dissonance in the prospect of its resolution — Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ Quartet provides a fine example —, is the meaning of the system of intervals: owing to the idea of anticipation, every sound of a chord tends towards adjacent chords, but it is melody which is ‘the essence of the musical genius’.51 Though remaining determined by harmony, melody can be formed precisely because the infinity of its possible constitutive relationships allows it to become a theme or motif. The signature of a great musician is his melodic style. And the history of music, starting from the Middle Ages, when vocal music appears, can seem the history of a progressive emancipation, first in relation to poetry, then in relation to song itself. In counterpoint and in the canon, polyphony evidently presupposes harmony while prefiguring instrumental music in a strict sense. Because ‘the language of music has its alphabet in melody [...] and because the genius reveals himself in melody’,52 music attains to its completion in the possibility of its instrumental expression in which the communion between creator and listener in pure feeling takes place through the artifice of melody. It is 51 52

Ästhetik II, 154. Ästhetik II, 158.

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true that music was first an accompaniment to texts (the Psalms or hymns, for instance), but even when its function was auxiliary to sacred song, the musical genius did everything to make it autonomous: it is the greatness of, say, Bach and Händel precisely to have affirmed with such persistence the independence of melody in relation to the religious framework which was imposed on them. The value of music has never depended on the value of the texts which it accompanied.53 In Bach’s Mass in B flat, during the second Kyrie, the melody embarks on a heroic flight that clearly liberates it from the text, which has only a functional value in the liturgy: ‘It is in melody that the enigma of Bach’s greatness lies.’54 In this respect he is a direct precursor of Beethoven, while Händel, in whom ‘the contrast between mournful and triumphant choruses shows an intermingling of the motifs of the sublime and humour’,55 is rather the forerunner of Mozart. But where do we find humour in Bach? When his imagination, turning away from redemption, individualizes as it were the different moments of the Passion, when he removes the sublime from his counterpoint, when he gives Christ a fourstring accompaniment, and thus underlines all that remains characteristic of Jesus in Christ. For to contrast Jesus with Christ by strictly instrumental means is to assert humour against the sublime, i.e. finitude against sacred exaltation. Haydn undertakes to reform the oratorio, giving nature increasingly the position which tradition assigns to the divine, even if faith remains present. But from now on the human and the divine meet without the obligatory mediation of holy texts. The love of Christ makes way for the love of God in general, which unites with human love. Beethoven represents the final stage in the history of the oratorio: the weight of the choir’s human voices is dominant in relation to the traditional idea of redemption and the remission of sins, so that Cohen sees it as anticipating the idea of an eternal progress of humanity rather than a climb towards a hereafter, which is not denied but secularised. The alliance of counterpoint — expression of the sublime — and 53 54 55

Ästhetik II, 161. Ästhetik II, 162. Ästhetik II, 163.

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melody (in the Benedictus) — voicing the simple and finite interiority of the individual, the dimension of humour — makes this oratorio a pinnacle of musical art. If Beethoven is the culmination of the oratorio form, among other aspects of his work for which Cohen shows distinct appreciation, Mozart marks the end of the evolution which first led to drama and finally to opera. Gluck’s reform allowed opera to free itself from drama: melody plays an essential role in it, and opera becomes lyrical, coming close to poetry (in contrast to the more epic genre typical of the oratorio), and from now on the aria, created by the oratorio, has the function of expressing human love. The orchestra becomes the accompaniment of a distinctive content, the sung melody. In contrast to the epic genre, operatic drama can no longer ascribe immoral and human actions to gods; it depends on a unity of action which goes back to the unity of a human subject, and no longer, like epic drama, to a cyclical time. Mozart is the genius of opera in that he introduced humour — ‘the aesthetic knowledge of grace’56 — in contrast to opera buffa, which is based on a simply comic vein. For Cohen, Mozart represents precisely in music what Shakespeare was for the theatre. He also says that Mozart was the ‘dramatist of opera’57, introducing mixed genres in the work of art, a coexistence of the ridiculous and the grandiose. In doing so he meets Plato’s requirement that the same author should create tragedy and comedy. If love is at the centre of Mozart’s operas, it does not simply involve sensual eros but more generally the love of man in a broad moral scope which leads to the idea of fraternity as expressed in Die Zauberflöte. At the same time it is the musical expression, dear to Cohen, of an alliance and not of an opposition between nature and culture, between the nature of man and the man of nature — a direct echo of pure feeling.58 Cohen’s preference for Beethoven is nevertheless evident, and this is not just the case in his 1912 aesthetics, for almost the same phrases are found in Kants Begründung der Ästhetik (1889).

56

Cf. ‘Mozarts Operntexte’, 501. ‘Mozarts Operntexte’, 491. 58 So the 1905-1906 article on the texts of Mozart’s operas does not privilege musical analysis; The Ästhetik of 1912 reproduces the gist of the article. 57

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Cohen merely developed and clearly expressed what he had thought for a very long time. This also helps to explain his silence about more contemporary musicians.59 Beethoven is the composer who embodies ‘absolute music’,60 in which orchestration and song are no longer distinct, such is the perfection of the melody. In Beethoven, too, what is most profoundly human in the music, the tumult of feelings, borders on prayer (cf. the Adagio of the Trio in B flat major, op. 97): ‘This sublimity of pure prayer is matched, analogous to his general thematic style of intensification, by an ecstasy in the development, a jubilation, a rapture which would almost reach mystic enthusiasm if not being at the same time and above all Promethean jubilation.’61 This is not to deny the presence of humour, because there is both a sense of nature and a return to popular song (in the first theme of the first movement in the ‘Appassionata’, in the second theme of the Adagio in the Ninth Symphony). However, Beethoven’s humour is purely musical (whereas humour remains on a dramatic level in Mozart) in that it relies on the register of prayer and on popular song, but also plays with the forms themselves, notably in some of his scherzos. Moreover, his themes often start from the slightest suggestion and thus arouse a feeling of irony which is gradually contradicted by the broad scope ultimately given to a melodic development. If this music can be said to be ‘absolute’, it is not because it has cut itself off from all its past history; it has not cut itself off from song, but has freed itself from the dramatic yoke to which Mozart remained subject. Thus Beethoven is the last stage in this aesthetic history of art, not because he is the last composer worth hearing, but because he is the first composer to have totally liberated instrumental music: ‘The purity of every art culminates in the autonomy of the

59 What he says about harmony, melody, and the tonal system prevents him from addressing the Schönbergian revolution from the perspective of musical analysis. But the systematic background of his aesthetics would have been able to integrate the new musical orientation (just as Schönberg himself never rejected the tonal system, as is shown in particular by ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’). 60 Ästhetik II, 187. 61 Ästhetik II, 189.

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modes of its work and its production. And, in every art, the purity of method leads to purity of feeling and of feeling of the self.’62

62

Ästhetik II, 193.

CRITICAL IDEALISM AND THE CONCEPT OF CULTUR E: Philosophy of culture in Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer URSULA RENZ, ZÜRICH

Since the First World War the neo-Kantian philosophy of culture has been received with reservations. It is regarded as academic and lifeless, its concepts as vague and empty. Martin Heidegger, for instance, in his 1919 summer lectures, accuses the neo-Kantian concept of culture of lacking ‘scientific certainty’ and ‘philosophical justification’;1 but he also calls into question the ‘principal and fundamental nature’ (Ursprünglichkeit)2 of the problem as proposed. Heidegger thus expresses an aversion which former Marburg disciples had privately voiced earlier.3 The question of the connection between Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms — the first three volumes of the Philosophie der symbolischen Formen were published in 1923, 1925 and 1929 — and the cultural philosophy of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, the fundamental concepts of which stem from Wilhelminian Germany, is of increased interest against the background of this historical reception. In what way is Cassirer’s philosophy of culture influenced by the approaches of his Marburg teachers? The literature on Cassirer of the last twenty years gen-

1 M. Heidegger, ‘Vorlesung Sommersemester 1919. Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie’, in: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 56/57 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 129. 2 Heidegger, Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie, 124. 3 A nice picture of the mood among former Cohen disciples is drawn by Heinz Heimsoeth in his letter of 6 April 1918, which he wrote to Nicolai Hartmann on the occasion of Herman Cohen’s death on 4 April 1918. He expresses his own feelings as follows: ‘I would often like to throw in the towel and forget all (European) philosophy — and all the ossified tradition of “culture” in general — and to start simply in the soul, with the primal activity of the inner life — but how should I do this: to whom precisely this has almost never been given as it really is, but rather only in the form of gaps in an intellectual net.’, F. Hartmann und R. Heimsoeth (Hrsg.), Nicolai Hartmann und Heinz Heimsoeth im Briefwechsel (Bonn, 1978), 296.

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erally tends to deny such an influence.4 But to clarify this question, it is necessary to read Natorp’s and particularly Cohen’s writings, too, as a philosophy of culture. This is not to say that Cohen, Natorp and Cassirer devoted themselves to a common programme. On the contrary, the systematic differences between Cohen and Natorp5 are mirrored in the differences between their philosophies of culture. Besides neo-Kantianism, Cassirer absorbs many different influences. He is interested not in the methodological discussion but in the cultural-philosophical interpretation of individual scientific results. His concept of culture is not oriented to the tripartite structure of philosophy in the wake of Kant but to the genuine diversity of cultural forms. What can be compared therefore are never individual theses but only the fundamental philosophical decisions behind these theses. With a view to this point of comparison, Cohen’s principle-oriented approach to the problem of culture and Cassirer’s phenomenological discussions often complement each other in an illuminating way. A systematic comparison is therefore instructive for the discussion of Cohen’s works too. My aim in what follows is to present central aspects and results of such a comparison between Cassirer’s and Cohen’s philosophy of culture. The starting-point is the idea of a critique of culture (section 1). I there will clarify Cassirer’s programme to turn the Critique of Reason into a Critique of Culture and compare it with Cohen’s approach to culture. In the second section I will deal with the most controversial point of difference between Cohen and Cassirer: the concept of system. The third section in4

This judgement was first prominently put forward by J. M. Krois, Cassirer — Symbolic Forms and History (New Haven and London, 1987), 38ff. and is now shared by many interpreters, mostly without being discussed in more detail. On the other hand T. Göller, Ernst Cassirers kritische Sprachphilosophie (Würzburg, 1986) points to systematic similarities. M. Ferrari, Il giovane di Cassirer e la scuola di Marburgo (Milano, 1988) and T. Knoppe, Die theoretische Philosophie Ernst Cassirers. Zu den Grundlagen transzendentaler Wissenschafts- und Kulturtheorie (Hamburg, 1992) demonstrate parallels between Cassirer’s early work and the Marburg school. 5 See extensively H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, two volumes (Basel, 1986) and J. Stolzenberg, Ursprung und System. Probleme der Begründung systematischer Philosophie im Werk Hermann Cohens, Paul Natorps und beim frühen Martin Heidegger (Göttingen, 1995).

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vestigates the basic methodological concepts of origin and symbolic form. The fourth section tackles the question to what extent religion or more precisely Judaism has a paradigmatic function. Next, Cassirer’s and Cohen’s relation to the problem of history is discussed (section 5). Finally, I will sketch the debate with the philosophical opponents, to wit Romanticism and philosophy of life (section 6).

1. Critique of culture and Kantianism The Marburg school’s philosophy of culture is in the first place a critique of culture which reformulates Kant’s critique of reason. In the introduction to his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen Cassirer formulates this pithily: Thus the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture.6

This formula can be read in two different ways: The critique of culture envisaged is in the first place a critique directed at culture. The genitive — following general usage — can be read as a genitivus objectivus. The replacement of the critique of reason by that of culture, if viewed in this way, points to a change or an expansion of the philosophical object. Philosophical criticism should no longer only occupy itself with the problems of human knowledge, but should rather make the ‘broader’ sphere of culture into an object of philosophical thought. In the second place, however, the quoted title of Kant’s main work also generates a reading of the formula in which the genitive in ‘critique of culture’ can be simultaneously read as a genitivus subjectivus. The critique of culture should accordingly be understood, too, as a critique of culture by culture. Culture, considered in this way, proves to be not just a criticized object but also a criticizing au-

6 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, three volumes. Translation by R. Manheim (Yale, 1953-1957) of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Berlin, 1923-1929). This quotation is from Philosophy of Symbolic Forms I, 80.

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thority. The turn to culture not only envisages a widened objectsphere but — more radically — a new subject of critical consciousness. According to which reading is considered, different interpretations of the systematic place of Cassirer’s work are produced. If the formula is read only in the first way, we can read into it a rejection of a transcendental philosophy oriented to the fact of science.7 But if the formula is read in its double sense, it refers to a historicizing Kantianism which is much closer to the neo-Kantian philosophy of culture than is often assumed.8 The orientation to the aspect of criticism moreover reveals a specific affinity with Cohen, whose modernization of Kantian idealism, for a large part, results from a revival of its critical spirit.9 As I will show in what follows, the second interpretation seems to me to be quite reasonable. However, it does presuppose that we do not locate the centre of the neo-Kantian philosophy of culture in the concept of validity, but rather try to understand neo-Kantianism and particularly Cohen from the perspective of a critique of culture. Cassirer is not in fact a theoretician of validity. However, in Cohen, too, the problem of validity is subordinate to the question of the relation between culture and philosophical reason. The transcendental method which he propagates is 7

Cassirer’s turn to culture has often been read as such a rejection. Cf. e.g. O. Schwemmer, Ernst Cassirer. Ein Philosoph der europäischen Moderne (Berlin, 1997), 200 or T. Knoppe, Die theoretische Philosophie Ernst Cassirers, 80ff. Esp. Marx argues against this interpretation, W. Marx, ‘Cassirers Philosophie — ein Abschied von kantianisierender Letztbegründung’, In: H.-J. Braun, H. Holzhey und E. W. Orth (Hrsg.), Über Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 75—88. 8 The fact that neo-Kantianism saw itself as a philosophy of culture is often disregarded. This is not a new phenomenon, however. As early as 1912 Paul Natorp reacts to the desideratum of a philosophy of culture with the comment: ‘So if, as an important new requirement, that of a ‘philosophy of culture’ is held out towards us, we can only answer: we have Kant’s philosophy and from the outset it is the philosophy of transcendental methodology, which, proceeding from Kant, we have endeavoured only to carry through more strictly and consistently, which we have understood and explicitly designated as philosophy of culture.’ P. Natorp, ‘Kant und die Marburger Schule’, in: Kant-Studien 17 (1912), 218f. 9 The critical concern of Cohen’s philosophy is emphasized in A. Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Albany NY, 1997).

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less based on a precise concept of validity and more on a certain interpretation of what makes a cultural phenomenon into a philosophical object. This interpretation is by no means shared by Cassirer, but for his philosophy of culture, too, the question of the relation between culture and philosophy is of central importance. We have thus already established two things. First, it is clear purely from the programmatic starting-point that the envisaged concept of culture goes beyond a merely descriptive conception. Both Cohen’s and Cassirer’s concept of culture display a distinctly normative component. But this does not imply that cultural phenomena themselves are normative or value-laden (werthaft).10 On the contrary: the normative aspect of the concept of culture cannot be derived from the value-laden quality of cultural phenomena, but conversely locates the grounds for the value-laden quality of culture in the concept of culture itself. Culture is a process which produces values and does not reflect them. Culture is by definition a process of creating value and cultural values are valuable because they have come out of this process and not the other way round. Second, the Kantian claim of Cassirer’s approach to the critique of culture differs fundamentally from a philosophy of culture that links up with Hegel.11 Though his philosophy of symbol contains many affinities with Hegel’s phenomenology in terms of content and material, in the requirement that the critique of reason be extended into a critique of culture Cassirer is primari10 The discussions on the value of culture derive from the fundamental characteristic of Cohen’s and Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. My concern here is to describe the relation of culture and value more precisely than and differently from the way in which it is often done in the present-day discussion of values. The term ‘value’ itself rarely occurs in the Marburg neo-Kantians and not in the sense used here. As Holzhey made clear in his lecture on the concept of value at the Zurich conference on ‘Ethik oder Ästhetik’, the concept of value is used in Cohen in its economic sense. On the relation of culture and morality, cf. also Krois, Cassirer — Symbolic Forms and History, and B. Recki, ‘Der Tod, die Kultur, die Moral’, in: D. Kaegi und E. Rudolph (Hrsg.): Cassirer — Heidegger. 70 Jahr Davoser Disputation (Hamburg, 2002), 106-129. 11 Cf. Ursula Renz, ‘Der problematische Ort des Kulturbegriffs’, In: P.-U. Merz-Benz und G. Wagner (Hrsg.), Kultur in Zeiten der Globalisierung (Weilerswist, 2004, forthcoming).

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ly a Kantian and not a Hegelian. Certainly a Hegelian critique of culture is conceivable. But this critique would consist first of all in a diagnosis of the history of time or culture. By contrast, both Cassirer and Cohen aim their critique of culture not just at the phenomenon but at the very principle of culture.

2. Culture and system A comparison between Cohen’s and Cassirer’s philosophy of culture cannot overlook one point: the concept of system. It reveals a crucial difference between Cohen and Cassirer. Cohen conceived his philosophy of culture as a system. In fact it would be more correct to say: he understood his system of philosophy as a philosophy of culture. The conception of system is to the fore here, while the concept of cultural consciousness forms ‘merely’ the horizon of the system.12 Cassirer, on the other hand, did not write a system of philosophy. Certainly the Philosophie der symbolischen Formen makes a systematic demand throughout, insofar as it insists that it must be possible to relate the various cultural directions ‘to a unified, ideal centre’.13 This centre is represented by the concept of symbol. Cassirer defines the symbol, more precisely the symbolic form, as ‘the energy of the mind by which a mental content of meaning is connected with a concrete sensory sign and internally dedicated to this sign’.14 A symbol is interpreted as a meaningcreating process constitutive of any form of meaningfulness (Sinnhaftigkeit), and only following from this are the products of 12 The concept of system has constantly been discussed in the literature on Cohen. Cf. e.g. D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewusstseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Heidelberg, 1968), W. Marx, Transzendentale Logik als Wissenschaftstheorie. Systematisch-kritische Untersuchungen zur philosophischen Grundlegungsproblematik in Cohens 'Logik der reinen Erkenntnis' (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp and Stolzenberg, Ursprung und System. 13 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms I, 80. 14 Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs (Darmstadt, 1956), 175. As D. Kaegi, ‘Jenseits der symbolischen Formen’, In: Dialektik 1 (1995), 73-82, 74, and B. Naumann, Philosophie und Poetik des Symbols. Cassirer und Goethe (München, 1998), 131, already emphasize, the passage quoted is the only definition of symbolic form in Cassirer’s entire work.

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this process also called symbols. The concept of symbol is therefore systematically relevant as a principle which is not constitutive of the system but of the phenomena themselves to be collected in the system. So although he maintains his systematic claim, Cassirer clearly dissociates himself from Cohen’s concept of system. This is made plain by a passage in the essay ‘Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie’: The renunciation of a ‘critical’ philosophy in the strict sense cannot be aimed at schematically simplifying the richness and fullness which present themselves here in the various basic directions of cultural consciousness, in that one tries to condense them into a general form: rather we should concretely interpret the special way in which within every sphere the sensory becomes the vehicle of the meaningful [sinnhaft] and try to show in their determinateness the basic laws governing all these various processes of formation.15

Cassirer here as phenomenologist opposes a rigid systematic claim which is based on schematically founded claims of validity. Whether he is actually referring to Cohen must remain open. With the phrase ‘basic directions of cultural consciousness’ he seems to be alluding to Cohen’s terminology, but it could also relate to circulated prejudices against the claim of a system of philosophy.16 Moving beyond Cassirer’s reception of Cohen, however, we must now ask in what way the latter’s system of philosophy relates to the problem of culture. The decisive reflections on this are not found in the system itself but are already developed in the framework of the commentary on Kant. In the final chapter of the second edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung Cohen discusses the system of critical idealism in detail. In connection with the meaning of the transcendental status of space and time, he points out that this has to do with ‘methods’ and not with ‘men-

15

Symbol, Technik, Sprache. Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1927-1933, Hrsg. von E. W. Orth und J. M. Krois (Hamburg, 1985), 8. 16 Cassirer’s attitude to the question of system can also be indirectly traced in his discussion with the Enlightenment. Cf. U. Renz, ‘Cassirers Idee der Aufklärung’, In: T. Leinkauf, Dilthey und Cassirer (Hamburg, 2003), 109-125.

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tal forms’.17 He thus primarily dissociates himself from the speculative claims of Kant’s concept of pure intuition, but the opposition of ‘methods’ and ‘mental forms’ is also relevant to the question of system. Not only Kant’s system of critical idealism but also Cohen’s system of cultural consciousness lays claim to being a system of methods and not of mental forms. But understanding concepts as methods and not as mental forms does not mean that they were invented by philosophy but only that philosophy should be capable of reconstructing them in relation to their function for the conceptualization of objects. The turn to culture, too, follows from this perspective. Cultural facts — and Cohen differs here from Natorp — are not products of a philosophical ‘logos’ but must merely be accessible to philosophical rationality. Cohen assumes a similarity between culture and philosophy in their rational claim, but not a shared origin. This clarifies the claim but not yet the function of the concept of system in Cohen. What does the system achieve for the concept of cultural consciousness? By way of clarification, the analysis of the status of aesthetics in the system, especially as discussed in Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, is instructive. In Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, unlike Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, the concept of system is from the outset a central viewpoint of reflection. It is striking, further, that for the first time this work identifies system and culture18 and talks about cultural consciousness.19 Cohen emphasizes that the inclusion of aesthetics is a later one. Aesthetics is to complete the system, not start it. This is significant because it becomes clear from this state of affairs what the system achieves in his view. ‘As long as art has not become independent among the parts of culture’ — i.e. as long as its independence has not been made valid in the framework of a systematic aesthetics —, ‘it obscures at the same time the limits both of science and of morality.’ The system is explicitly discussed here as a question of raising awareness of limits. The integration of

17 18 19

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 743. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 2-4 and 342f. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 335.

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aesthetics in the system has the function here — as later in the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls — of denying philosophical legitimacy to an aestheticism which disregards these limits.20 So the system serves Cohen as a guarantee of the observance of categorical distinctions between various kinds of validity. His concept of system is therefore not so far removed from Cassirer’s Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. With its orientation of philosophy of culture to the concept of symbol the Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, too, does not simply postulate a unity of the mind but seeks a unified functional basis which takes into account cultural forms precisely in their irreducible manifold.

3. Symbolicity and origin Whereas in Cassirer’s philosophy of culture the concept of symbolic formation forms the central methodological concept, in Cohen this is to be located in the concept of origin. True enough, origin and symbol, far from meaning the same, relate to totally different aspects of cultural consciousness. Nevertheless, they have a comparable theoretical function, insofar as they both secure the emancipatory potential of culture. The concept of origin appears in Cohen’s writings mainly in connection with epistemological questions. It stands for Cohen’s demand to support the transcendental foundation of knowledge only by a rule-governed construction through concepts, and not to fall back, like Kant, on a givenness of objects in sensation.21 The givenness of objects in sensation functions in Kant as the last safeguard of the reality of knowledge. Cohen finds the starting-point for his departure from Kant in the concept of intensive magnitude, or degree. Through this concept a thought-produced element must be found in sensation, which offers a way to avoid all givenness in sensation in the justification of knowledge, and so to conceive of knowledge in general as creative thought. The mathematical concept of the infinitely small — the terminological background of the expression ‘origin’ (Ursprung) — is thus 20 21

Cf. also section 6. Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 5 and 151f.

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made useful for the epistemological proof of the constructive moment of all knowing. In this way the fundamental intelligibility of nature is practically postulated.22 As now becomes clear particularly in connection with the theme of culture, this conception of knowledge which is based on the methodological principle of rule-governed construction of concepts is in the first place critically motivated. Thought, says Cohen in the second edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, is to be freed ‘from the prejudices in which matter, the material of culture (Kulturstoff) embroils the laws’.23 Cohen attempts here to recover Enlightenment concern with the critique of prejudice as a matter of principle. In his view, one can only be free of prejudices if the sensory given is denied any epistemological function and legitimacy is refused on principle to any appeal to the given. This Enlightenment moment of a return to the origins can also be observed in the other parts of the system. The point is to prevent cultural relations from being presented as quasi-natural facts and culture from becoming a second nature. The priority of logic has this point among others, of orienting all philosophical thinking, including ethical thought — of such central importance for culture — to the principle of origin. It is methodological in kind and not based on content. The requirement which goes together with the concept of origin, namely to discover the foundations of being in thought or in the method of hypothesis, extends to all areas of cultural consciousness. In the chapter

22 Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 31f. On the diverse mathematical and metaphysical traditions, cf. P. Schulthess: ‘Einleitung’, in: Cohen, Werke vol. 5/1, 7*-46*. 23 Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 748. It is striking that Cohen still refers dismissively to culture here. On the whole an ambivalent attitude to the concept of culture can be observed up till Kants Begründung der Ästhetik. For Cohen, the reference of philosophical foundations to cultural givenness, which became accepted in historicism, is as much to be rejected as a materialistic reference to nature. At the same time, however, a positively valued dimension of the concept of culture also emerges from the time of the first edition of Kants Begründung der Ästhetik. As the embodiment of the changeability of human condition, culture also constitutes the basis on which an idealistically founded ethics has any chance at all of attaining its goals. Cf. U. Renz, Die Rationalität der Kultur. Zur Kulturphilosophie und ihrer transzendentalen Begründung bei Cohen, Natorp und Cassirer (Hamburg, 2002), 45-53.

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about the judgement of origin Cohen talks about a ‘basic human interest in the question of origin’.24 He does not thereby express the metaphysical need to know the ontological origin of things, but rather the critical question of the conceptual constitution of our concepts of things, with which, as the introduction of the Logik relates, science and philosophy arise.25 To what extent this interest is a basic human one, Cohen does not reveal. But if we recall the concern to liberate from prejudices, we can surmise that he understands the question of origin as a presupposition of human freedom. This is wholly plausible, at least in the framework of a very particular understanding of freedom. Only where the possibility exists of inquiring into the conceptual constitution of objects is emancipation from naturalistic, cultural or mythical prejudices conceivable. The point here is not in the last place to underpin epistemologically the freedom for a radically ethical self-design of human beings.26 The principle of origin guarantees that ethics can be written as an anti-naturalistic ‘theory of the concept of man’.27 However, the concept of origin is the guiding methodological principle of Cohen’s philosophy of culture not just in its conception but also in how it is elaborated. The criticizability of culture is basically grounded in the possibility of examining cultural meanings as to their origin and to discover the latter in rational foundations. Only where objects are dealt with which are left to the discretion of human reason, so with objects which are neither contingent nor absolute, where, at least in principle, a kind of mental origin can be referred to, does critical thought find any point of departure. The methodological penetration of cultural consciousness, as Cohen demands it with the principle of origins, has the function, among others, of demonstrating culture’s fundamental need for critique notwithstanding long traditions.

24

Logik, 80. Logik, 35f. 26 Seen in this way, Cohen’s theory of knowledge has a function comparable to constructivistic feminism. Cf. e.g. J. Butler, Bodies that Matter (London/New York, 1993). 27 Ethik, 3. 25

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Cassirer’s foundation of philosophy of culture in the symbolic function of the mind can also be reconstructed from his concern to show a kind of need for a critique of culture. In comparison with Cohen’s radical demand for a ‘pure’ foundation, the critical claim of his philosophy of culture seems relatively weak. In contrast to Cohen’s concept of origin, the concept of symbol is not concerned with the content of cultural phenomena but with the form which creates the relation between sensory vehicle and mental content. In reverting to the element of form Cassirer’s philosophy of symbol, too, is characterized by an anti-materialistic tendency. In the essay ‘Der Begriff der symbolischen Form in Aufbau der Geisteswissenschaften’ (which appeared before the Philosophie der symbolischen Formen) the proof that cultural phenomena evade a positivistic approach is the starting-point of his discussion.28 It is part of the peculiar nature of objects in the humanities that they are only open to an idealistic approach. According to Cassirer’s account, a need for an idealistic foundation of culture is therefore already noticeable within the humanities. The concept of symbol is to take this need into account.29 The point of departure with the concept of a symbol also constitutes the attempt to avoid specific philosophical bottlenecks and imbalances. This is shown by the definition quoted above. I quote it here again because in what follows I want to look more closely at some details: A ‘symbolic form’ should be taken to mean the energy of the mind by which a mental content of meaning is connected with a concrete sensory sign and internally dedicated to this sign.30

This definition hides more than that it shows. Cassirer talks about an ‘energy of the mind’. In doing so he implicitly follows Humboldt, who understood language not as ergon or work but as energeia or activity.31 This activity is characterized in the definition 28

Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 172. Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 171f. 30 Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 175. 31 ‘It [language] is not itself work (ergon) but an activity (energeia)’, W. von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Berlin, 1907), 46. 29

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as ‘an inner dedication of a mental content of meaning to a concrete sensory sign’. The word ‘dedication’ ascribes to the symbolic a form of mental spontaneity. Meaning is not an incorporation of content, which is why neither the generation nor the understanding of meaning is a passive process. Mental content is attached to a sign and not conversely the sign ascribed to content. Though the link between content and sign does not depend on any necessary laws¸ it does not have a purely arbitrary basis either. On the contrary, the phrase ‘inner dedication’ refers to the fact that this connection, despite the absence of necessary determination, is not perceived as arbitrary. Another striking feature is the reference to the sensory concreteness of the sign. The generation of meaning does not take place in a world exempt from sensation. For Cassirer, the content of a meaning itself is mental, but its genesis is not a matter of abstraction but of symbolization. This has its essential condition for genesis and completion in a sensory vehicle. This is something which an idealistic philosophy of culture, too, must take into account. An idealism which tries to explain the generation of meaning independently of its materially mediated symbolization misses the central point: the continuity of sensibility and sense. Hence Cassirer clearly distances himself from a dualistic idealism. With the basic concept of symbolic form, therefore, Cassirer does not just show the symbolic constitution of cultural forms but at the same time liberates cultural philosophy from two conceptual oppositions which are rich in tradition but misleading: that between mind and sensory perception and that between arbitrariness and necessity of signs. Mental activity, which underlies every cultural performance, does not start on the other side of sensation but in the perception of manifest properties as signs of the thing endowed with this property. Likewise the fundamental arbitrariness of the connection between mental sense and sensory vehicle does not destroy the specific necessity of a concrete meaning, but rather makes it possible. Precisely because signs are arbitrary, they can be the object of spontaneous giving of meaning.

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On these grounds only we can also ascribe an emancipatory power to symbolic formation. In order to place the foundation of human freedom in the symbolicity of consciousness, it is necessary, on the one hand, that any metaphysical support of the relation between sign and content be removed. On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary — if not only the homo noumenon but also the homo phainomenon is to be endowed with freedom — already to assume mental spontaneity in sensory perception. Otherwise only an ascetic but not a man of flesh and blood would be capable of culture. However, culture consists in the forming of sensory impressions, and also, in connection with this, in the liberation from their power. Thus symbolic formation, like reflection on the origin, is an emancipation from the given world, and the phenomenal exposure of the symbolicity of culture, like the question of origin, something that a critical idealism is obliged to undertake.

4. The development of cultural consciousness out of the spirit of religion Parallels between Cohen’s and Cassirer’s philosophy of culture can be understood from an entirely different angle: in both, religion — more precisely: the relation of religion and myth — plays a decisive role in the development of culture or of cultural consciousness. At first sight Cohen’s statements on the relation of myth and religion seem rather contradictory. In Der Begriff der Religion he writes: Already in the myth, the primeval form of all consciousness, the divine was connected and closely tied up with all that is human, as it were religion with philosophy. And when culture raised and separated itself, it was unable to cut philosophy off from all myth, let alone from all that is essential in religion, nor religion in its mysteries and likewise in its public cult from the speculations of philosophy.32

32

Der Begriff der Religion, 6.

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At the beginning of the paragraph Cohen admits that religion involves a ‘border area of philosophy’. In view of this location on the border to philosophy and to cultural consciousness, myth and religion seem not to differ at all, and in fact both occur as a contamination of cultural consciousness. Yet it is striking that he understands myth as the primeval form of consciousness and no longer — as he still did in 1909 in the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls — delimits mere awareness (Bewusstheit) from consciousness (Bewusstsein).33 Cohen thus comes surprisingly close to the view of myth held later by Cassirer, who on the one hand sees in myth the not yet fully differentiated beginning and cradle of all cultural forms,34 and on the other hand subsumes myth, like other cultural forms, under the perspective of formation.35 Even more than Cohen, Cassirer emphasizes that religion can never be fully separated from myth.36 More often than this ultimately cultural-anthropological view, a different perspective is at work in Cohen, which starts from a radical distinction between myth and religion. This distinction comes out most clearly in the approach to suffering and guilt. Cohen locates the origin of religion in the moment of sin or more precisely in man’s self-knowledge through the insight into sin. Myth, on the other hand, has ‘one of its deepest origins in the concept of guilt’, guilt being understood here as fate to which the gods themselves are subject’.37 The categorical distinction between religion and myth is thus given a material foundation, but it is wholly relevant to the cultural and individual selfconcept by which human beings understand themselves. The man who lives in mythological consciousness sees himself as the ‘scion of his forebears’, whose guilt becomes his undoing. By contrast, the religious man sees himself as the originator of sin. The insight into the self-authorship of guilt is therefore equivalent to the discovery of individual responsibility.

33

Ästhetik I, 120f. Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 112. 35 Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 79. On the consequences, cf. Renz, Die Rationalität der Kultur, 209f. 36 Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 188. 37 Religion der Vernunft, 196. 34

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With these different conceptions of human culpability are connected not just individual insights but also collective patterns of thought. The step from myth to religion can therefore be understood as a cultural development. Its direction, though, is unambiguously given in Cohen: it involves a growth of ethical rationality and self-responsibility away from the idea of fatal liability of all for ancestral sins. This growth is covered by ethics on the one hand and religion on the other. Cohen has, besides, a further criterion for the distinction between religion and myth: the difference between monotheism and polytheism. Cohen quite often identifies religion with monotheism, in particular of course with the monotheism of the prophets. This is by no means to say that for him only Judaism and not for instance Christianity constitutes a religion. As became clear above, Cohen also has an anthropological concept of religion which he does not measure against Jewish monotheism. In his view, however, the criterion for the concept of religion which is compatible with the philosophical requirement of reason consists unambiguously in the purity of monotheism, for which the prophets form the advantage. This characteristic, too, can be connected with a general cultural development. The transition from monotheism to polytheism signifies progress for Cohen because it demands a growth of rationality. The concept of a single God cannot be oriented to random factors but must at least spring from the requirement according to reason. To this end thought must free itself from the images of the imagination and perception. According to Cohen, the single God of monotheism, in contrast to the gods of polytheism, is not interpreted as an image but as an idea.38 This element of turning away from the images of the mythical imagination returns at a significant place in Cassirer’s philosophy of symbol. Cassirer did not write a philosophy of religion, occupying himself with religion only in his philosophy of mythology. There, however, he understands religion starting, entirely like Cohen, from the emancipation from myth which is represented in privileged fashion in monotheistic prophetism. Whereas the mythical consciousness is determined by a general 38

Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 61.

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‘indifference of image and thing’, Cassirer finds the ‘proper characteristic form of the religious’ in a conscious break with the mythical consciousness.39 The development of monotheism forms the prototype of the ‘crisis’ in which Cassirer virtually locates the driving force of cultural development in the second volume of the Philosophie der symbolischen Formen.40 Unlike in Cohen, however, the element of progress here is not to be sought in ethics and religion but in the critical insight into the nature of images as ‘mere’ representations. According to Cassirer, too, the religious man conducts himself in a more enlightened way than the man who is blinded by myth. But this not because he has become conscious of the individual assignment of guilt, but because he sees through the magic of images and deprives it of its power. The prophet committed to monotheism has already, in relation to religious images, taken the step which Cassirer demands of psychologists and physicists at the very beginning of the development of his philosophy of symbol: The symbols for which mathematicians and physicists in their contemplation of the outer world and those of psychology in its contemplation of the inner world lay the foundation, must both be learned to be understood as symbols.41

The insight into the representative character of images is therefore relevant not just to religion but also to the enlightened approach to all forms of culture. To a certain extent it even forms a presupposition for any approach to symbols. It is not just that the tendency to free oneself from the mythical magic of images is already present in myth itself.42 As Cassirer additionally shows in his phenomenological description of the cognitive progress of Helen Keller and Laura Bridgman, the insight into the representative character of signs — and in connection with this into the universality of the sign function — also means, within the onto39

Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 188f. In doing so he argues both from a historico-cultural and an anthropological point of view. However such an assumption can only be justified in an anthropological respect. 40 Cf. e.g. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, 286. 41 Zur modernen Physik (Darmstadt, 1957), 118. 42 Cf. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, 283: ‘To the constant construction of the mythical image-world corresponds the constant pushing beyond it’.

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genetic development of an understanding of signs, a remarkable step which directly finds its expression in the understanding of signs. This insight is thus not external to culture but already present in it. The autonomous approach to symbols implies a consciousness for the character of a representation. The requirement of a critique of culture by culture has one of its strongest foundations in this implication.

5. The problem of history as a theme of philosophy of culture Neo-Kantian philosophy of culture has one of its central motivations in the discussion with history. In this regard Martin Heidegger hits the nail on the head with his diagnosis that the discovery of history as a problem of philosophy underlies the philosophical analysis of culture.43 The awakening of a historical consciousness is in fact a central precondition for philosophy of culture. Only a historical consciousness can grasp the meaning of culture as a medium that shapes the view of the world and of the self. Nineteenth-century philosophy of culture is a child of historicism and can only be understood with reference to the latter.44 It is striking for this background that both Cohen and Cassirer largely abstain from direct reflection on history and the historicity of human existence. They do so for different reasons, however. Cohen avoids it for fundamental reasons, for Cassirer it carries no great weight for methodological reasons. Cohen’s attitude is best described as a kind of negative philosophy of history. What this means can be shown in connection with the question of philosophico-historical optimism. In Kants Begründung der Ethik he writes:

43

Cf. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, 122f. and 129. On Southwest German neo-Kantianism, cf. in this connection H. Schnädelbach, Geschichtsphilosophie nach Hegel. Die Probleme des Historismus (Freiburg/München, 1974).

44

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The question of the highest good, of the best for the world [Weltbesten] is not a question of metaphysical discussion; it is not a question of cosmology […]; but it is a question of ethics solved by determination of the content of moral law. […] The question is therefore treated within the limits of this foundation.45

Cohen denies any philosophical justification to the metaphysical interest in mankind’s progress. The question of progress or more generally of historical development is exclusively a matter of ethics. More specifically, he assumes that it was superseded in the nineteenth century by the problem of socialism.46 More decisive in my view, however, is the firm rejection of any metaphysically or theoretically motivated interest. For this entails a fundamental rejection of any speculation about the course of history.47 History in general becomes a problem only in connection with the question of human happiness and unhappiness. It cannot become an object of philosophical reflection except in ethical contexts. This rejection of metaphysical speculations about history reflects a similar concern to that in the dismissal of myth: human suffering is not fate, but either a question of relations, or of chance. For exactly the same reason Cohen sees poverty and not death as the great existential challenge to philosophy. Poverty, unlike death, does not affect everyone, but nevertheless it affects the poor man without guilt. At least he is to be held guiltless if we are to understand his poverty as a challenge to philosophy.48 45

Kants Begründung der Ethik, 367. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 368. 47 The main adversary in the background here is of course Hegel with his speculative philosophy of history. But also Marxist philosophy of history, which links up with Hegel, is rejected here on theoretical grounds. Cf. S. S. Schwarzschild, ‘The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen’, In: Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. 27, (Cincinnati, 1956/1994), 209 and H. van der Linden, ‘Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants’, in: H. Holzhey (Hrsg.), Ethischer Sozialismus. Zur politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 164. 48 Cf. H. Wiedebach, ‘Hermann Cohens Theorie des Mitleids’, in: S. Moses und H. Wiedebach (Hrsg.), Hermann Cohen's Philosophy of Religion. International Conference in Jerusalem 1996 (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1997), 231—244, and U. Renz, ‘Affektivität und Geschichtlichkeit: Hermann Cohens Rehabilitation des Affekts’, in: A. Engstler und R. Schnepf (Hrsg.), Ethik und Affekt. Zur 46

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Certainly there are historical and economic but not exclusively natural reasons or indeed reasons of fate for his poverty. The insight into the abyss of contingency which opens up between epistemology and ethics therefore has its counterpart in the experience of social need. To the question of the sufferer, ‘Why me?’, there is no conclusive and theoretically satisfying answer. If we wish to compensate this question speculatively, we would not just make pure mockery of the sufferer, but we would moreover cut off the way to an ethical solution to his problem. That the problem of history can only be a part of ethics is an important point of Cohen’s thought. That is why conclusions about his view of the relation between philosophical reason and history can only be drawn ex negativo. Reason, one can say in summary, is not presented in history, but is to be brought to fulfilment. This means two things: first, the relation of reason and history is not a given, but must be promoted for ethical reasons. It can only be named as an Ought. Second, a kind of historicity can be attributed to reason itself from the perspective of its fulfilment. The development of reason in history is, in terms of its structure, like a promise which has yet to be fulfilled. For Cohen, history is therefore fundamentally open to the most diverse developments. This also applies to his philosophy of culture. His system of cultural consciousness is conceived from the outset in such a way that the freedom of further future developments is guaranteed. Thus for instance all factuality is denied to cultural consciousness which joins the various parts of the system together into a unity. Instead of a fact, Cohen talks about the fiction of cultural consciousness. For the unity of the system there are no factual grounds, and indeed there cannot be if philosophy of culture is to be kept open to historical developments. It is the object of a hypothesis and only that. Yet indirectly an important decision has been taken in this way. The integration of different cultural directions into a unity is not simply left to history. The integration which cultural consciousness achieves is methodological and not historical in kind. Even if for a large part Cohen orientates himself to a historicocultural concept of culture, this does not mean that he identifies Affektenlehre von Spinoza (Hildesheim, 2002), 297-319.

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the unity of cultural consciousness with the unity of cultural history. Though culture is understood as a product of history, rather than history as an expression of man’s cultural existence, Cohen maintains that history cannot be the yardstick for our understanding of history. The problem is entirely different in Cassirer’s philosophy of symbol. From 1920 onwards his philosophy of culture is aimed at understanding culture from its symbolic constitution.49 This reverses the foundational relations of a philosophical reflection on history. History no longer forms the horizon of cultural facts, but culture — understood as a symbolic function — is the principle of history and historicity.50 What this means for the question of history can already be read from the approach to history — here understood as historia rerum gestarum — in An Essay on Man. Cassirer starts with the methodology of historians. On what can a historian base himself? Not mere historical facts but symbols form the object of the science of history. The historian ‘must, first of all, learn to read these symbols. Any historical fact, however simple it may appear, can only be determined and understood by such previous analysis of symbols.’51 Cassirer claims an analogy between physical and historical facts to the extent that both are obtained by a theoretical process: physical facts through observation and experiment, historical facts through a hermeneutics of symbols.52

49 Cassirer’s earlier philosophy of culture, in particular Freiheit und Form and the studies collected in Idee und Gestalt in 1918, is for a large part committed to a historico-cultural understanding of culture. Reading these texts against the background of the later philosophy of symbol, one gets the impression that Cassirer is in fact struggling for an understanding of culture which does not force him into the philosophico-historical aporias of historicism. Thus the aspect of ‘Formgebung’ is already central to Freiheit und Form, without it being explained in a theoretically satisfying way. Only after turning to the symbol does he stop looking at the problem of meaning from the hypothesis of a historical meaning and understands it as a question of structure. For this, cf. also Renz, Die Rationalität der Kultur, 159. 50 Cassirer states this explicitly in An Essay on Man (Yale, 1944), 69: ‘This structural view of culture must precede the merely historical view’. 51 An Essay on Man, 175. 52 An Essay on Man, 174.

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However, the appeal to the symbolic constitution of historical facts is not just relevant to the science of history but also to philosophy of history, which inquires in general into the essence and the meaning of history. The possibility of a hermeneutical reconstruction of symbolically constituted meaning at the level of historia rerum gestarum requires that the meaningfulness (Sinnhaftigkeit) of results at the level of res gestae is constituted by symbolical processes of form.53 Cassirer clearly assumes that any form of historical meaningfulness can be reduced to symbolic processes. So what Cohen still denied, namely that history be understood as an expression of man’s cultural existence, applies in large measure to Cassirer. He takes cultural-anthropological viewpoints much more into account than Cohen. Nevertheless, his ‘structural view’ never results in a pure cultural anthropology. Cassirer maintains that culture also achieves a historical meaning, otherwise he could not understand it as ‘the process of man’s progressive self-liberation’.54 But culture itself is not constituted by this meaning but by the symbolic function. The historical meaning of self-liberation can be understood as a terminus ad quem of culture, but not as a terminus a quo.

6. Philosophical adversaries: Romanticism and philosophy of life I will conclude my comparison between Cohen and Cassirer by looking at the opposite views on philosophy of culture from which their approaches dissociate themselves. I will primarily focus on the systematic challenge implied in these opposite viewpoints. One of the central views which Cohen constantly opposes in his philosophy of culture is Romanticism. However, Romanticism in Cohen means not just the historical and cultural character of an era but a philosophical position. Its typical feature is to move away from the central fundamental principles of transcendental idealism — namely its close ties with the sciences, the systematic 53 54

An Essay on Man, 69. An Essay on Man, 228.

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difference between being and ought and the rejection of an intellectual way of thinking.55 In the critique of Romanticism we therefore find the same points of criticism which Cohen urges against speculative Idealism or against pantheism. Although these differences are primarily epistemological and methodological in kind, Cohen starts his debate with Romanticism in his aesthetic writings. The heart of this debate is the question of the status of aesthetics for philosophical thought. Cohen’s requirement that aesthetics be viewed as part of the system — and this means precisely: only as part of the system — should be seen as a reaction to the Romantic aestheticization of thought. In Cohen’s view, there is no third way between his own position and the Romantic position: ‘Either aesthetics is the part of a system of philosophy or the system and with it philosophy itself is destroyed, even though it is resolved into aesthetics.’56 But the distinctly hostile attitude to Romanticism determines not just the approach to aestheticism, but also how it is carried through. Thus the founding of aesthetics in feeling serves to display the creative moment of culture in a rule-governed form. Cohen uses very diverse strategies here. First he ascribes feeling an active element, which can be interpreted as rule-governedness. Feelings (Gefühle), like their preliminary form, acts of feeling (Fühlen), are not passively undergone, nor are they mere sensations. Feelings spring from a ‘self-movement of the nervous system’ and hence they react only indirectly to external stimuli. By being anchored in the movements of the nervous system, feeling is, second, embedded in the context of human physicality. It is therefore — despite all the internality of emotional experience — physiologically conditioned. Third, it is important that Cohen additionally historicizes central parameters of aesthetics — in particular the brilliant act of the genius.

55

Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, 73. Ästhetik I, 16. Cf. also Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 422, where he says that the defect of Romanticism is ‘that it does not seek to found art in its characteristic properties and only starting from the latter seeks the connection of art with the other directions of the mind.’ 56

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All these strategies reveal the same tendency: the Romantic mystification of aesthetic creation and experience is to be denied legitimacy, without thereby questioning the uniqueness of the artist’s achievement. Underlying the polemic against Romanticism is a fundamental philosophical distinction: in contrast to Romanticism, Cohen wants to find cultural achievement in the principle of art, instead of making art itself the principle of culture. Starting from a similar fundamental distinction, Cassirer’s analysis of philosophy of life can also be understood more precisely. It is striking that Cassirer, who often represents otherwise different positions in such a way that they seem to fit in almost seamlessly with his own perspective, takes a stand in the case of philosophy of life. Instructively in this context, Cassirer sees not only Simmel but also Heidegger — if in a somewhat different sense — as a philosopher of life.57 The challenge of Heidegger’s analytics of existence may indeed have occasioned Cassirer’s analysis of philosophy of life at the end of the twenties and the beginning of the thirties.58 He views philosophy of life — as does Cohen Romanticism — not simply as a phenomenon of the time but as a particular type of philosophical reflection of which there are historical examples too. As such examples he mentions Romanticism,59 in certain respects the body-soul debate in rationalism,60 in others Rousseau.61 57

Cf. his remarks on Heidegger in Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen. Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte, vol. 1. Hrsg. von J. M. Krois und O. Schwemmer (Hamburg, 1995), 219ff. 58 Cf. Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, 3-54, 207-229 and Geist und Leben. Schriften zu den Lebensordnungen von Natur und Kunst, Geschichte und Sprache. Hrsg. von E. W. Orth (Leipzig, 1993), 32-60. 59 Geist und Leben, 33. 60 Geist und Leben, 43. 61 Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Fünf Studien (Darmstadt, 19612), English transl. by S.G. Lofts, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies, (Yale, 2000), 104. In my view, the debate with philosophy of life — and with Heidegger — also forms an important background to Cassirer’s Rousseau studies. A particularly central concept here is that of form: ‘The incomparable power which Rousseau the thinker and writer exercised over his time was ultimately founded in the fact that in a century that had raised the cultivation of form [Kultur der Form] to unprecedented heights, bringing it to perfection and organic completion, he brought once more to the fore the inherent uncertainty

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Between the systematically reconstructed philosophy of life and his own philosophy of culture Cassirer obviously sees such an important difference that he cannot or will not simply pass it by. Dissociating himself from philosophy of life, he interprets his own philosophy of culture as a philosophy of the human mind, that is, he maintains that mental products cannot be derived from a not yet broadly interpreted concept of life. Human culture has its origin in the activity of the mind and not in some hypostasis of life, ‘it is only the mind which forms pictures through contact with the foundation of life —’62 Yet he does not simply distance himself from philosophy of life. He definitely seems to find some attraction in the diagnosis of a tension between life and mind underlying the conception of culture in philosophy of life and also seems to be truly challenged by it. This can be nicely demonstrated from his position on Simmel’s 1911 essay ‘Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur’. In this text Simmel compares the idea of culture with the ‘the soul’s way to itself’.63 This way is not determined by a goal but by a change of structure: ‘culture is the way from the closed unity through the unfolded plurality to the unfolded unity.’64 But the soul cannot simply carry out this change of structure by itself. It is necessarily directed to objective mental products, which present themselves as external and other. But in the necessity of the confrontation with products that have become external Simmel sees not just a law that is logical in terms of development, but also locates in it the reason for ‘our suffering from our own of the very concept of form.’, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, transl. by P. Gay (New York , 1954), 35f., original: Das Problem Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Darmstadt, 1975). This characterization almost functions as a reply to Simmel, who links the conflict of modern culture to the principle of form: ‘We are now experiencing this new phase of the ancient struggle, which is no longer the struggle of today’s life-filled form against the old, now lifeless one, but the struggle of life against form in general, against the principle of form.’, G. Simmel, Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur. In: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 16 (Frankfurt am Main, 1999),181-207, 185. Cf. Renz, ‘Cassirers Idee der Aufklärung’, 120 and 124. 62 Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, 209. 63 Georg Simmel, Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, in: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 12 (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 194. 64 Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 196.

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past’.65 Owing to the crossing over of philosophico-historical and structural elements, this suffering becomes an ineluctable fate in Simmel. Though it is a specifically modern phenomenon, it has a tragic structure.66 It arises from the essence, from the evolutionary law of culture itself. According to Simmel, modern man’s experience of being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of cultural products is written into the concept of culture itself.67 It is not a contingent, historically random phenomenon, but fateful and inescapable. Cassirer responds to this 1911 diagnosis more than a decade later in his essay ‘Die “Tragödie der Kultur”’. He concedes to Simmel that there is a considerable tension between spiritual experience and cultural product. He also agrees with him that this contains a dialectical element of culture which displays dramatic features.68 His criticism is first of all directed at two elements: on the one hand he implies that Simmel has a latent tendency towards mysticism and on the other he opposes the cultural-philosophical fatalism which Simmel expresses in focusing on the expression of tragedy. Cassirer cannot and will not share this systematically established cultural pessimism. What, for Cassirer, makes up Simmel’s tendency towards mysticism? For one, it lies in the assumption that the creative genius possesses ‘the original unity of the subjective and objective’ which must be separated in the process of cultivation.69 There is in fact a hint of mystical yearning here. But the main problem is not the yearning of the mystic but the ideas which underlie his yearning. Especially problematic is the notion of an immediate self-unity. This idea is mistaken according to Cassirer. In his view, the objectified forms of culture do not form an antithesis to the primordial ‘I’-experience, but on the contrary constitute the indispensable precondition for it.70 An immediate self-unity is therefore impossible.

65 66 67 68 69 70

Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 199. Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 219. Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 221. Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 105. Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 206. Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 108.

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These two points of criticism of fatalism and mysticism are both a consequence of a one-sided view of what constitutes cultural activity. For Cassirer, the viewpoint of the creative individual should not form the only and privileged viewpoint for the conception of culture. Culture amounts to more than the relation between artist and work, it is a process which includes its reception. Unlike Simmel, Cassirer does not make a fundamental distinction between communicative exchange and creative production of signs. In his view, both aspects, the communicative and the artistic, together make up culture, and neither can function wholly without the other. On the one hand the production of new forms is integrated in the communicative exchange of signs. Without the tradition of the old, the new is impossible. On the other hand the understanding of cultural forms, too, is not a mere reproduction but a creative act. If this understanding takes place, no alienation occurs. In dissociating himself from philosophy of life, Cassirer responds to the same kind of systematic challenges as Cohen in his opposition to Romanticism. The provocative element for both is that in the experience of the artistic individual a kind of ‘inner limit’ of culture is established. No such limit exists for Cohen and Cassirer. Even internal impulses of the individual are in their view historical and rule-governed71 or sign-mediated magnitudes. They belong to culture and only for this reason are they also a legitimate subject of philosophical investigation. There can be no inner limit of culture if the critical concerns of philosophy of culture are taken seriously.

71

Cohen does not play off the physiological origin of feeling against its historicity. See more extensively U. Renz, ‘Ethik oder Ästhetik? Das System als Interpretament der Kulturproblematik’, in: P.-U. Merz-Benz und U. Renz, Ethik oder Ästhetik? Neukantianische Kulturphilosophie vor den Herausforderungen postmoderner Existenz (Würzburg, forthcoming).

RELIGION

MAIMONIDEAN ELEMENTS IN HERMANN COHEN’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ARTHUR HYMAN, NEW Y ORK

When, at a banquet held in 1914, a speaker celebrated the then 72 year old Cohen as a returnee, a ba‘al teshuva, Cohen interrupted exclaiming ‘I have been a ba‘al teshuvah already for 34 years’.1 The year to which Cohen alluded was 1880 — a year in which the then 38 year old Cohen was firmly settled into a distinguished academic career. In 1880 Cohen had a secure position as a full professor at Marburg, had published Kants Theorie der Erfahrung and Kants Begründung der Ethik, and was well on his way toward the publication of seminal works which included the magisterial three volume Das System der Philosophie. But 1880 was also the year in which the distinguished historian Treitschke, in his ‘Ein Wort über unser Judentum’, described Judaism as ‘the national religion of an originally foreign race’. Anti-Semitism had raised its ugly head in — to use Cohen’s phrase — ‘the nation of Kant’.2 Ever the proud Jew, Cohen replied to Treitschke in his ‘Eine Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage’ arguing that far from being the national religion of a foreign race, Judaism, in fact, was the ideal embodiment of the religion of reason. With the publication of the ‘Bekenntnis’ Cohen began a career as the articulate spokesman for German Jewry. In public addresses, occasional pieces, and more sustained essays, he eloquently defended Judaism against attacks, presented his views on contemporary Jewish issues, polemicized against a number of thinkers and scholars (including Graetz, Nöldeke, Wellhausen, Buber), and analyzed the nature of Judaism as the religion of reason. Whereas, prior to 1880, he had published only a few essays on a Jewish topic, there now followed a stream of writings devoted to Jewish themes. Collected posthumously under the ti1 2

üdische Schriften I, xxi. ‘Ein Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage’, in: Jüdische Schriften II, 73.

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tle Jüdische Schriften, the essays contained in the three volumes of the work, number sixty-seven. Cohen’s philosophy of Judaism as it emerges from these essays and occasional pieces, most of which predate his more formal Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, still remains to be studied and analyzed. That Cohen was intimately acquainted with medieval Jewish philosophy and influenced by it is apparent to anyone who has even a cursory acquaintance with his writings. In his Religion of Reason alone there appear Saadiah Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Abraham Ibn Daud, Hasdai Crescas, Simon Duran, Joseph Albo, Isaac Arama, and, of course, Moses Maimonides. But even earlier he had written significant essays on the ethics of Bahya Ibn Pakuda and the ethics of Maimonides and references to medieval Jewish Philosophy are scattered throughout his Jewish writings. As philological comments in the bodies of his essays and citations in the footnotes show Cohen knew these materials not only in German and French translations but also in their medieval Hebrew versions. If one speaks of the influence of medieval Jewish philosophers on Cohen’s thought, the term ‘influence’ lends itself to at least three interpretations. In one sense it can mean that Cohen saw in medieval Jewish philosophers, especially Maimonides, predecessors who provided a model for a philosophic interpretation of Jewish tradition. In this Cohen was no different from other modern Jewish philosophers, such as, for example, Krochmal.3 Cohen himself attests to this influence of medieval Jewish philosophy. In a public address held in 1907,4 he finds a close analogy between the intellectual situation of German Jewry and that of Jews living within the ‘spanish-arabic culture’. And in a lecture held in 19135 Cohen describes Maimonides as the ‘the wise and clear guide of our rationalism’ (der weise und klare Führer unseres Rationalismus).

3

Kitvei R. Nachman Krochmal, ed. S. Rawidowitz (Berlin, 1924; reprinted London-Waltham, 1961), 5. 4 ‘Religiöse Postulate’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 10-11. 5 ‘Das Gottesreich’, in: Jüdische Schriften III, 173.

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There is a second sense in which the term ‘influence’ can be understood, namely that Cohen follows a medieval philosopher — especially Maimonides — in a systematic way. That this interpretation does not apply to Cohen is also clear. One could hardly expect that Cohen, the neo-Kantian, would accept the metaphysical parts of Maimonides’ philosophy in their own right, nor could one expect that Cohen with his deontological approach would agree with all aspects of Maimonidean ethics. How could Cohen accept Maimonides’ proofs of the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God, or the causal role of God in creation, prophecy and providence? Or, how could Cohen accept Maimonides’ eudaemonistic approach according to which the ‘wellbeing of the body’ and the ‘wellbeing of the intellect’6 were the purposes of the Torah. This leaves a third alternative, namely, that Cohen could accept those parts of medieval Jewish philosophy that were compatible with his own thought. Here comes to mind Maimonides’ influence on Cohen’s discussion of divine attributes and on aspects of Cohen’s conception of the relation of ethics and religion. But even here Cohen read Maimonides through neo-Kantian glasses. The difficult question arises: to what extent is Cohen a genuine interpreter of Maimonides’ thought and to what extent does Maimonides provide a kind of ‘prooftext’ for Cohen’s own philosophy? The answer to this question is not easily discovered. In order to understand the influence of Maimonides and other medieval philosophers on Cohen’s thought one must first turn to some of the salient features of his philosophy of religion. While Cohen had dealt with aspects of religion, especially Judaism, in some of the essays collected in his Jüdische Schriften, the systematic exposition of his conception of religion had to wait until the publication of his Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie, which appeared in 1915, and the post-humously published Religion der Vernunft. By the time Cohen came on the scene there had been extensive studies of the nature of religion. There had been scholars who maintained that the nature of religion is discovered through the study of its history. Other scholars located the origin 6

Guide of the Perplexed, 3:27.

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of religion in intuition or induction (both rooted in sense perception) and there were still others who assigned the study of religion to the study of mysticism. Cohen rejected these approaches and affirmed that the study of the essence of religion (das Wesen der Religion) belongs to philosophy, not to its history (Religionsgeschichte). Cohen writes: The difference between philosophy of religion and history of religion consists in this: the former can construe the essence of a religion through the conceptual idealization of its basic concepts, while history of religion condemns itself if it announces itself as the presentation of its essence.7

In similar fashion, Cohen holds that religion cannot be the result of intuiton or induction, nor can it be assigned to mysticism.8 Having established the rational character of religion, Cohen must make its relation to philosophy more precise. That religion is not ultimately absorbed by philosophy, is a fundamental principle of Cohen’s later thought. Religion has a part in philosophy, but it retains its individuality. As Cohen puts it, religion is a boundary region of philosophy (Grenzgebiet der Philosophie)9 and the relation of religion and philosophy belongs to the boundary problems (Grenzproblemen).10 Having shown that the analysis of the essence of religion belongs to philosophy, Cohen next inquires how religion is related to the three-fold Kantian scheme of consciousness (Bewusstsein): logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Maintaining in his early writings that this scheme covers all rational activity, Cohen had assigned religion to ethics. The historical religions in their highest forms, especially Judaism, found their culmination in philosophic ethics.

7

‘Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 303-04. Cf. Der Begriff der Religion, 1-3. Religion der Vernunft, English translation by Simon Kaplan, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (New York, 1972), 4-11. 8 Der Begriff der Religion, 8. 9 Der Begriff der Religion, 6. 10 Der Begriff der Religion, 7-8.

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However, with the appearance of the Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie, which appeared in 1915, Cohen seemed to have changed his mind. While he never dissolves the bond between ethics and religion, he now appears to hold that religion has some kind of independence of its own. Interpreters have differed on what this independence is. Franz Rosenzweig, who wrote the introduction to the Jüdische Schriften, maintained that there was a basic shift in Cohen’s philosophy and he sees in him a kind of proto-existentialist. Pointing to the subjective language of religion that Cohen now uses, Rosenzweig writes: Man in the presence of God is no longer the ‘self’ of ethics (Selbst der Ethik), which for itself can only be an eternal task, but he is the actual human being with the needs and suffering of his sin-encased moment. He cannot be helped with the comfort of eternity. The ‘individuum quand même’ […], is the human individual who in his sinfulness and regret cannot look at humanity in its totality, but who must consider himself as unique — as God.11

Alexander Altmann12 and others differ, however, from this interpretation. They maintain that Cohen retained the essentially Kantian character of his system, turning to religion only in order to supplement what he considered a shortcoming in Kantian ethics. Religion does not have ‘independence’ (Selbständigkeit); that is to say, it is not a realm of consciousness additional to the three delineated by Kant, but it had a ‘special nature’ (Eigenart). Cohen asks rhetorically: ‘Is it then correct that one has to posit a special form of consciousness (Bewusstsein) to make possible the special nature (Eigenart) of religion? Does one not confuse ‘special nature’ (Eigenart) with ‘independence’ (Selbständigkeit)?’13 And more explicitly he states: ‘It would be a mistaken beginning, were one to invent for the ‘special nature’ [of religion] a specific and independent direction of consciousness’.14 11

Jüdische Schriften I, xlv. ‘Hermann Cohens Begriff der Korrelation’, in: In zwei Welten. Siegfried Moses zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. H. Tramer (Tel Aviv, 1962), 377-99. Cf. Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, transl. John Denton (Albany, 1997), 157-58, and 302-06. 13 Der Begriff der Religion, 15. 14 Der Begriff der Religion, 15. 12

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What then are the shortcomings of Kantian ethics that need to be supplemented? Having assigned to ethics its own domain of consciousness, Kant had proposed that philosophic ethics must be scientific. By this he meant that ethics must have universal principles that, like scientific ones, are applicable to all human beings in situations of the same kind. In technical language, ethical principles must be ‘categorical imperatives’. In one of the versions cited by Cohen, this principle reads: ‘Respect mankind in your person as in the person of every other man’.15 It is here that Cohen finds the shortcoming. While he retains the principle of ‘categorical imperative’, he finds that it applies to human beings as members of a class, but it neglects human beings as individuals. At best, human beings can discover their individuality as members of the state. Cohen, citing this opinion, writes: ‘A human being can become a genuine individual through the totality (Allheit) that the state provides. He should learn to remove his separate self in order to find his true self in the totality that the state provides’.16 But even in this case the individual would still only be an instantiation of mankind in general. To supplement the Kantian conception of ethics and to discover the ethical individual, Cohen considers the shortcomings of human life. Cohen writes: ‘[The human being] is a living being beset by the pressures of the earth, and moral troubles and sicknesses threaten his life and fortune’.17 It is the shortcoming (Mangel) of human life, especially suffering (Leid) and compassion for another person (Mitleid) that threaten man as human being. Cohen was not the first one to discuss suffering but he attached to it an importance that it did not have for his predecessors. The Stoics18 had considered human suffering, but they had advocated an attitude of indifference toward it. They had thereby excluded suffering from ethics. Similarly, Spinoza had described suffering as a negative affect which could be removed

15 16 17 18

Religion der Vernunft, 284; Eng. transl., 241. Der Begriff der Religion, 52. Der Begriff der Religion, 53. Religion der Vernunft, 19-21; Eng. transl., 17-18.

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through understanding. By contrast, Hermann Cohen assigned ethical importance to suffering and suffering is an existential fact of human life. While ethics, at best, can discover the individual as a member of the state, it is only religion that can discover the individual as a person. Cohen writes: Here appears the important insight that the concept of man is not totally determined by ethics in every way, in that the individual is dissolved in the totality of the state. […] Ethics has learned from religion that the prophets, especially Jeremiah and Ezekiel, discovered the individual in the self-recognition of sin.19

Or more succinctly: The discovery of man through sin is the source from which every religious development flows.20

With the introduction of sinfulness as the clue to the nature of the human individual Cohen’s intellectual framework begins to shift from ethics to religion. It must be emphasized once again, however, that this shift marks an expansion, not a transformation of the Kantian ethical system. Sinfulness requires forgiveness and forgiveness requires a God that forgives. With the introduction of sinfulness, forgiveness, and a God that forgives, Cohen’s conception of God undergoes a change. In Cohen’s early writing God is an idea of reason which guarantees the moral order and that the world lends itself to the success of man’s moral striving. In his later writings, God is being and the world becoming. At the same time — and here Cohen turns to religious terminology — God creates, reveals and redeems. To explain the new conception of God, Cohen introduces the notion of correlation. He writes:

19 20

Der Begriff der Religion, 52. Religion der Vernunft, 23; Eng. transl., 20.

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Correlation is a concept in logic, not metaphysics. It means that to understand a concept I must understand its correlate. For example, to understand God I must understand man; to understand man I must understand God. One of the connecting links between philosophy and religion is that between ‘being’ and ‘God’. Cohen writes: ‘God signifies in religion what being (Sein) signifies in philosophy’.22 But it is here also that that distinction between philosophy and religion appears. In the empirical sphere (Cohen’s example is the planets) the ‘being’ of an object requires as its correlate its (sensory) ‘existence’ (Dasein). God, by contrast, has ‘being’, but not existence. Cohen writes: Only ‘being’ (Sein) is the object of our knowledge of God; ‘existence’ (Dasein) belongs to the negative attributes. […] According to Maimonides this means: God is the origin (Ursprung) of existence; without him there would not be any existence.23

While without God there cannot be any existence, God’s role as ‘origin’ (Ursprung) is that of a logical principle, not that of a cause. As will be seen, Maimonides’ doctrine of negative attributes will here be of help to Cohen. In similar fashion, Cohen uses correlation to explain creation, revelation and redemption. Creation describes God’s relation to the world, revelation His relation to human beings, and redemption His relation to history. Since for Cohen religion, particularly Judaism is ‘ethical monotheism’, revelation and redemption, with their universal ethical message, are more important for him than creation.

21 22 23

Der Begriff der Religion, 47. Der Begriff der Religion, 45. Der Begriff der Religion, 46-47.

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In explicating these three terms, Cohen rejects what he considers the mythological meaning that the literal reading of the biblical text provides. As Cohen the liberal interpreter sees it, Judaism, already in the Bible, had moved from the mythological to the universal ethical and this is the way in which he reads the biblical text. The universal ethical message finds its climax in its philosophic interpretation, the religion of reason. Revelation is no longer God’s one time appearance at Mount Sinai nor is He the cause of revelation to prophets, redemption is not that of a personal messiah, and creation is not a one-time event marking the beginning of the world. Revelation then is not a supernatural event but it is an expression of man’s moral reason. Its content consists of a priori eternal moral principles. And even though revelation had its origin among the Jewish people, it ultimately was directed to all mankind. Revelation is not so much concerned with principles of divine worship as with morality and law. It is the ideal and eternal condition of morality. Cohen writes: As the [biblical] expression [statutes and ordinances] itself indicates [,…these] are concerned with purely moral prescriptions and social and political institutions and requirements as well as with the entire institution of law and courts of justice in theory and practice.24

It is the eternal foundation of morality that is called revelation. Cohen writes: ‘This eternal as the foundation of [moral] reason in all of its content, the Jew calls revelation’.25 Redemption, similarly, finds its explanation in Cohen’s ethical theory, more precisely his theory of history. Whereas originally Jewish tradition had spoken of the messiah as an individual, Cohen refers the concept to the messianic period. As the culmination of history, messianic times are times of peace and tranquility for mankind. Cohen identifies messianic times with a kind of socialism that he describes as prophetic or messianic. He writes: ‘Prophetic messianism has gained in socialism the recognition of human beings through the history of mankind’.26 The 24 25 26

Religion der Vernunft, 90; Eng. transl., 78. Religion der Vernunft, 97; Eng. transl., 83. Der Begriff der Religion, 48.

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notion of correlation also serves to explain creation. Here the problem is not creation of the world out of nothing, but rather the preservation (Erhaltung) of the world. Cohen writes: ‘And creation does basically mean nothing other than the renewal of preservation. This is the real problem; not as one often thinks, preferably or exclusively creation out of nothing’.27 That the influence of Maimonides on Cohen’s philosophy should be limited can be seen from what we have said so far. While sinfulness, remorse, and redemption are themes in Maimonides’ philosophy, they are by no means that factor in human existence on which Jewish tradition is based. Repentance is an important commandment, but by no means does it play the central role it plays for Cohen.28 Nor does Cohen’s virtual neglect of Maimonidean metaphysics do justice to this philosopher’s thought. With these backgrounds of Cohen’s philosophy in mind we shall now turn to Maimonides’ influence on Cohen’s thought. Two principles govern Cohen’s discussion: Judaism in its essence is ‘moral teachings’ (Sittenlehre) and ethics provides the major context for the discussion of God. In an essay published in 1910 and tellingly entitled ‘Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum’ Cohen argues that it is Kant’s accomplishment ‘to elevate God to an idea’ and it is God who is ‘the originator and guarantor of the moral law’.29 While in his later writings Cohen describes God as ‘being’ rather than as an idea and while he uses ‘correlation’ to describe God’s relation to the world, humanity, and history, this is, as we have argued, an extension of Kantian philosophy rather than a fundamental change in Cohen’s thought. To justify his claim that Judaism is essentially Sittenlehre and the further claim that Jewish ethics is an ethics of duty rather then one of happiness, Cohen turns for support to medieval Jewish philosophy, especially Maimonides.30 His argument, in part, is based on the last four chapters of The Guide of the Perplexed.

27 28 29 30

Der Begriff der Religion, 127. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshubah. Jüdische Schriften I, 293. ‘Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis’, in: Jüdische Schriften III, 231-232.

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Having devoted most of the Guide to a discussion of such theoretical issues as the existence of God, divine attributes, creation, prophecy, and providence, Maimonides in these four chapters discusses moral virtues and seems to advocate the primacy of morality over theoretical speculation. Yet even if one grants that this is the content of these chapters, the question remains: how are they related to the earlier parts of the Guide? Manuel Joël, a historian of Jewish philosophy, had addressed this question in his Die Religionsphilosophie des Mose ben Maimon and had come to the conclusion that the last four chapters are ‘just an appendix’ (ein blosser Anhang).31 Cohen rejects Joël’s interpretation and undertakes to counter it by philological means. Cohen bases his rebuttal on a statement which appears in Guide 3:51 and which reads: This chapter (3:51)…does not include additional matter (tosefet) over and above what is comprised in the other chapters of the Treatise [the Guide]. It is only a kind of conclusion (ve-eino rak ki-demut hatimah) […]

Joël had misinterpreted this passage, Cohen claims, by translating hatimah as ‘appendix’. The correct translation of the word is ‘consequence’ (Konsequenz). Far from being an appendix, these chapters, with their ethical message, are the highpoint of the Guide. All the previous chapters with their theoretical speculations are only a preface to the concluding section. Cohen writes: ‘The case is just the reverse [of that presented by Joël]; the preceding chapters (of the Guide) do not differ from this conclusion. They are only a preface to it’.32 While Cohen is not blind to the theoretical nature of the earlier sections of the Guide he holds that morality, not metaphysics, is the kind of wisdom (hokhmah) to which these speculations lead. He writes: ‘The third part (of the Guide) leaves no doubt that morality (Sittlichkeit) provides the meaning and purpose of wisdom’. And

31

Manuel Joël, Die Religionsphilosophie des Mose ben Maimon (Maimonides) (Breslau, 1859), reprinted in: idem, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie, two volumes (Breslau, 1876, reprinted Hildesheim, 1978), vol. 1, 4-100, esp. 16. 32 ‘Ethik Maimunis’, in: Jüdische Schriften III, 231-232.

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even more sweepingly he states that the last four chapters with their ethical message provide ‘the center of gravity toward which the whole work (the Guide) tends’.33 Cohen provides a similar ‘Kantian’ interpretation when he discusses Maimonides’ account of the purpose of human life. Whereas according to a conventional interpretation Maimonides eudaemonistically defines ‘happiness’ as the goal of human life, according to Cohen’s deontological interpretation the purpose of human life is ‘self-perfection’. In one essay,34 he even cites the Maimonidean term hishtalmud interpreting it to mean ‘fulfilling one’s duty’. Cohen writes: ‘Maimonides posits self-perfection (Selbstvervollkommnung) in place of happiness (Glückseeligkeit)’. And even more sweepingly he adds that it is clear that ‘from Saadiah to Maimonides and beyond, the whole line of Jewish philosophers has rejected happiness (Glückseeligkeit) as the goal of human life’.35 To provide an adequate description of God Cohen sets down two propositions: (1) God is totally distinct from the world and (2) God is known through His moral attributes. Maimonides is of help for establishing both of these propositions. Monotheists agree that God is one, but this description is not sufficient. For a polytheist can claim that there is one god who is above other gods and a pantheist can agree that God is one, though he identifies God with nature. In his early thought Cohen had flirted with pantheism (and he had recognized pantheism as a stage preliminary (Vorstufe) to monotheism),36 but in his later thought pantheism had become the enemy. In identifying God and nature, pantheism had given an illegitimate, metaphysical description of God and had become unable to give a philosophically adequate account of ethics. To emphasize the distance between God and the world, a mainstay of his philosophy, Cohen had introduced the distinction between God as being and the world as becoming — God is unchanging and eternal, the world is changing and transitory. In

33 34 35 36

‘Ethik Maimunis’, in: Jüdische Schriften III, 231-232. ‘Innere Beziehungen’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 300. ‘Innere Beziehungen’, in: Jüdische Schriften, I, 290. ‘Einheit oder Einzigkeit’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 88.

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establishing the transcendence of God and His ethical nature Maimonides, who had discussed divine attributes at length in the first part of the Guide, was of help to Cohen. Invoking the principle that God’s oneness requires not only that He is unique, but also that He is simple, that is non-composite, Maimonides had maintained that no attribute predicated of God can have a positive meaning. This brought him to the conclusion that essential attributes, such as one, omniscient, omnipotent, must be interpreted as negations of privation,37 while accidental attributes, such as merciful, gracious, long-suffering. must be interpreted as attributes of action.38 Cohen makes no attempt to establish philosophically the attributes predicated of God. These are given in Scripture and it is the task of the philosopher of religion to interpret them. It was Maimonides’ great accomplishment to show that essential attributes predicated of God must be interpreted as negations of privation. ‘Maimonides’, writes Cohen, ‘becomes a classic of rationalism in the monotheistic tradition, most decisively, perhaps, through his interpretation of the crucial problem of negative attributes’.39 But in spite of this tribute, there is a subtle shift in Cohen’s use of the Maimonidean view. Maimonides was guided by the principle that God’s unity requires that He be simple, not composite. This brought him to his interpretation of essential attributes as negations of privations. It was Maimonides’ purpose to attach some (metaphysical) meaning to the difficult terms, while it was Cohen’s purpose to show that God (being) is totally different from the world (becoming). In Cohen’s language — God is not only one (eins), but also singular (einzig).40 While Maimonides had provided a steppingstone for what might be called Cohen’s metaphysical agnosticism, Maimonides also kept Cohen from proposing a concept of God that was empty. For besides discussing essential attributes, Maimonides had spoken of accidental attributes — which he interpreted as attributes of action. Having stated in Guide 1: 52 that it is permissi-

37 38 39 40

Guide of the Perplexed, 1:58. Guide, 1:52 end. Religion der Vernunft, 73; Eng. transl., 63. ‘Einheit oder Einzigkeit’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 87-92.

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ble to interpret accidental attributes as attributes of action, that is descriptions of what God does rather than what He is, Maimonides further on, lists the biblical ‘merciful, gracious, longsuffering’ as examples of such actions. While attributes of action may be predicated of God, it is not their function, according to Cohen, to tell us what God is, but rather to provide a model for human conduct. Cohen writes: Action in the case of God [being] is related to the possibility of action in becoming, namely, in man. And this possibility is related not to causality [that is, that God is the cause of certain actions or events in the world], but comes under the viewpoint of purpose. Hence the attributes of action are not so much characteristics of God, but rather conceptually determined models for the action of man.41

In language in harmony with Cohen’s thought, the moral attributes predicated of God provide the ‘origin’ (Ursprung) of human moral actions. By way of conclusion it may be stated that medieval Jewish philosophers, especially Maimonides, provided Cohen with a model for interpreting Judaism as a religion of reason, and that specific teachings, such as the Maimonidean interpretation of essential and accidental divine attributes provide a springboard for Cohen’s description of God. But in the end, Cohen provided a Kantian reading of Maimonides. Even when Cohen describes God as being, as person, and as the one who forgives human sin, it is not God conceived in metaphysical fashion, but it is God as the ‘origin’ who has His place in logic.

41

Religion der Vernunft, 110; Eng. transl., 95.

CRITICAL IDEALISM IN HERMANN COHEN’S WRITINGS ON JUDAISM IRENE KAJON, ROME

‘It is a blessing for us that Hermann Cohen lived and wrote’ (Leo Strauss)1

The aim of this article is to provide an introduction to the manner in which Cohen offers an interpretation of critical idealism in his writings on Jewish tradition. But, owing to the fact that Cohen, as we shall see, considers Kantian thought a philosophy of culture and the model and highest point of philosophy, the discussion of this problem involves the examination of three other important questions in Cohen’s work. The first question could be formulated in the following way: what is the relationship between Kantian doctrine and Jewish sources? The second question is: what is the relationship between the system of philosophy and religion as a field of experience which is not reducible to other fields? The third question is: what is in human nature the element which is the necessary condition of human culture and which philosophy should recognize? In this article I would like to maintain first of all the thesis that Cohen’s thought underwent an evolution as regards the answer to these questions: it seems to me that at the beginning Cohen holds some positions which are typical of a defense of modernity, and at the end he is rather inclined toward premodern positions, if in a new garb. Second, I would like to argue that precisely the view which he arrives at in his last writings could be interesting and helpful to contemporary philosophy, when this philosophy, faithful to its ‘cosmic’ or ‘cosmopolitic’ sense, tries to answer the Kantian 1 Leo Strauss, ‘Introductory Essay’ in: Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (New York, 1972), xxiii-xxxviii, quotation: xxxviii, reprinted in: Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity. Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, Edited with an Introduction by Kenneth Hart Green (Albany, 1997), 282.

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question ‘what is man?’.2 I shall try to demonstrate these two theses through a synthetic description of Cohen’s evolution in his Jewish writings with regard to his interpretation of Kantian idealism. This contribution is therefore composed of three parts corresponding to the different phases of Cohen’s thought on the four problems mentioned above.

1. 1867-1903: Judaism in the light of critical idealism as a scientific philosophy Some careful readers regarded Cohen’s books, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Kants Begründung der Ethik, and Kants Begründung der Aesthetik, published in Berlin in 1871, 1877 and 1889 respectively, as works which had their inception not so much in the objective and detached study of Kantian thought as in the interpreter’s own intuition of the world which he clarified through a dialogue with Kant.3 According to these readers, Cohen had considered the arguments which Kant had unfolded in his three Critiques, devoted to an analysis of the forms and principles of theoretical reason, practical reason, and the faculty of judgment, with the aim of giving not simply an account of a historical body of thought, but an exposition of a coherent and valid philosophical doctrine: his intention was constructive and theoretical rather than descriptive and historical. Now, the intuition of being and man which is the ground and inspiring impulse of Cohen’s explanation of Kantian philosophy becomes evident if one takes into consideration a previous essay entitled ‘Heine and Judaism’ (1867).4 In this contribution the author explains how Heine maintained a relationship with Judaism not so much because of the education he received in his 2

Cf. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 804ff., B 832ff. Cf., for example, E. Cassirer, ‘Hermann Cohen und die Erneuerung der Kantischen Philosophie’, Kant-Studien 17 (1912), 252-273; P. Natorp, ‘Selbstdarstellung’, in: R. Schmidt (Hrsg.), Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, 2 vols., (Leipzig, 1921), vol. 1, 151-176; H. Liebeschütz, Von Georg Simmel zu Franz Rosenzweig. Studien zum jüdischen Denken im deutschen Kulturbereich (Tübingen, 1970), 7-54. 4 Cf. ‘Heine und das Judentum’, in: Jüdische Schriften II, 44ff. 3

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childhood, nor because of his youthful friendship with such Jewish personalities as Eduard Gans or Leopold Zunz, but owing to his deep sympathy for Spinoza. Certainly, according to Cohen, Heine does not accept the Spinozian system; but he shares the principle on which this system is founded, i. e. the principle of the ideal unity of nature. Spinoza had changed the Jewish concept of God as unique and transcendent and of whom it is forbidden to make images or idols, into the concept of unity to which the intellect brings natural phenomena. This was connected with the strong modern interest, not in a transcendental world, but in knowledge of the natural world. So, as Cohen writes in his essay, ‘the God of All’ had become ‘God the All’.5 According to Cohen, exactly this loyalty to Spinoza makes it possible to define Heine as a follower of the ‘monotheistic pantheism’. Unlike the ‘pagan pantheist’, who is inspired by Greek art and religion, the ‘monotheistic pantheist’ makes a very clear distinction between the spirit and those variable natural forms which are perceived by the senses. Besides, Cohen thinks that Heine enlarges on this fundamental Spinozian teaching. From the idea of the intellectual unity of the world Heine infers many consequences: the concept of the autonomy of the human mind, however necessarily man lives in nature and history; the criticism of the medieval dualism between being and human thought, and between intellect and sensibility; the idea of the right of man to freedom as a rational being and to happiness as a sensitive being; the exaltation of earthly pleasures against ascetism; the concepts of the unity of humanity and of its endless material and moral progress in a historical time with a manifest goal. From the intellect which constructs an order in the knowledge of nature Heine also arrives at the will as a guide for actions, and at God as the ideal which signifies the realized humanity and the ground of this realization as well. Therefore, Cohen represents Heine as a defender of that philosophy of modernity whose origin is Spinoza, according to Heine himself. Actually Cohen writes: ‘For Heine all later philosophy is dependent on Spinoza’.6 Cohen, who expresses his admiration for Heine in his 5 6

Jüdische Schriften II, 9. Jüdische Schriften II, 29.

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essay, shares with Heine the way in which he refers to a Jewish influence — even if it comes from a Judaism which is interpreted in the light of Spinoza — the concepts that were the causes of the crisis of medieval civilization. So Cohen points to Heine, the disciple of Spinoza, as an example for those Jews who want at the same time to continue their tradition and to take part in the cultural milieu on the same level as the other participants. However, in his writing on Heine and Judaism, Cohen only outlines the intuition of the world which he refers to: at this time he is still looking for a philosophy which is able to specify this intuition of the world in the most rigorous and accurate manner. The intellectual movement of the Völkerpsychologie, of which he is a member at the beginning of his intellectual activity, is not a real response to this research of his because of its empiricism — i.e. lack of universality and scientific strictness —, that he soon observes.7 Instead, the philosophy which expresses the being of the world and man according to Heine’s Spinozian vision, is found by Cohen in the Kantian books, when he devotes himself to the study of Kantian thought, after his participation in the debate raised by the conflict between Adolph Trendelenburg and Kuno Fischer about the meaning of Kantian a priori.8 Actually for Cohen, as he makes clear in his books on Kant, the Kantian critique of metaphysics implies the rejection of any evasion toward the supersensible world, and the request for a life in this world — although this natural and historical world is not a pure empiric world, but a construction of a human activity which comprehends intellectual and sensible functions as well. According to Cohen’s interpretation of Kant, philosophy has the duty to make man conscious of this activity through the analysis of these functions: they are immanent in human culture, which

7

Cohen’s first philosophical essays, devoted to Platonic idealism, mythological representations of God and soul, and poetic fantasy, were published in M. Lazarus’ und H. Steinthal’s Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie in 1867-1869: cf. Cohen, Schriften I, 30-228. The contradiction, which appears in these first essays by Cohen, between the direction toward universality and psychological and empirical research is emphasized by H. Dussort, L’école de Marbourg (Paris, 1963). 8 Cf. Cohen, ‘Zur Kontroverse zwischen Trendelenburg und K. Fischer’ (1871), in: Schriften I, 229-275.

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is made up of natural knowledge first of all, then morality, and finally art. Performing this duty, philosophy has natural knowledge as its ground, and this beginning gives philosophy the character of a science; but, at the same time, philosophy asserts the primacy of ethics because the highest human action, whose aim is the realization of a kingdom of freedom and equality, is determined by pure reason; philosophy finally states God as the idea of the unity of nature and spirit and the guarantee of this realization, which happens endlessly in human history. So Cohen regards Kantian thought, which he endorses in his books on Kant, as a critical and scientific idealism. In these books he offers this interpretation in detail: in Kants Theorie der Erfahrung first of all he explains Kantian notion of the a priori as a form which is not the opposite of an external objectivity, nor the producer of a content, but is immanent in natural science itself;9 then he describes Kantian idealism as a philosophy which is different from materialism and idealism, doctrines which make either matter or the mind absolute;10 finally he regards the ‘thing in itself’ as a pure conceptual illusion from the point of view of scientific knowledge, and the ‘I think’ as the expression of the whole of synthetical a priori principles of natural science, thus emphasizing the role of intellect rather than the role of sensibility in the building of this science.11 In Kants Begründung der Ethik Cohen expounds how the theory of natural knowledge itself leads Kant to ethics, through the determination of the meaning of ‘idea’,12 how the fundamental ethical idea is freedom as ‘autonomy’ and as ‘end in itself’,13 and how the final unity of nature and morality is not the concept of immortality of soul or the concept of God as the ground of this immortality, but rather the idea of God as the systematical unity of the ends of morality and nature, as the final unity of the system of philosophy.14 And in Kants Begründung der Ästhetik Cohen finally shows how in the Kantian critique art is that activity of ‘consciousness’ in which the different func9 10 11 12 13 14

Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (18711), 48-49, 54ff., 79ff. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (18711), 244ff. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (18711), 249ff. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 19ff., 42ff. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 75ff., 117ff., 160ff., 256ff. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 283ff., 325ff.

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tions of the consciousness itself find an integration,15 and the connection between the creative subject and the created objectivity appears in a much more evident way than in the other fields of culture.16 Now, exactly because Cohen sees Kant as the philosopher who expresses Spinoza’s and Heine’s intuition of the world, and regards this intuition as a modern interpretation of Judaism, he also considers Judaism in the light of critical idealism in this phase of his thinking. In fact, if it is true that Judaism ultimately refers to Kant as the philosopher who expresses the meaning of its teachings which Spinoza first had set out, then it is also true that Kantian philosophy offers the criteria of evaluation of Judaism to the modern Jew who intends to idealize his religion. Exactly this position is evident in the writings on Jewish topics which Cohen published between 1880 and 1903 — as we shall see, in 1904 new reflections on ethics will produce a complication in the relationship that he had described until that time between Kantian thought and Judaism. In 1880, in his response to Heinrich von Treitschke, who had affirmed that Judaism could not be purified because of its estrangement from modern culture, Cohen makes reference to Kant as the author who had proved the unity of all the faiths in the rational or philosophical religion.17 Two ideas, which are held in Judaism and Christianity as well, are typical of the philosophical religion according to Cohen: the idea of the autonomy of human spirit, and the idea of the endless progress of morality grounded in God as the transcendent guarantee of this progress. Christianity — so Cohen maintains in this response — emphasizes the first notion rather than the second, Judaism the second notion rather than the first; but both faiths are in profound agreement if they are evaluated in the light of scientific philosophy, reciprocally recognizing their specific contribution to the history of human culture. I declare, Cohen writes with conviction, that ‘I cannot recognize any difference between Jewish monotheism and Protestant Christian-

15 16 17

Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 96ff. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 165ff., 175ff. Cf. ‘Ein Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage’, Jüdische Schriften II, 73ff.

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ity with regard to the scientific concept of religion’.18 In this manner Kant becomes the guide who is absolutely necessary for the purification of Jewish religion, although — as Cohen explicitly admits —19 the main idea which inspires Kantian philosophy, i. e. the idea of the autonomy of human reason first of all in natural knowledge, and then in culture, would be indefensible if this idea had not been preceded by the expansion of the concept of the divine in man through Christianity. In the other Jewish essays which are published in this period, Cohen maintains this interpretation of Judaism by means of Kantian philosophy as a scientific idealism. This interpretation particularly becomes apparent in his essays ‘Die Nächstenliebe im Talmud’ (1888), ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’ (1890-1892), ‘Die Messiasidee’ (1890-1892), ‘Das Problem der jüdischen Sittenlehre’ (1899), ‘Autonomie und Freiheit’ (1900), ‘Liebe und Gerechtigkeit in den Begriffen Gott und Mensch’ (1900), ‘Der Stil der Propheten’ (1901).20 In these essays Cohen identifies the essence of Judaism with philosophical ethics; he interprets the Jewish notions of love for the fellow man, justice, reconciliation, sanctification, messianism, from the point of view of the ethical content which philosophical ethics states; he considers ‘true faith’ the equivalent of ‘true science’; he regards the religious idea of freedom as ‘purity of heart’ or ‘obedience to divine commandment’ or ‘choice of life’ only as a step toward the philosophical idea of freedom; he sees the theory which explains the specific concepts of Judaism only as a preparation for ethics as a philosophical doctrine; he prefers the scientific style, which is characteristic of philosophy, rather than the poetic style which is peculiar to the Prophets in the determination of morality.

18

Jüdische Schriften II, 75. Jüdische Schriften II, 77-78. 20 ‘Die Nächstenliebe im Talmud’, Jüdische Schriften I, 145ff.; ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’, Jüdische Schriften I, 125ff.; ‘Die Messiasidee’, Jüdische Schriften I, 105ff.; ‘Das Problem der jüdischen Sittenlehre’, Jüdische Schriften III, 1ff.; ‘Autonomie und Freiheit’, Jüdische Schriften III, 36ff.; ‘Liebe und Gerechtigkeit in den Begriffen Gott und Mensch’, Jüdische Schriften III, 43ff.; ‘Der Stil der Propheten’, Jüdische Schriften I, 262ff. 19

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So, according to what Cohen holds in this phase of his intellectual development, the history itself of Judaism in Europe leads to Kantian idealism through the expansion of Christianity and the affirmation of natural science: according to Cohen, the Judaism which keeps itself independent as a faith should dissolve into this critical idealism. But, if modernity has elaborated the essential content of Judaism, has not Judaism already accomplished its task in history? In the case of an affirmative reply to this question, is not the connection that the Jew maintains with his religious tradition only a matter of fidelity, as the philosopher himself admits?21 Is this feeling sufficient in order to preserve Judaism, when the fundamental point of reference for a Jew is a Kantian thought whose interpretation is directed by the ideas of modernity?

2. 1904-1912: Critical idealism as a scientific philosophy or as an ethico-religious philosophy, close to Judaism? After the publication of Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, the first part of the system of philosophy, in Berlin in 1902, Cohen publishes Ethik des reinen Willens, the second part of the system, in 1904. As we have seen, according to Cohen, ethics rests on an idealistic theory of knowledge as scientific experience: this is the view that he had found in Kantian reflection, looking more for a coherent doctrine than for a historical representation, and that he fundamentally maintains in his elaboration of the philosophical system. In fact, especially from 1883 onwards Cohen had more and more criticized the ‘letter’ of the Kantian doctrine in favor of its ‘spirit’;22 and in the introduction and in the first chapter of the Ethik entitled ‘Das Grundgesetz der Wahrheit’ he explains how the philosophy of natural science is the necessary foundation of the philosophy of humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) or the ‘sci-

21

Cf. ‘Der Religionwechsel in der neuen Ära des Antisemitismus’, Jüdische Schriften II, 342ff. 22 Cf. Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode 15ff., 105ff.; and Logik, 9ff., 25ff., 37ff., 81ff., 274ff.

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ences of culture’ (Kulturwissenschaften). Among these sciences the science of law (Rechtswissenschaft) is considered the science which particularly has a rational structure. However, in the chapters of the Ethik entitled ‘The Ideal’ and ‘The idea of God’ Cohen also makes reference to a moral philosophy which outlines a peculiar and irreducible concept of time: ethical time is absolutely independent of the space and spatial time which logic defines. Space and spatial time build the ‘totality’ (Allheit) of the being of nature while ethical time concerns the ‘infinity’ of the ideal and human history. Ethical time is connected with the eternity intuited by Jewish monotheism, when it posits a relationship between the ethical work of humanity and God as the perfect ethical being: ‘Eternity means absolutely only that of pure will; eternity has nothing in common with scientific thinking’.23 In Jewish monotheism the idea of God absolutely transcends the being of nature determined by logic, and this idea therefore forms the ideal which humanity has the task to reach: ‘The ideal, as the distinctive nature of ethical being, shows the autonomy of pure will with regard to thinking and knowing’.24 So the Ethik draws a contrast between the sphere of being, which is characteristic of natural science, and the region of the ideal, which is characteristic of ethical actions. But this contrast is not completely consistent with the foundation of ethics on logic which Cohen refers to in this same book: the ethics which makes immediate reference to the idea of divine transcendence opposes the ethics which needs the mediation of logic in order to acquire soundness and certainty. Now, the consequence of this equivocal position which Cohen maintains in his Ethik on the relationship between logic and ethics, is not only that Cohen’s ethics is no longer fully coherent; the concept of the center of the philosophical system, the relationship between philosophy and Judaism, and the interpretation of Kantian idealism too, are no longer clear and definite. In fact, if the system is separated between logic and ethics alternatively regarded as an independent beginning, then the concept of the autonomy of thinking and the concept of the cor23 24

Ethik, 421. Ethik, 425.

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relation between human will and God through morality dispute the position of the central idea of the system; Judaism is divided between its philosophical interpretation by means of a scientific ethics and its similarity to a non-scientific philosophical ethics; and Kant, who on the one hand is the first of all the philosophers of natural knowledge, is on the other hand the philosopher who establishes a close relationship between religion and ethics, and therefore shows an evident analogy with Judaism as a self-sustaining religion. In Cohen’s essays on Judaism which were published between 1904 and 1912 — in fact, as we shall see, 1912 is the beginning of a turn in Cohen’s reflection — the different views on the different subjects mentioned above come out in all their ambiguity and ambivalence. This dramatic theoretical situation appears, for example, in the essays entitled ‘Ein Gruss der Pietät an das Breslauer Seminar’ (1904), ‘Religiöse Postulate’ (1907), ‘Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis’ (1908), ‘Die Bedeutung des Judentums für den religiösen Fortschritt der Menschheit’ (1910), ‘Gesinnung’ (1910), ‘Die Liebe zur Religion’ (1911), ‘Emanzipation’ (1912).25 On one hand in these writings Cohen certainly sees the ‘autonomy’ of ethical will as the ground of modern religion; he relates this ethical autonomy to the State and to humanity as the agent of culture in history; he reduces religion and Judaism, as the original example of religion, to philosophy as the only scientific ‘view of the world’ (Weltanschauung); he points out the necessity of abandoning the medieval idea of religion as the center of culture in favor of the scientific ethics; he exalts the modern Jew’s love for culture and for the State; he regards the Jewish medieval philosophers, particularly Maimonides, as defenders of the ‘Enlightenment’ or supporters of the excellence of theoretical reason as the instrument of pure contemplation; he gives an interpretation of Kantian doctrine by means of the scientific method of philosophy. But, on the other 25

‘Ein Gruss der Pietät an das Breslauer Seminar’, Jüdische Schriften II, 418ff.; ‘Religiöse Postulate’, Jüdische Schriften I, 1ff.; ‘Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis’, Jüdische Schriften III, 221ff.; ‘Die Bedeutung des Judentums für den religiösen Fortschritt der Menschheit’, Jüdische Schriften I, 18ff.; ‘Gesinnung’, Jüdische Schriften I, 196ff.; ‘Die Liebe zur Religion’, Jüdische Schriften II, 142ff.; ‘Emanzipation’, Jüdische Schriften II, 220ff.

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hand, in these same essays Cohen explains how Judaism has an original philosophical content which is formed by the correlation between man and God through ethical will and which makes Jewish thought different from self-confident and self-centered rational philosophy; he points out the role of Jewish religion in the preservation of the idea of morality in history, because this idea requires the recognition of the finite or the conditioned character of human beings; he insists on the fact that modern culture and philosophy find their essential point of reference in the Jewish concept of God; he exalts the love for religion which makes the modern Jew very similar to his fathers; he regards the Jewish medieval philosophers, particularly Maimonides, as the supporters of a ‘religious Enlightenment’ which makes human reason dependent on divine reason; he sees Kant as the philosopher who is deeply conscious of the relationship between freedom and the obedience to an ethical commandment. In particular, these ambiguous and ambivalent expressions of Cohen in the Jewish writings of this period, on themes and arguments which are certainly the most important in his thought, are evident in his essays ‘Religion und Sittlichkeit’ (1907) and ‘Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum’ (1910).26 The first essay, which carries out a difficult search for a concordance between the point of view of philosophy and the point of view of religion, between Kant as a scientific philosopher and Kant as an ethico-religious thinker, finally concludes with a simple opposition between the first and the second direction. Thus Cohen writes in the conclusion of this essay: First of all Judaism has a historical originality in which it is superior to all religions of culture. Such an original force cannot appear as a force which could be substituted.[…] The inclinations and attempts aimed at a gradual destruction are thus characterized and directed as an opposition to humanity. And the other point is the trend of modern culture, and particularly of the modern State. […] The State will produce the reconciliation of the religions too, in order to make them useful for the ideal of systematic ethics in the State of ethics.27 26 ‘Religion und Sittlichkeit’, Jüdische Schriften III, 98ff.; ‘Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum’, Jüdische Schriften I, 284. 27 Jüdische Schriften III, 168.

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So at the end of ‘Religion und Sittlichkeit’ Cohen does not point out any element which can unify the ancient Jewish doctrine, which affirms the necessity of the survival of Judaism on behalf of humanity, with the modern theory of ethics as a branch of philosophy which essentially refers to history and politics. According to this modern theory, humanity is not related to a transcendent God; rather, human beings build a cultural world by themselves, without divine help, because they are completely free from every connection with a world beyond space and time. Therefore, in this essay Cohen’s thought shows an evident lack which is difficult to fill if the radical difference between the two directions is not previously observed and explained. The aforementioned essay on the relations between Kant and Judaism begins with the assertion that Kant always refers to theoretical reason and to that practical reason which has continuity with theoretical reason, as a means for the evaluation of the Bible; and certainly, as Cohen explicitly recognizes, there is a conflict between Kant and Judaism from this point of view. However, Cohen adds in the following pages, Kant himself finally thinks that ‘self-legislation’ (Selbstgesetzgebung) is not sufficient for the real foundation and soundness of morality: for this reason in all his ethical works Kant in the end connects morality and God as the ‘head in the realm of morals’ exactly as Judaism does. In this way, according to Cohen, Kant himself finally points out a very clear division between the knowledge which is directed toward nature, and faith which is directed to an ethico-religious sphere, exactly as Judaism affirms. Besides — as Cohen still maintains in this essay — Kant and Judaism as well identify freedom with the purity of a spirit whose origin is God; both consider evil the negation of this freedom which nevertheless is not able to destroy completely this positive force; both affirm humanity as an end in itself, because it is a divine creation, and peace as the aim of history. Nevertheless, in the conclusion of this essay on Kantian thought, Cohen again defines Kant as the philosopher who in the most rigorous manner expresses the ethos of the French Revolution of 1789. And certainly, Judaism cannot be sympathetic to this ethos which celebrates the rights of man as the only author of his destiny, because of its idea of

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God as the unique true being, as Cohen himself admits. So Cohen ends his exposition of the relationship between Kant and Judaism with the assertion that the first refers to the ‘truth’ of the ‘philosophical method’, while the second makes reference to the ‘truth’ of God. There is no doubt that Cohen, in this phase of the evolution of his thought, attempts to see the existence of an internal harmony between philosophy and Judaism, between culture and religion, between critical idealism as the model of the autonomous thinking and critical idealism as a doctrine which is very close to a philosophy of Judaism as a thought different from the philosophy oriented to science. But, notwithstanding his intellectual effort, Cohen does not succeed in this attempt because in this phase he really does not make evident the deep difference between the first trend of his reflection and the second one. Certainly, he describes their incompatible points and themes; but he does not clarify their essential difference. This difference could perhaps be described in the following manner: that the first direction affirms the concept of a reason which is immanent in being, in Spinozian style, and consequently does not antithetically oppose spirit and nature; and that the second direction, instead, affirms the concept of a reason which is in relationship with a transcendent and supernatural God. So, whereas the first tendency, which certainly makes a distinction between natural sensible forms and rational laws, is nevertheless inspired by an antipantheism that remains pantheistic in its most profound meaning, the second tendency is absolutely antipantheistic, although it sees the presence of God in the human and natural world. In the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, published in Berlin in 1912, Cohen finally clears up this essential difference between scientific philosophy and Judaism about the relationship between spirit and the world by analyzing the opposition between Greek art and Jewish art — the first art typically expressed in statues and pictures, the second in lyrics and music.28 Therefore Cohen becomes now conscious of the necessity of reconciling his two interests and points of reference, represented by Hellenism and 28

Ästhetik I, 186-187; II, 259ff.

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Jewish religion, in a more convincing way than the way he has followed so far.29 Exactly because of this reconciliation, Kantian thought too takes on a consistent aspect instead of the contradictory form which it has in Cohen’s Jewish writings of this period in his intellectual development.

3. 1913-1918: Man’s love of the Unique God as the condition of human culture From 1913 onwards Cohen is involved in a reflection on religion which increasingly brings him to change the center of his philosophical system. In fact, in his Jewish writings composed in the years 1913-1918, he explains more and more clearly the implications and meanings of the concept of ethical correlation between God and man, which he had already seen as the center of the system in the preceding period when he had evaluated Judaism as a religion necessary to the foundation and preservation of human culture. During these years, he unfolds more distinctly how such correlation has its roots in the pure ‘affect’ of love — first of all the love which God has toward man, and then the love of man toward God and at the same time toward his fellow man. This path, which tends more and more toward this new conception of the element which is the condition of human culture, brings Cohen — as we shall see — toward a new reflection on Kantian thought: during these years, Cohen tends to regard Kantian thought no longer as a scientific, but as an ethico-religious idealism which on the one hand is conscious of the origin and impulse of practical reason in what can be expressed by the term ‘religious love’ or ‘spirit of sanctity’ (Geist der Heiligkeit), and on the other hand expands into a philosophy of human culture built on this concept of ‘religious love’ or ‘spirit of sanctity’. So Cohen, in this period, tends to give a coherent image of Kantian philosophy which differs from that maintained in the previous phase.

29

Ästhetik I, 167ff.; II, 422ff.

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The work published in Giessen in 1915, Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie — whose title refers to a subject to which Cohen had devoted a course at the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin in the winter 1912-191330 — already outlines the two themes mentioned above, i.e. first the question of a firm ground for human culture, and secondly the question of a fresh evaluation of Kantian doctrine. Certainly, the research that Cohen conducts in this book has the aim of describing the way in which religious concepts can be harmoniously reconciled with philosophical concepts: the first concepts are deduced by philosophy from Judaism, the second ones from the sciences of nature and human sciences as well. However, the true result of this research is to show not only how religious concepts are deeper than purely philosophical ones in the description of the being of man and the world; but also how purely philosophical concepts can acquire a new meaning and greater soundness if they are built on the religious ones. In fact, the distinctive religious concepts which are explained in Der Begriff der Religion are: the concept of God as an ‘I’ who is absolutely beyond the being of the world, and therefore means the ‘I think’ that absolutely does not refer to sensibility or imagination as sources of knowledge; the concept of a human being who first of all is characterized by ‘compassion’ (Mitleid) for the suffering of the other human being, because he knows that in the world there is no correspondence between guilt and suffering, and who finds his identity as individual in this ‘affect’; the concept of the individual’s ‘desire’ (Sehnsucht) for God as the Infinite which is never satisfied, and whose origin is in God because God Himself stirs up the flame of disinterested love for Him and for the other human being in the human heart; the concept of a love toward God and the other which finds its expression in an infinite ‘humility’ (Demut) or capacity to suffer and support rather than energetically act, and from which nevertheless the energy or activity for moral improvement of the individual and the world necessarily arises; the concept of a meaning of life which is located exactly in this love for God and human beings, because exactly in this pure feeling man reveals his dignity and realizes a theodicy as well — a theod30

Cf. H. Wiedebach, ‘Einleitung’ in: Cohen, Werke, vol. 16.

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icy that consists in recognizing such a divine element in himself, although this theodicy does not imply the negation of human weakness or fragility, of evil, or of death. By contrast, the philosophical concepts which Cohen explains in the Begriff der Religion, are: the concept of the difference between thinking and being as the beginning of natural science, which is maintained in Plato’s notion of ‘hypothesis’ — a concept which is nevertheless connected to Parmenides’ idea of the immanence of thought in the being of nature, therefore to pantheism and its fault of making a clear distinction between the being of ideas and the existence of things; the concept of man as a member of the State or of humanity as ideal ‘totality’; the concept of artistic activity as a ‘sublime game’, a source of infinite joy, a manifestation of human creativity, which is directed to the representation of a human being as a ‘type’ of certain human qualities rather than as an individual; and finally the concept of a progressive realization of culture — i.e. scientific knowledge, the liberal and democratic State, arts — as the highest end of humanity in history. Now, in the Begriff der Religion Cohen himself assigns the features of abstraction, fault of attention to individuals, and indifference to human suffering to these philosophical concepts. But, if these philosophical concepts are elaborated in the light of the aforementioned religious concepts, they are exempt from these limitations. This is exactly what Cohen does in this work when he identifies religion not so much with a new part in his system, as with an ever present element in the three parts of his system, and therefore the point of confluence and synthesis of his system itself.31 In fact, if the philosophical concept of the distinction between thinking and being is seen in the light of the religious idea of the transcendence of a God who is beyond nature, sensibility and imagination, then this concept can give a more accurate description of the mathematical method of natural knowledge. If the concept of humanity for which one has the feeling of ‘respect’ (Achtung) is grounded in the religious concept of ‘plurality’ (Mehrheit) of the individuals, then humanity is no more an impersonal ‘totality’ (Allheit), but a 31

For this remark on Cohen’s Der Begriff der Religion, cf. F. Rosenzweig, ‘Einleitung’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, xlvii-xlviii.

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whole composed of different women and men, and these women and men first of all have social relations through the ‘compassion’. If art as a ‘game’ or evasion from serious human reality has the ‘affect’ of love for suffering human beings as its necessary condition, then art is fully inserted into human life. If culture rests on ‘humility’ or the passivity of compassion as the attitudes in which human value and dignity are revealed, then culture does not lose its ultimate meaning by being limited to the field of only shallow conquests, external to the real life of individuals. Therefore, it is legitimate to maintain that in the Begriff der Religion Cohen arrives at a religious foundation of human culture, beyond his explicit purpose of introducing religion as a distinctive domain into a culture whose fundamental directions are already determined in the light of scientific idealism. Certainly, religion needs culture; but religion is the root from which culture, i.e. knowledge, morality, art, can grow. If religion without culture were restricted to the sphere of pure affect and pure relationships between the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’, culture without religion would be devoid of its ground and essential end. This is what on should infer from the results of the research offered by Cohen in this book. In some passages of the Begriff der Religion Cohen explicitly expresses the idea that the system of philosophy, if lacking reference to the uniqueness of God, compassion, and the relationship between individuals through love as the ‘fundamental force’ (Grundkraft) in consciousness, would be deprived of its center and last end. For example he writes: ‘The distinctive nature of religion is a fundamental condition of the systematic unity of modern cultural consciousness’.32 Or, in a very clear and emphatic expression: ‘Whatever is human […] must always be related to the unique being of God’.33 Now, exactly because the Begriff der Religion tends to emphasize the relationship between man and God, and between man and the other man through the pure ‘affect’ of religious love as the necessary condition of human experience, this work also tends to emphasize the fact that Kant himself had recognized 32 33

Der Begriff der Religion, 119. Der Begriff der Religion, 139.

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and exalted this ‘affect’ when he had identified the last point of his philosophy with listening to the voice of conscience for the sake of this voice itself. Certainly, at the beginning of the Begriff der Religion Cohen describes Kantian theory as the thought which is the high point of the intellectual movement whose origin is Greek science and philosophy, and whose continuation is European scientific and philosophical Enlightenment. But, afterward, Cohen strongly emphasizes how Kant is near to religion when he regards moral commandments as coming from God and at the same time from individual conscience, and obedience to these commandments as the way in which the individual realizes his freedom.34 In the Begriff der Religion, therefore, Cohen tends to evaluate Kantian philosophy as a philosophy of culture inspired by an ethico-religious idealism: this idealism rests upon the concept of the immediate reception of the ‘duty’ imposed on by a categorical and inflexible imperative to every person in the different specific situations of life. So, in this work, Cohen makes clear more the affinity between Kant and Judaism than their difference: he no longer sees the affinity and the difference between these two elements as two equivalent forces, as he did in his Jewish writings of the preceding phase. While in the earlier phase Cohen was divided between his adherence to philosophical tradition inspired by Greek culture, and his loyalty to Jewish legacy, in this he has his most important point of reference in Judaism, and exactly from this point of view he now looks at philosophical thought. In the writings on Judaism which Cohen publishes between 1913 and 1918, he develops in an evident and remarkable way both the directions he had sketched in the Begriff der Religion, i.e. the theme of man’s non-pathological love toward God as the ground of human culture, and the theme of Kant as follower of an ethico-religious philosophy as the first and fundamental part of a philosophy of human culture. In particular the first direction of inquiry appears in the essays whose titles are ‘Das Gottesreich’ (1913), ‘Der Nächste’ (1914), ‘Die Lyrik der Psalmen’ (1914), ‘Die religiösen Bewegungen der Gegenwart’ (1914),

34

Der Begriff der Religion, 110ff.

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‘Das soziale Ideal bei Platon und den Propheten’ (1916).35 In this last essay of his, for example, Cohen explains how the connection between religion and culture could be reduced to the relationship between the Prophets and Plato: on the one hand prophetic sources are superior to the Platonic perspective because they hold ethical ideas of humanity, compassion, humility, which Platonic philosophy does not maintain; on the other hand a philosophical Platonic orientation is essential to prophetic sources because science, philosophy and culture are necessary instruments for the determination of the ‘intuition’ (Schau) and ‘presentiment’ (Ahnung) of the prophetic God as well as for the realization of the prophetic idea of ‘the good’ in the world. The second direction of inquiry appears in the essays published in 1915 ‘Deutschtum und Judentum’, ‘Der heilige Geist’, and ‘Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum’.36 In this last essay, for example, Cohen introduces an antithesis between Spinoza and Kant: Spinoza, whose personality has a ‘fundamental lack of ethico-religious substance’, and who is therefore unable to understand the moral character of human beings and consequently the age-old cause of Jewish survival, limits the use of reason to natural science which includes human science, and so he arrives at the ‘supposed rationalism’ from which many following thinkers will draw inspiration. By contrast, Kant locates the source of human morality in that ‘spirit of sanctity’ which is not a theoretical reason, nor a speculative reason, however related to a metaphysics identified with ethics, but rather the human capacity to listen to divine commandments, the real incentive of ethical actions, and the basis of all other spiritual faculties. Finally, in his posthumous work Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums Cohen expands these two subjects of his inquiry, i.e. the determination of the ethico-religious center of his philosophical system and the ethico-religious interpretation of 35

‘Das Gottesreich’, Jüdische Schriften III, 169ff.; ‘Der Nächste’, Jüdische Schriften I, 182ff.; ‘Die Lyrik der Psalmen’, Jüdische Schriften I, 237ff.; ‘Die religiösen Bewegungen der Gegenwart’, Jüdische Schriften I, 36ff.; ‘Das soziale Ideal bei Platon und den Propheten’, Jüdische Schriften I, 306ff. 36 ‘Deutschtum und Judentum’, Jüdische Schriften II, 237ff.; ‘Der heilige Geist’, Jüdische Schriften III, 176ff.; ‘Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum’, Jüdische Schriften III, 290ff.

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Kant, while giving more details and descriptions of human phenomena than in his previous Jewish writings. On the one hand he explains how the ‘I’ only arises through his relationship with the ‘Thou’ in compassion, how only this typical religious feeling is the attribute which can characterize human beings as such, and how society, humanity and culture have their origin precisely in this relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’. Thus Cohen writes in this work of his: Besides the I and distinct from the It, there arises the He. Is the He only another example of the I, whose thought is therefore already established by the I? Language already protects us from this mistake; language sets up the Thou before the He. Is the Thou also only another example of the I, or is a separate discovery of the Thou necessary, even if I have already become aware of my own I? Perhaps the opposite is the case, that only the Thou, the discovery of the Thou, is able to bring me to the consciousness of my I, to the ethical knowledge of my I.37

On the other hand in his Religion der Vernunft Cohen discusses the similarity between Kant and Jewish sources on the concept of ‘spirit of sanctity’: this concept means human love toward God and toward man , i.e. that goodness or compassion which is the only possible starting-point for practical reason. In this way this concept acquires also the significance of being the root or the ground of Kant’s philosophy of human experience. Thus Cohen writes: Through the ‘statutes and ordinances’ the sanctity actually becomes morality; in the same way the holy spirit in later history always more and more definitely shapes itself into the moral spirit, into moral reason. And the priority given to it over all other qualities of the spirit, allows us to recognize the germ of the thought that Kant expresses by the ‘primacy of the practical reason’.38

But the subject of the explanation of the most important human attribute, on which the unity of culture rests, as well as the subject of the meaning of Kantian doctrine — if they are discussed in the manner in which Cohen discusses them in Religion der Ver37

Religion der Vernunft, 17, English translation by Simon Kaplan, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (New York, 1971), 14-15. 38 Religion der Vernunft, 123, Eng. transl., 106.

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nunft — first of all require an answer to the question of the relationship between philosophy and Jewish sources. Is not a religious terminology used in a philosophical system that sees as the center of human existence man’s pure ‘affect’ of compassion for his fellow man, an ‘affect’ which is the effect of God’s compassion for every man? Does not this system, as an expression of human speculative reason, rest on a preceding, not speculative dimension which is within the human soul? Does not Kant — as the author who finally discovers the fact of ‘respect’ for moral law which is inscribed in the conscience, as the basis of his philosophical system — refer on the one hand to Jewish and Christian tradition, and on the other hand to the necessity of grounding philosophy as rational knowledge in a moral event? This problem of the relationship between philosophy and Jewish sources as the pure and original expressions of religion is actually discussed in some pages of the introduction of Religion der Vernunft. The analyses expounded in these pages are precisely aimed at making clear the anteriority of Judaism or religion with regard to philosophy. The reason which produces the Jewish sources and therefore is present within these sources — Cohen explains in these pages — is completely different from the reason which produces the knowledge of nature as well as the philosophy which is grounded in this knowledge, and therefore is present within this knowledge as well as this philosophy. The reason which it is possible to find in Jewish sources can be defined as the expression of a correlation between human beings and a God who transcends natural events and existence: reason is immediately present when the spirit of morality or religious love connects these two beings. The reason which is the expression of this correlation, discovered by Jewish sources, builds and sets forth a distinctive comprehension of human relations as well of being, i.e. a distinctive philosophy. ‘The philosophical element in the biblical sources has to possess the same distinctive nature as belongs in general to the share religion has in reason’.39 Therefore, the philosophy which analyzes the philosophical element which is found in Jewish sources, determines and organically articulates some concepts that do not immediately belong 39

Religion der Vernunft, 11, Eng. transl., 10.

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to its own field, but to the field of religion. This philosophy, which enlarges its terminology in this way, shares the grounds and the orientation of religion. Consequently, it is very far from the philosophy which was proposed by the Greeks, and which is present mostly in the history of European philosophical thought. While this second philosophy refers to the natural world or natural science as its essential point of reference, the first philosophy refers to Jewish biblical sources and Jewish commentaries on the Bible. Religious sources become the foundations of this philosophy which has a different content and meaning from the content and meaning of Greek philosophy. Now, when Cohen explains this relationship between Jewish sources and philosophical thought in the introductory pages of his posthumous work, he refers to Jewish medieval philosophy: what is typical of this philosophy is the fact that it does not in the first place clarify the knowledge of the being of the world and of the grounds of the world which is found in Jewish religious sources, but rather the knowledge of morality and of the grounds of morality which is found in these same sources. Jewish medieval philosophy does not in the first place define the ontological attributes of God, but His ethical attributes. In particular Cohen refers to Maimonides when he makes clear this aspect of Jewish philosophical thought during the Middle Ages. However, Cohen in the Introduction of Religion der Vernunft also criticizes medieval Jewish thought. He explains, as we have seen, how the human capacity on which ethical knowledge ultimately rests is not so much practical reason as a speculative ability — as is held by the majority of Jewish medieval philosophers, who are connected to the intellectualism of Greek philosophy — as practical reason moved by piety and compassion. Only this ‘fundamental force’ of the soul can produce the ‘I’. Before that relationship of knowledge between God and individuals on which the definition of the divine being as an objective being of morality rests, there is a relationship between them as ‘persons’ through a ‘loving desire’. It is exactly this strong feeling, which coincides with the purity of heart, that is defended, according to Cohen, not so much by Jewish medieval philosophy as by Jewish biblical sources and their commentaries. But, in the introduction to Religion der Vernunft, Cohen also insists that Jewish religious sources are not the

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only sources to which philosophy must refer, if philosophy is to make clear the essential content of religion. Other traditions and other religious literatures can express the same essential content that Jewish sources express, if in forms which are different from the forms of Jewish sources. Nevertheless, according to Cohen, Jewish sources have the privilege of originality and purity in comparison with other religious sources, when they try to express what is the meaning of human being and the conception of the being which arises from this meaning. And so the philosopher who deduces from these Jewish sources the fundamental notions of religion as the results of a rationality which is inspired by the love for God and human beings, has a less difficult task and a more direct and simple path in comparison with those philosophers who refer to other religious sources and traditions. In this manner Cohen adheres to an idealism which fundamentally is more ethico-religious than scientific and theoretical in the last phase of his reflection on the relationship between the philosophical system inspired by Kant and Judaism; and he also gives an interpretation of Kant in the light of this ethico-religious idealism. In this last phase Cohen tends toward a criticism of modern thought, which places the center of human experience in man himself, as well as toward an explanation of the concept of man which is different from the explanation proposed by the philosophical tradition mostly influenced by the Greeks. In fact, as we have seen, Cohen makes clear the deeper knowledge of Jewish medieval philosophers concerning the finite and conditional being of man in comparison with modern philosophers, because of their constant reference to God as the center of their doctrines, although Cohen emphasizes much more than many Jewish medieval philosophers the ‘affective’ content of their idea of intellect or reason as the immediate connection between man and God. And he also no longer refers to theoretical reason, as in Greek philosophy, but to ‘compassion’ as unconditional ‘humility’ or passivity of the ‘I’ in the face of the suffering ‘Thou’, as the fundamental force in human spirit. So Cohen, in the last years of his activity, offers deep thoughts to the philosophical reflection which, in our contemporary age, still wants to answer the question ‘what is man?’, because it

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shares with Kant the ‘cosmic’ conception of philosophy.40 In his posthumous book on Judaism Cohen points out on the one hand the limits of a Logos which has its ground in itself and deduces from itself its own laws, on the other hand the necessity of preserving the universality of the Logos by means of a foundation of the Logos itself in an affectively grounded practical reason. This practical reason, which immediately connects man and God, is the origin of all the other functions of consciousness, of the Logos’ productions too. In this manner, philosophy recognizes that it has its origin in the ethical event which is present in human culture, so that philosophy itself depends on the ethical life of the philosopher in society and history. On the other hand, philosophy can maintain its meaning of rational science, although it recognizes the existence of many expressive forms of its truths: these expressive forms belong rather to the sphere of religious literature. So Cohen, who begins his philosophical reflection by sharing the modern perspective of exalting man’s autonomous activity, finally tends to a return, if on a new, no longer intellectualistic base, to the premodern conception of human nature. The different interpretations of Kant which appear in Cohen’s Jewish writings — from a scientific to an ethico-religious critical idealism — correspond to the different points of views about man and about the relationship between culture, philosophy, and religion which are affirmed in the course of the evolution of his thought.

40

Cf., for example, E. Husserl, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, 1935-1936, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6 (Den Haag, 1954), M. Buber, Das Problem des Menschen (1943), Werke, vol. 1 (MünchenHeidelberg, 1962), and H. Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung (Frankfurt am Main, 1979); Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz. Eine jüdische Stimme (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), as authors who refer to Kant as their mentor in their discussion of the being of man.

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The present essay focuses on Cohen’s handling of the religious concepts of atonement (Versöhnung, also translated ‘reconciliation’), purification and repentance. It will be structured around his essay ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’, with reference to other works as appropriate. Attention will be devoted on the one hand to his handling of the philosophical problems arising from his Critical Idealism, and on the other hand to the often forced way he reads Jewish source texts.

The Kantian Heritage Immanuel Kant, as the originator of German idealism, must shoulder much of the burden of responsibility for the mess in which Hermann Cohen found himself when attempting to reconcile religion and philosophy. The first problem arises from Kant’s unconventional understanding of God. In the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781; 17872) Kant famously debunked the three traditional proofs of the existence of God, the ontological, the cosmological and the physicotheological, or argument from design. God, or at least the concept of God returns through the back door, however, in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1786). Morality1 demands justice, and life in this world is often unjust, so there must be concepts of God, life after death, and freedom, for without these virtue and justice could not exist.

1 I have not attempted in this essay to distinguish between ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’.

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Now the concept God as a functional presupposition may be adequate to support an attenuated deism, but cannot easily support as well-defined and developed a religion as Cohen’s Judaism. Cohen therefore expended much effort in the attempt to stretch Kantian metaphysics to incorporate religion, that is, Judaism in its liberal interpretation. Even in his ‘pre-Jewish’ Ethik des reinen Willens (1904) he extended the concept of God a little beyond Kant as the presupposition necessary to ensure the permanence not only of the implementation of ethical bevahiour but also of the physical world which supports it. Essays such as ‘Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum’ (1910) and the two ‘Deutschtum und Judentum’ essays (1915, 1916) lead to the suspicion that his emotions would have been well satisfied had he been able to demonstrate the total equivalence of Kantian ethics, Liberal Judaism and Germanness. But the attempt was a stretch too far. S.H. Bergman and others may have been right to claim that by the time Cohen composed his posthumous Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (1919) he had in effect substituted a theocentric system for the Kantian anthropocentric one; the shift was perhaps already complete in Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie, published in 1915.2 God, for the mature Cohen, is not a mere leaning-pole for rational ethics, but the source of the whole system, including the world of science; God is origin, rather than presupposition. Even so, the ontological status of Cohen’s God is far from clear; Steven Schwarzschild held that the concept of God remained functional rather than ontological.3 Since, according to Cohen’s ‘principle of origin’, all objects are constructs of thought, this is perhaps not surprising. Though the matter cannot be pursued here, the following sentence is enlightening, and there is no need to assume that Cohen moved from it: The statement ‘God is spirit’ is of value to ethics only insofar as it prepares for the thought ‘God is Idea’. Person, life and spirit are attributes rooted in myth; they are of no use in ethics.4

2 3 4

See Irene Kajon’s article in the present volume. S.S. Schwarzschild, ‘Introduction’, in: Cohen, Ethik, xxii. Ethik, 453.

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The second problem arises through Kant’s insistence that ethics be grounded in ‘reason’, by which he means in synthetic a priori judgements. These judgements must be purely ethical, that is, not grounded in extraneous philosophical, theological or empirical considerations, let alone on self-interest. In the ‘popular’ section of his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) he argued that one should act only in such a way ‘that I might at the same time will that my maxim should be a general law’.5 In the more sophisticated section which follows he distinguishes between categorical imperatives, whose demands are absolute, and conditional imperatives, of the form ‘You must do a or b if you wish to achieve x or y’. Only the previously mentioned rule, Kant maintains, qualifies as a categorical imperative; it is more properly expressed as the Formula of the Law of Nature: ‘Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a Universal Law of Nature’.6 Such a system hardly leaves room for 613 commandments, but that is not a serious problem for Cohen, since even in his religious phase he adhered to the Reform interpretation of Judaism as primarily concerned with ethics, and Kant had already illustrated how various ethical rules, such as not to commit suicide or fail to repay a loan, can be confirmed by reference to the general law.7 What worries Cohen is that Judaism appears to derive its ethics from God’s revelation rather than a priori, out of pure reason. Consequently, he agonises about the relationship between Sittlichkeit (ethics, morality) and Judentum (Judaism=religion), between rational and revealed ethics; from a Kantian point of view only the former is authentic, yet Cohen becomes convinced that the latter is superior.8 Moreover, Kant’s insistence that there is in fact only one categorical imperative makes it difficult to create ‘space’ for specifically religious demands, such as those of holiness and purity, which are obviously central in Jew5

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 4, 402. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 4, 414, 421. 7 Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 4, 422. 8 Cohen wrestles with the relationship between Revelation and rational ethics in Chapters 4 t (Offenbarung, 82f.) and chapter 16 (Das Gesetz, 398f.) of the Religion der Vernunf. Of course, at no time does he understand Revelation in the conventional, historical sense. 6

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ish theology but not obviously derivable from the categorical imperative; perhaps this is why Cohen reduces holiness and purity to ethics, a matter we shall touch upon in our Concluding Reflections.

Cohen on Atonement In his essay 1890/92 ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’9 and much later in his short 1917 essay ‘Der Tag der Versöhnung’10 Cohen focuses on the concept of atonement, or reconciliation. The former essay appeared while Cohen was heavily engaged in the task of defining love of neighbour (Nächstenliebe), defending Judaism against the accusation that it interpreted the command ethnocentrically; the latter is a deeply felt reflection on what he had come to recognize as the core problem of religion (das ganze Problem der Religion). Material from both essays is worked into chapters 11 and 12 of the Religion der Vernunft. Amongst the abundant material Cohen published between the two essays was ‘Religion und Sittlichkeit’ (1900/1907).11 Cohen’s extension of metaphysics to incorporate religion was only possible because he already interpreted religion, and specifically Judaism, in primarily ethical and moral terms. At this early stage the extension had not been completed, but the question already arose, if religion was reducible to ethics and morality what was the point of religion? Clearly, it was necessary to establish a distinctive ‘realm’ for religion so that it might be distinguished from ethics and morality. ‘Religion und Sittlichkeit’ is a sustained attempt to accomplish this division, without which any discussion of atonement, purification and repentance would reduce to ethics. Cohen states explicitly of Judaism in his ‘Religiöse Postulate’ (1907) that ‘in it there is in principle no opposition between religion and ethics, for the God of Judaism is the God of Ethics’.12 9 10 11 12

Jüdische Schriften I, 125-139. Jüdische Schriften I, 140-144. Jüdische Schriften III, 98-168. Jüdische Schriften I, 2.

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This does not mean, as Eva Jospe translates, ‘Judaism, as a matter of principle, makes no distinction between religion and ethics.’ There certainly is a distinction between religion and ethics, or rather between ethics as derived from reason and ethics as revealed in religion. Whether there is a distinction in substance is unclear at this stage; perhaps religion and ethics demand the same patterns of behaviour. But there is certainly a distinction in origin, and the significance of this will grow as Cohen’s thought develops. Atonement, Cohen states in the opening paragraph of ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’, operates in three areas, those of Religion, Ethics and Art; it affects man’s relationship with God, with society, and with himself. A basic moral sense characterizes all three aspects. Basing himself on a now outmoded anthropology Cohen traces the development of the sacrificial system. At first, pagan sacrifice expressed a naïve sense of community with the gods. Since there is no prior sense of sin, of alienation, the offering is a feast, there is no element of reconciliation, for this would presuppose the prior awareness of inadequacy. At a later stage the prophets of Israel, denouncing social injustice, made people conscious of the internal conflict within the sinner, of the sinner’s alienation from God. People were brought to understand that what God wants is not sacrifice, but righteousness. A wrong committed against another person is a wrong committed against God, and at the same time reveals the conflicting inclinations within the individual. Reconciliation with God is only possible when hatred and envy, the ground of the internal conflict, are renounced. It depends on reconciliation between offender and offended, together with the resolution of the contrary tendencies within the individual. The prophet Ezekiel, avers Cohen, inaugurated a third stage. ‘The soul that sins shall die’, declares Ezekiel (18:4). Cohen correctly interprets ‘the soul’ as ‘the individual’ (das Individuum).13 That is, not the father nor the son of the sinner, but only the sinner himself is to suffer the consequences of his sin. This is a sig13

The Hebrew nefesh here carries no metaphysical connotation; ‘soul’ is a misleading translation.

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nificant advance, according to Cohen, on the Ten Commandments, which indicate that God will punish the third and fourth generations of the sinner’s descendants.14 Cohen reckons that Ezekiel’s insistence on individual responsibility is somewhat undermined by his commitment to the priestly cult. Nevertheless, Ezekiel’s insight that it is the individual who sins means that ‘this soul, this person, this individual possesses both the strength and the freedom to achieve morality’.15 It is at this stage that the sacrificial ritual shows itself inadequate to the spiritual demands of the individual and a new and higher form of worship, namely prayer, emerges. Cohen articulates at length the process by which he believes the prophets and their Jewish successors came to realise the inadequacy of the priestly cult to accomplish the ultimate purpose of religion. Though his biblical chronology has not withstood the test of time and his interpretation of Bible and rabbinic texts is unsound, the underlying philosophical notion carries some conviction. For instance, he cites ‘You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’16 as if it were a call for the extension of the priesthood to the whole nation, and in that way a harbinger of the obsolescence of the priestly cult.17 Apart from the questionable chronology implied in this reading, which places Exodus after Ezekiel, the verse surely does not signify that the whole of Israel are to be priests in any formal sense; in fact, it enhances the priestly role by portraying the relationship between priest and lay Israelite as a model for the relationship of Israel to the nations. Nevertheless, Cohen’s point that the mature sacrificial cult led to a deeper understanding of the nature of sin and reconciliation, which in turn rendered both priests and sacrifices otiose, may be correct. Or take a rabbinic passage. Cohen cites a Talmudic statement18 to the effect that the seventy oxen sacrificed as burnt offerings on the festival of Succot corresponded to the ‘seventy na-

14 15 16 17 18

Exodus 20:5,6. Jüdische Schriften I, 128. Exodus 19:6. Jüdische Schriften I, 130. Babylonian Talmud, Succah 55b.

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tions’ of the world. He rightly ignores Rashi’s comment19 that this was a curse on the nations, since the sacrifices declined daily; presumably (though he does not say so) he relies on the more irenic remark of Rabbi Yohanan, paraphrased by Rashi,20 that the offerings atoned for the sins of the nations. However, there is nothing of all this in scripture itself, and consequently no scriptural justification for Cohen’s claim that the Succot offerings de-emphasized the particularism of national unity, creating a community (Gemeinde) which was ‘an association of people beyond class and nation, [dedicated to] unity of conscience, unity of moral humanity’.21 Undoubtedly, there are elements in the prophetic writings that suggest the de-emphasis of particularism, but it is far-fetched to read this into the details of the sacrificial ritual in Numbers. Cohen’s basic contention may be right, that the priestly cult, once it chose to focus on individual guilt and atonement, pointed the way to a universalism which undermined the cult itself. On the other hand, much has happened in anthropology in the last hundred years, and the naïve notion of ‘primitive’ people first thinking collectively, ‘progressing’ to an appreciation of the individual, and thence to the higher concept of the universal brotherhood of man no longer seems plausible. The Hebrew term bi-sh’gaga, as in the opening chapters of Leviticus, is usually translated ‘unwitting’. Cohen, following Biblical scholarship of the time, thinks it originally referred to the purification of the place where an unidentified person had committed a crime. That is, at first it denoted a sin committed without the community’s knowledge. It then came to mean a sin that someone had committed inadvertently, and which lay on his conscience. At the third stage, which Cohen considers reflects growing enlightenment, the question is posed whether, after all, every sin is in a profound sense unintended, seeing that it arises from a temporary obscuring of the moral consciousness22: ‘Is not ev19

Rashi on Numbers 29:18. Rashi on Numbers 29:18. 21 ‘die Vereinigung der Menschen über Stände und Völke zur Einheit des Gewissens, zur Einheit der sittlichen Menschheit’, Jüdische Schriften I, 130. 22 This is reminiscent of the statement attributed to Resh Laqish (Babylonian Talmud, Sota 3a) ‘no-one commits a trespass unless the spirit of foolishness has first entered him’. 20

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eryone’s understanding more or less obscured by passion, or at least insufficiently developed for freedom of choice?’23 ‘Any transgression, no matter how punishable, is also only an error, and as such pardonable.’24 But this might lead to self-indulgence: ‘This is a double-edged thought, which opens the door to thoughtlessness and complacency and undermines the sense of responsibility’.25 (Does Cohen have in mind here those Protestant theologians who may appear over-indulgent to the sinner because (a) we are all sinners and (b) Jesus is nevertheless ready to forgive?) It must be complemented by another of the concepts stressed in Ezekiel 18, that of teshuva (penitence), the root meaning of which is ‘(re) turn’, that is, turn away from evil, return to good, and above all, turn inwards, that is, reconcile the division within yourself. Cohen’s thinking here is obviously indebted to the rabbinic psychology of sin. The internal division he emphasises corresponds closely to the conflict of the yetzer tov (good inclination) and yetzer ra (bad inclination) within the individual. The language of reconciliation, however, does not fit very well with this. The rabbinic approach is not to reconcile the good and bad inclinations, but to put the good in control, a process somewhat reminiscent of Plato’s fable of the charioteer controlling a pair of winged horses;26 Simon ben Laqish, for instance, declared ‘Always incite the good inclination against the bad’.27 C.G. Jung’s concept of individuation through integration of the parts of the psyche may provide a closer analogy, but no direct connection, as Jung was only fifteen when ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’ appeared, and it would be some decades before he elaborated his psychoanalytic theories. It appears, then, that the high point of religion is the discovery of human inadequacy, and of the means to achieve atonement or reconciliation for it. How does this differ from purely human ethics (menschliche Sittenlehre), which, though it ‘proceeds 23

Jüdische Schriften I, 131. Jüdische Schriften I, 132. It is difficult to reproduce in English the play on the words Vergehen and Versehen. 25 Jüdische Schriften I, 131. 26 Plato, Phaedrus, 246. 27 Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 5a. 24

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on the assumption that the laws of ethics are the product of reason, nevertheless expresses the thought that all human deeds are inadequate (and that) all moral laws therefore are and must remain assignments for which one can merely approach the fulfilment’?28 Cohen’s answer is that religion differs from ethics in that, first of all, ‘for religion, this idea (of human inadequacy) is a presupposition; morality is not self-revealed, but rather revealed by God’.29 One might ask, so what? If, for instance, God decided to ‘reveal’ that two two’s made four, would this make it any more or less true than it is already? Surely not. In that case, if we grant Cohen’s (and Kant’s) assumption that ethics is grounded in reason, so that reason would tell us that it is wrong to steal, would the fact that God revealed in the Ten Commandments that stealing was wrong make it any more or less wrong than it was already? This is close to the question much debated in the Middle Ages as to whether certain actions are wrong because God said so, or whether God forbade them because they were already wrong. The mediaevals started from the assumption that God issued ethical commands; they then speculated as to whether there was a realm of ethics independent of God. Cohen’s initial, Kantian, position is the reverse of this. Reason generates ethics; ethics is a Selbstoffenbarung (self-revelation). Does this leave room for an Offenbarung Gottes (divine revelation) which not only has the same content, but possibly greater moral force? A fuller answer to this question is captured only in Cohen’s later writings on religion. In the 1904 Ethik, as we remarked above, the Gottesidee served Kant-like as the presupposition necessary to ensure the permanence of the implementation of ethical bevahiour and hence of the physical world which supports it. But in the Religion der Vernunft Cohen seeks to accord religion a place within his system of philosophy independent of, though still conforming with, ethics; the Introduction to the work shows how exercised Cohen was about this relationship.30 It becomes clear that some problems transcend ethics. Ethics is concerned 28 29 30

Jüdische Schriften I, 135. Jüdische Schriften I, 135. Religion der Vernunft, 38f.

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with humanity in general, but cannot take into account individual personal concerns. This is addressed by religion, which ‘saves’ the individual, and introduces the categories of sin, repentance, and salvation to deal with the individual’s anguish and guilt.31 This suggests that the content, as well as the origin, of divine revelation, in some way exceeds that of rational human ethics. In ‘Der Heilige Geist’ (The Holy Spirit — or rather, as Cohen makes clear in his introductory words, The Spirit of Holiness) (1915)32 the key concept is the correlation of God and human being.33 Although Cohen now and then refers to correlation as a Vereinigung (union),34 what he seems to mean is rather that each is the inevitable counterpart of the other, mirroring but not merging. Merging would obliterate the distinctiveness of God and human; it would verge on pantheism. God’s holiness demands human holiness as its correlate (cf. Leviticus 19:2). But the quality of holiness transcends rational ethics. Cohen does not suggest that there is some specific duty or act prescribed by religious ethics which is lacking in rational ethics; presumably the specific tasks are the same (don’t steal, don’t commit adultery etc.). It is the awareness, the inwardness, the motivation, the spirit of holiness with which the act is performed that constitutes the ‘added value’ of religion. Citing the penitential Psalm 51 Cohen demonstrates how this spirit leads to the admission of frailty and sin, and ultimately, through the ‘holy spirit’, or ‘spirit of holiness’, to healing, or purity. ‘Create in me a pure (tahor) heart, O God; and renew a firm 31

See N. Rotenstreich, ‘Hermann Cohen’, in Essays in Jewish Philosophy in the Modern Era, ed. R. Munk, (Amsterdam, 1996), especially 94-101. See especially Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie referred to above. The close connection of religion with the concerns of the individual was of course stated already in ‘Die Versöhnung’, as we have indicated. 32 Jüdische Schriften III, 176-196. Compare Religion der Vernunft, chapter 7. 33 Alexander Altmann analysed Cohen’s concept of Korrelation in ‘Hermann Cohen’s Begriff der Korrelation’, in: In Zwei Welten. Siegfried Moses zum fünfundsiebzigsten Geburtstag ed. H. Tramer (Tel Aviv, 1962), 377-399. I have not examined his analysis. 34 Jüdische Schriften III, 191, 23, 24. In Religion der Vernunft, 122 Cohen reveals his apologetic intent of defending Judaism against the Christian and pantheist accusation that it allows no room for connection between the human and the divine.

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spirit within me’ (v.12). ‘So the heart is not fixed at birth, nor is the spirit; rather, God must form a new heart and a new spirit, for only in this way will they be firm’.35 This constantly recreated ‘holy spirit common to God and man’ is incompatible with the notion of original sin and with the idea of an intermediary between God and man. Moreover, ‘this correlation is intrinsic to the concept of God’ for ‘the spirit comes from God, who is the origin of the holy spirit’.36 ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’ continues with a careful analysis of the Yom Kippur liturgy through which Cohen concludes that ‘God’s grace is the counterpart of human frailty’.37 This idea is obviously the forerunner of the concept of Korrelation which figures so powerfully in the later essays; when the passage is incorporated into the Religion der Vernunft Cohen actually substitutes the term correlation.38 Judaism differs from — Cohen means, but is too polite or circumspect to say ‘is superior to’ — Christianity in three ways. It requires no mediator; in acknowledging human sinfulness it does not impute another’s sin to the individual (‘original sin’); and it has completely severed itself from the notion that sacrifice is needed for atonement, whereas Christianity retains the figure of the ‘son of God’ as the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of humankind. All these virtues of Judaism stem from its recognition of the immediacy of God’s relationship with human beings. ‘God’s immediacy is the foundation of redemption and forgiveness’.39 God is love,40 and this furnishes the ground for all redemption and reconciliation without the need for extraneous sacrifice, whether of animals or of Jesus. Purification is through and before God, a fact noted by Rabbi Akiva in his dictum ‘Happy are you, Israel. Before whom do you purify yourselves, and who purifies you? Your father in heaven!’41

35 36 37 38 39 40

Jüdische Schriften III, 189, 18. Jüdische Schriften III, 190-91, 19-22. Jüdische Schriften I, 136. Religion der Vernunft, 236. Jüdische Schriften I, 136. Jüdische Schriften I, 136.

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Several comments are in place here. First of all, we may note Cohen’s use of the equivalence ‘God is love’. Cohen rather often states that God is love. The phrase of course comes from 1 John 4:8. While there are innumerable instances in rabbinic literature of God manifesting love, or acting in a loving way, the equivalence ‘God is love’ does not occur. God has many aspects; his relationship with humanity is not always loving. Cohen’s use of the phrase is apologetic, as if to say ‘We Jews are as good as you Christians in proclaiming God’s love’. He doesn’t mean to say that God is identical with love, or that he has no other attributes; even in the present context he puts God’s justice on a par with his love, and in the Religion der Vernunft he argues that the high point in the concept of God is his holiness.42 A second observation is made by Reinier Munk,43 who is concerned with Cohen’s view on the role of God in the ritual act of purification. Leviticus (16:30) reads: ‘For on that day he will atone for you, to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord’. According to Cohen, in ‘Die Versöhnungsidee’, the subject of the verb ‘atone’ is the High Priest, who makes atonement in order that man shall be clean ‘before the Lord’. God is the aim of the act of purification. Purity, that is, cleanliness from sin, is achieved ‘before the Lord’: This advance from purification by the priest to purity before God characterises the distinctive moral responsibility of human beings. For one no longer attains purity by means of a priestly offering, but before God, that is, through one’s own holy striving. Through this effort you fulfil your relationship with God; God becomes your ideal. The Mishna formulates this Jewish awareness of a universal truth in these words: ‘Happy are you, Israel! Who purifies you, and before whom do you purify

41

Mishna Yoma 8:9, inaccurately cited, as we shall see. Cohen develops this thought more powerfully in the conclusion of his essay on the Day of Atonement. 42 Religion der Vernunft 244, 53. 43 R. Munk, ‘Who is the Other? Alterity in Cohen’s “Religion der Vernunft”’, in H. Holzhey et. al. (eds.), “Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums”. Tradition und Ursprungsdenken in Hermann Cohens Spätwerk (Hildesheim, 2000), 275-286, esp. 284-285.

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yourselves? Before your father in heaven’. The latter part of the sentence corrects the former; only through self-purification can purity before God be achieved.44

But as Munk observes, as well as translating the Mishna’s mi taharin as ‘purify yourselves’ (active voice) rather than in the passive (are purified sc. through the ritual of the High Priest), Cohen has reversed the prodosis and apodosis, since the words attributed to Rabbi Akiva in the Mishna are: ‘before whom are you purified, and who purifies you?’45 Cohen’s reading negates the effect of the High Priest’s ritual. As he makes clear in the Religion der Vernunft, purification has to originate in the autonomous will, as self-purification. ‘Only through self-purification can purity before God be achieved.’46 It is very unlikely that this was Akiva’s meaning. To the contrary, though Akiva like Cohen stresses that purification is ‘before God’, he is expressing wonder, not disbelief, at the efficacy of the Temple ritual. It is indeed God who cleanses, and before whom one is cleansed, but God does this through his prescribed ritual. Appropriately, Akiva compares this to the way the miqvé (ritual bath) cleanses, that is, the way God cleanses when people obediently perform his prescribed ritual of immersion. Indeed, God is the only redeemer (der einzige Erlöser), but whereas pace Cohen God redeems collaterally with human moral strivings and without reference to formal ritual, pace Akiva the ritual itself is a wonderful tool that God in his mercy has provided to facilitate redemption.

44

‘Diese Steigerung der Reinigung des Priesters zu der Reinheit vor Gott ist der eigenen sittlichen Arbeit des Menschen zustatten gekommen. Nicht schon durch das Opfer des Priesters wird der Mensch rein, sondern erst vor Gott, d.h. durch sein eigenes heiliges Streben, die Reinheit zu erringen. In diesem Streben vollzieht er das Verhältnis zu Gott, wird Gott sein Ideal. Die Mischna hat das Bewußtsein des Judentums von seiner weltgeschichtlichen Wahrheit in dem Satz formuliert: “Heil euch, Israel, wer reinigt euch und vor wem reinigt ihr selbst euch?: es ist euer Vater im Himmel.” Der Nachsatz ist die Korrektur des Vordersatzes. Nur durch Selbstreinigung kann die Reinheit vor Gott zustande kommen.’, Jüdische Schriften I, 137. 45 That this is no accidental slip is evident when Cohen repeats the error in Religion der Vernunft, 263. 46 ‘Nur durch Selbstreinigung kann die Reinheit vor Gott zustande kommen.’, Jüdische Schriften I, 138.

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Has Cohen then grossly misrepresented the Jewish sources in his effort to establish a religious basis for a modified Kantian ethic? When he implies that rabbinic Judaism abandoned the sacrificial system and replaced it with something ‘higher’ he is certainly incorrect, Maimonides’ position in the Guide of the Perplexed notwithstanding.47 But when he scores a point over Christianity by claiming that Judaism has completely severed itself from the notion that sacrifice is needed for atonement, whereas Christianity retains the figure of the ‘son of God’ as the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of humankind, he is not entirely wrong. The fact is that in rabbinic theology teshuva is possible and effective without sacrifice. We cannot know to what extent the rabbis simply built on the prophetic writings to achieve this position, or to what extent they were forced to adopt it in order to rescue an economy of atonement and redemption when there was no longer a functioning Temple. Unlike Cohen, however, their conviction that atonement and reconciliation with God were available to all penitents at all times was not bought at the expense of denigrating the Temple ritual. Atonement could indeed be achieved without a Temple and sacrifices, but it was much more difficult than with them; through the sacrificial system God had in his compassion provided a helping hand to the penitent. The late essay ‘Der Tag der Versöhnung’ (The Day of Atonement) premises that God is love and justice combined through reconciliation. Two consequences are drawn from this assumption. One is that God cannot redeem the non-penitent. This adds little to what Cohen wrote in the earlier piece; clearly, Cohen is distancing himself from certain Christian expressions of predestination. The other is that redemption is not a release from this-worldly, finite existence. Here he is responding negatively to what he took to be the attitude of ‘Eastern religions’. 47

Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 3:32. Maimonides’ point is that prayer is a superior form of worship to sacrifice; the sacrificial code was instituted at a stage of human development when such things were needed to wean people from idolatry. It is not clear that he denies the restoration of sacrifices in the coming messianic period. His statement in the Guide was often misinterpreted and almost as often subjected to attack; one of the classical attacks is Nahmanides’, in his commentary on Leviticus 1.

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Concluding Reflections We must enquire (a) what does Cohen mean by ‘purity’ and (b) how this relates to ‘purity’ as understood in religions, specifically in Judaism. It is not difficult to answer the first question. Both Kant and Cohen use the adjective rein (pure) almost obsessively (a circumstance which should attract the attention of psychoanalysts). Mostly, it qualifies reason, or will, or feeling. It indicates the absence of ‘foreign’ elements. For Kant, for instance, in the case of reason, ‘pure’ means independent from experience, which is ‘foreign’ as regards ‘pure’ thought. For Cohen, it is ‘the rejection by thought of data, not deduced by means of rational laws from their respective and proper sources’.48 The abstract nouns Reinheit (purity) and Selbstreinigung (selfpurification) are said by Cohen himself, as we saw above, to denote the absence of sin. Since Cohen appears to understand sin as an exclusively ethical concept, human self-purification is the process of approximating perfect ethical behaviour with respect to God, one’s neighbour, and oneself. This accords with the philosophical interpretation of ‘pure’ since the process of approximating perfect ethical behaviour is a process by which, through the practical reason, behaviour is aligned with that which ‘pure’ reason demands. This concept of purity does not at first sight conflict with the religious understanding of the term, but neither does it exhaust the term. Likewise, Cohen’s concept of holiness does not at first sight conflict with the religious understanding of the term, but neither does it exhaust it. The ultimate question here is whether distinctively religious values such as purity, holiness, or the currently fashionable ‘spirituality’, really can be reduced to ethics as Cohen would have us believe.

48

J. B. Agus, Modern Philosophies of Judaism (New York 1941), 69-70. See the sections on ‘die Methode der Reinheit’ in Ethik, 94f.

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Holiness, for Cohen, is essentially a social attribute: ‘So far we have found holiness the high point in the concept of God. But this, in all the richness and depth of its meaning, relates specifically to the content of social ethics’.49 Contrast this view with that of Rudolf Otto, who actually followed Cohen at Marburg in 1917, the year he published ‘Das Heilige’. It is Otto who establishes a truly religious a priori in his concept of the numinous, the sense of awesome mystery, which includes the good and the beautiful but is not reducible to them. Much earlier, Kierkegaard, in his extraordinary analysis of the Binding of Isaac, introduced the concept of the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’, in which the tension between the holy and the ethical is evident; the possibility of such tension demonstrates the irreducibility of the holy to the purely ethical. Traditional religious sources likewise distinguish between the ethical, the holy and the pure. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (17071746), for instance, elaborates the ‘stages of holiness’ attributed to the second century sage Pinhas ben Yair, and distinguishes very carefully between n’qiyyut ‘cleanness’, which might correspond to Cohen’s Sittlichkeit¸ and higher virtues including tahara purity and qedusha holiness.50 Luzzatto, drawing heavily on the thirteenth century Spanish rabbi Bahya ben Asher, author of Kad ha-Qemah51, defines purity as a state of the mind in which it is completely free from the yezter ha-ra‘ (evil inclination). Luzzatto’s insistence that the pure of heart individual is motivated only ‘by the good which arises from the deed in thought and in service (of God)’52 is Kantian in tone, but does not conceive purity as a social attribute.

49

‘Als höchster Punkt im Begriffe Gottes galt uns bisher seiner Heiligkeit. Aber diese in aller Fülle and Tiefe ihrer Bedeutung bezieht sich eigentlich doch nur auf den Inbegriff der sozialen Sittlichkeit’, Religion der Vernunft, 243. 50 Luzzatto’s Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Upright) was first published in 1740. It was translated into English by Shraga Silverstein, New York and Jerusalem, 1966. Chapter 16 deals with purity. 51 This was translated into English by Charles B. Chavel under the title Encyclopedia of Torah Thoughts. (New York, 1980), see 271-278. 52 Mesilat Yesharim, 204.

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Pinhas ben Yair’s words make a fitting conclusion to any discussion of Atonement, Purification and Repentance, the more so as it would be easy to interpret them along Cohenian lines: Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair said: (The study of) Torah leads to carefulness; carefulness leads to zeal; zeal leads to cleanness; cleanness leads to refinement (abstemiousness, separation); refinement leads to purity; purity leads to piety; piety leads to humility; humility leads to the fear of sin; the fear of sin leads to holiness; holiness leads to the holy spirit, the holy spirit leads to the resurrection of the dead.53

53

Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zara 20b. There are many textual variants and alternative ways to translate.

SUFFERING AND NON-ESCHATOLOGICAL MESSIANISM IN HERMANN COHEN ANDREA POMA, TORINO

In this paper I shall consider only one of the many important aspects of the messianic idea in Cohen’s thought. In his view the Jewish messianic idea is the historical origin, source of meaning and regulative ideal of the universal idea of humanity and therefore of universal history; it is the regulative ideal of the idea of political justice and the dignity of the poor and therefore of the profound relationship between ethics and politics. Furthermore, the messianic idea is an integral part of the monotheist idea and hope of redemption. Here I shall investigate another of its aspects: the relationship of the messianic idea with suffering, which raises the latter to its supreme meaning of ‘vicarious suffering’. It is here, in my view, that the problem of the relationship between messianism and eschatology lies. Though this problem is resolved unequivocally in Cohen, the solution is an unsatisfactory one, owing to its radical nature. There appear to be significant difficulties in Cohen’s thought on this point, and they also involve his anti-eudaemonism. I shall start from a passage in Cohen’s ‘Die Messiasidee’, where he writes, with reference to the radical novelty introduced by Deutero-Isaiah: The new Messiah does not need to be powerful; the entire cult of heroes must be destroyed. This gives birth to the moving image of the servant of God, who, like a miserable, afflicted, despised man of pain and suffering, with neither appearance nor beauty, is led, like a lamb, to the slaughter, and, like a sheep, falls dumb before its shearers. He is buried with the wicked. But ‘by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many’. This servant of God deposed God’s anointed. But since he is a man of the people, the people are now significantly called ‘the servant of God’, as is especially the case in Deuteronomy.

414

ANDREA POMA The object of religious-patriotic yearning is now purified in the strictly religious concept of the servant of God, replacing the anointed king.1

The essay immediately goes on to indicate an initial consequence: Israel’s historical universalism as its messianic task.2 All this can easily be identified with an important stage in Cohen’s attempt to develop a radical, coherent anti-eudaemonistic ethics (and thus a philosophy of history and religion), in the direction of Kant, but one that was even more drastic, since his intention was not only non-eudaemonistic but anti-eudaemonistic. It is well known that Cohen, though appreciating the non-eudaemonistic nature of Kant’s ethics, rejected Kant’s location of the idea of the supreme good in ethics, and within it the idea of happiness, which, though not a determining factor for morality, pointlessly weakened and obscured the purity of ethics.3 Admittedly, Kant, as is well known, was aware of the problem and attempted to treat it as delicately and subtly as possible. In the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, he initially looks for ‘a word to denote a satisfaction with existence, an analogue of happiness which necessarily accompanies the consciousness of virtue, and which does not indicate a [sensuous] gratification, as “happiness” does’,4 and concludes that: ‘this word is “self-contentment”’.5 Subsequently, still preserving the difference from Glückseligkeit, he places Zufriedenheit next to Seligkeit: Thus we can understand how the consciousness of this capacity of a pure practical reason through a deed (virtue) can produce a consciousness of mastery over inclinations and thus of independence from them and, from the discontentment which always accompanies them, bring forth a negative satisfaction with one’s condition, i.e. contentment, whose source is contentment with one’s own person. Freedom itself thus becomes in this indirect way capable of being enjoyed. This cannot be called happiness, since it does not depend upon a positive participation of feeling; nor can it be called bliss, because it does not include complete independence from inclinations and desires. It does never-

1

H. Cohen, ‘Die Messiasidee’, in: Jüdische Schriften I, 114. Cf. ‘Die Messiasidee’, 114. 3 See, for example, H. Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ethik, 351ff. 4 I. Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 117; Eng. transl. by Lewis White Beck (New York, 19933), 124. 5 Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 117; Eng. transl., 124. 2

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theless resemble the latter so far at least as the determination of the will which it involves can be held to be free from their influence, and thus, at least in its origin, it is analogous to the self-sufficiency which can be ascribed only to the Supreme Being.6

At this stage an interesting operation makes it necessary and possible for him to extend the empirical definition of happiness, to which he usually refers, to a new, more generic definition opening the way to an ideal, pure concept of happiness: Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world, in whose whole existence everything goes according to wish and will. It thus rests on the harmony of nature with his whole end and with the essential determining ground of his will.7

Now the scene is set for the introduction of happiness into the supreme good, though still keeping intact the latter’s ideal nature: The holiness of morals is prescribed to them even in this life as a guide to conduct, but well-being proportionate to this, which is bliss, is thought of as attainable only in eternity. This is due to the fact that the former must always be the archetype of their conduct in every state, and progressing toward it is even in this life possible and necessary, whereas the latter, under the name of happiness, cannot (as far as our own capacity is concerned) be reached in this life and therefore is made only an object of hope.8

6

Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 118; Eng. transl., 125. See also the note in Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 123; Eng. trans., 130. See also the distinction between ‘moral happiness’ and ‘material happiness’ in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 6, 67f.: ‘worunter [die moralisch Glückseligkeit] hier nicht die Versicherung eines immerwährenden Besitzes der Zufriedenheit mit seinem physischen Zustande (Befreiung von Übeln und Genuß immer wachsender Vergnügen), als der physischen Glückseligkeit, sondern von der Wirklichkeit und Beharrlichkeit einer im Guten immer fortrückenden (nie daraus fallenden) Gesinnung verstanden wird; denn das beständige “Trachten nach dem Reiche Gottes”, wenn man nur von der Unveränderlichkeit einer solchen Gesinnung fest versichert wäre, würde eben so viel sein, als sich schon im Besitz dieses Reichs zu wissen, da denn der so gesinnte Mensch schon von selbst vertrauen würde, daß ihm “das Übrige alles (was physische Glückseligkeit betrifft) zufallen werde”’. 7 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 124; Eng. transl., 131. 8 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 128f.; Eng. transl., 135.

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Nevertheless, Cohen was dissatisfied with Kant’s efforts. The latter had been prevented from taking the final step in a clear break with eudaemonism by two aspects: a) the need to reward moral ‘worthiness’ (Würdigkeit); b) the consideration of the good as hope concerning the individual. Cohen definitely freed his ethics from this second limit, grounding the concept of man as an individual in the universal one of humanity. Here the messianic idea plays an important role. In Cohen’s view messianism only reaches its full value when it loses all personal, still somewhat mythical connotations, linked with an individual, and becomes an idea. Again in ‘Die Messiasidee’ we read: We call this idea historical, in the sense that it becomes the guiding concept of history, absolutely not exclusively in the direction of national history. Whereas from the patriotic standpoint the political presupposition ensures that the Messiah be the liberator of Israel, the prophet gradually takes the Jewish state, the kingdom of David, the city of Jerusalem to mean the kingdom of God on earth. Thus the Messiah, who is called upon to found this kingdom of God, turns from political envoy into guarantor of the faith in the realization of divine requirements on earth. This is the eminent historical meaning of the concept of Messiah. The Messiah not only passes from conventional priest and king to free individual with a subjective function and responsibility. He is also freed from the ambiguities of personal heroism. He must remain a person, but the person becomes a symbol of an age, in which the person, inasmuch as he has this meaning, disappears. Roughly speaking, the Messiah becomes a concept of the calendar. The person of the Messiah is replaced later by ‘the days of the Messiah’. The anointed one is idealized in the idea of a historical period of the human species.9

This idealization is underlined further in the distinction, dating from the talmudic period and later revived by Maimonides,10 between ‘future world’ (olam ha-ba) and ‘future time’ (atid lavo).11 Thus Cohen thought he had excluded from messianism 9

‘Die Messiasidee’, 107f. Cf. H. Cohen, ‘Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis’, in: Jüdische Schriften III, 280f. 11 Cf. ‘Die Messiasidee’, 117f.; see also Religion der Vernunft, 291, 361; English translation by Simon Kaplan, Religion of Reason Out Of the Sources Of Judaism (New York, 1971), 249, 310f. 10

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any trace of eschatological meaning, at the same time raising it to the meaning of a universal historical ideal. Nevertheless, if the Messiah has thus actually, uniquely become a historical ‘idea’, losing all connotations as a mythical ‘individual’, this does not mean that this idea, resulting from Cohen’s elaboration, does not still have even greater importance for the historical individual and his action of ethical realization. This point has the purpose of opening up an initial prospect on the problem of eschatology. In both ‘Die Messiasidee’12 and the Religion der Vernunft,13 Cohen, in the very name of the above mentioned idealization and historicizing of messianism, abandons all hope for the immortality of the individual as such, seeing in such hope an eschatological illusion, with which he contrasts the ethical ideal of the survival of the individual in the eternity of the moral, historical progress of humanity. Another negative prospect on the problem of eschatology arises from the above mentioned aspect of a strict anti-eudaemonistic conception in Cohen’s view. The dignity acquired by man in his moral activity does not require or expect a reward. Therefore happiness can be neither a determining motive nor even an expectation for the individual, either in this world or in the illusory future world of eschatology. Only ‘peace’ can be the messianic hope: a historical, not an eschatological hope; universal, not individual.14 Thus, in Cohen’s thought, anti-eudaemonism and rejection of eschatology are complementary, not merely co-existent, but inextricably linked. On the one hand, denying that happiness is the sense of history is not a manifestation of pessimism or moral cynicism, but, on the contrary, a positive affirmation of the value of the infinity of the ideal and of its immanent reality with respect to historical progress.15 But rejection of a utopian next 12

Cf. ‘Die Messiasidee’, 117f. Cf. Religion der Vernunft, Chap. XV, 344ff; Eng. transl., 296ff. 14 Cf. ‘Die Messiasidee’, 115ff; Religion der Vernunft 290f.; Eng. transl., 249. 15 See, for example, Kants Begründung der Ethik, 351: ‘The simple question: “how is the supreme good practically possible?” is bad. There are no more questions. What is needed in the face of the forum of practical pure reason is therefore practically possible. Our human efforts are unimportant, as are cultural conditions and the whole of nature. all our experiential knowledge 13

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world does not mean shutting the door of hope; it is rather rejection of a flight from the moral activity of the historical realization of the good.16 Nevertheless, it appears to me that there are considerable difficulties on both sides. On the one hand, however attractive and objectively significant Cohen’s attempt at formulating a strictly anti-eudaemonistic ethics may be, the problem does present itself of whether this kind of ethics is feasible within critical philosophy, avoiding the pitfall of the mystique of pure love. On the other hand, however convincing the appeal to the absolute faithfulness of ethics to history may be, the reduction of eschatology to mere utopia is debatable. The difficulties involved in both Cohen’s radical anti-eudaemonism and anti-eschatologism become unavoidably clear as soon as attention is shifted to the individual and his role in history. As is well known, this happens when we pass from ethics to religion. As long as Cohen saw the messianic idea as originating in religion, though only of interest for the transfer of content to ethics (as is also essentially the case in his essay ‘Die Messiasidee’), the difficulties are latent. However, when, in the Religion der Vernunft, the messianic idea, without any change in content, is also considered in its religious specificity, and thus also in the prospect of the responsibility and universal historical vocation of the individual (as person or people), these difficulties become evident and require examination and resolution. This is sparked off by the theme of messianic suffering. Suffering, which had not been of particular importance for Kant’s ethics, takes on, as is well known, a multiple, important role in Cohen’s ethics and philosophy of history and religion: as desired to find its limits and it found them in the realm of ends.’ 16 Cohen, ‘Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis’, 283f.: ‘The idealization of this world in messianic time corresponds to the sublimation of the next world. The distinction between the two, the elimination of their identity, establishes their ethical link, where they complete each other. Despite all of Israel’s political fears and tribulations, yearning for the Messiah could not lose its meaning for humanity, but scepsis and mysticism here have transformed the future into utopianism. Maimonides saw ancient eudaemonism in this utopianism of the Arab political novel, just as Thomas More was a historical eudaemonist. Maimonides was able to use the ethicized next world in self-fulfillment for the messianic age, making the latter the preparation for the former. Hoping for this, arranging and ensuring self-fulfillment means acknowledging the idea of the Messiah.’

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Mitleiden, a moment in the moral activity of liberation from guilt and, finally, in its culminating meaning of messianic man’s vicarious suffering. This historical and ethical value and dignity of suffering raises important questions in respect of Cohen’s anti-eudaemonism and anti-eschatologism. There is no doubt that Cohen opposed metaphysical exaltation of suffering, for which he criticized Schopenhauer, for example: The metaphysical meaning of suffering makes suffering the only reality in human existence proper, and the practical consequence of this metaphysics of pessimism is therefore the realization and verification of this principle in the negation, in the repeal of existence. However, if this wisdom is considered to be metaphysics, in no case can it be considered ethics; for the latter is throughout the affirmation, development, and elevation of human existence. If ethics now sees existence afflicted with suffering, the compassion becomes for it only a signpost for the question: How can suffering be overcome? Subjectively, suffering is pain; does passion abide on one level with pain, or does it contain in itself a means of dissolving it? Is it perhaps the wound itself, which brings with it its own healing?17

Cohen is always unambiguous when dealing with the notion of Mitleiden (often in opposition to Schopenhauer) not in the sense of sympathetic suffering, but in that of a moral act whose aim is the elimination of the suffering of the other, firstly poverty, historical social suffering. Thus, also in the individual’s action of moral liberation from guilt, Cohen clearly treats suffering as a stage in the process, not its final result, even less as its end: Other systems of faith made the mistake of thinking that suffering is not a means but a final end. Thus it became possible to represent the divine itself as suffering, as human suffering. Although in this idea the end of the redemption of men is seen along with and beyond suffering, yet the redeemer himself must take this suffering upon himself. And through this idea, suffering becomes and is the end. Moreover, there is a corrupting attraction in the idea that suffering is a divine end in itself. Nonetheless, this idea is false. Only morality itself, only the correlation of God and man can be an end in itself. Everything else in morality, everything else in religion, is accessory and a means to this unique end. Therefore, suffering also can only be a means. And the end itself, which

17

Religion der Vernunft, 21; Eng. transl., 19.

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ANDREA POMA is redemption, cannot be thought of in isolation from its means; both have to cooperate in order to achieve the end. Hence, redemption and not suffering is the final meaning of life. In order to consummate redemption man and God cooperate; in this the correlation of man and God receives its highest confirmation.18

Further on in the Religion der Vernunft, Cohen reaffirms: Suffering is the precondition for redemption. The latter, however, is the liberation from all the dross of empirical humanity and the ascent to the ideal moment in which man becomes a self. [...] suffering is only a prelude, even if it lasts thousands of years.19

The meaning of suffering takes a qualitative step forward, placing it in a position well beyond the limits of a mere instrumental value, when it is further investigated in the messianic idea where suffering, free from any function as liberation from the individual’s guilt, as the suffering of the just one, takes on the supreme dignity of an ultimate, anti-eudaemonistic sense of history, and, at the same time, of a supreme force of historical progress. In Chapters XIII and XIV of the Religion der Vernunft, which deal with the messianic idea, a number of passages testify to this shift. In his comment on Isaiah 45.7: ‘He [God] makes peace and creates evil’, Cohen separates the meaning of ‘misfortune’ and suffering, sent by God, from moral evil, for which God is not responsible.20 In the same passage he distinguishes between moral good and earthly well being and prosperity, refuting the idea that the latter are signs of divine blessing; on the contrary, in Cohen’s view, the ethical rigour of monotheism, in opposition to eudaemonism, recognizes the sign of the divine vocation and the ideal meaning of history in suffering, particularly in its social form, i.e. poverty: ‘The poor become the pious. This identity is the high point of ethical monotheism. Plato’s ethical idealism never reached this height.’21

18 19 20 21

Religion der Vernunft, 268; Eng. transl., 230. Religion der Vernunft, 274; Eng. transl., 235. Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 302; Eng. transl., 259. Religion der Vernunft, 302; Eng. transl., 259.

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Further on, returning to the anti-eudaemonistic meaning of history,22 Cohen reveals the meaning and value of ‘vicarious suffering’: The historical concept of Messianism produced a concept, namely, that of the vicarious sufferer, which will now be elucidated. This concept seems to contradict the fundamental concept of ethical autonomy, because morality in all its stages has to be one’s own deed, and does not admit of any representative. However, this autonomy means only that a representative for guilt is excluded, but not for suffering. Social insight and feeling have disclosed the way this distinction is to be understood, and this understanding has the value almost of a new revelation. Only through the above distinction can the identity between God’s justice and love become understandable. Man’s sufferings become ‘chastisements of love’. Consequently the man, the Messiah, is conceivable as representative not of the guilt of men and peoples but of the suffering, which otherwise would have to be their punishment. Only through the Messiah’s taking the earthly suffering of man upon his shoulders does he become the ideal image of the man of the future, the image of mankind, as the unity of all peoples. He becomes through this not a Tantalus or Sisyphus but the Atlas who supports the moral world of the future. Only through this concept of the representation of human suffering could the messianic concept of history be fulfilled. For the concept of power in history is only naturalistic, anthropological, ethnological, or nationalistic. The ethical concept of world history must be basically free of all eudaemonism. Therefore, power cannot be the standard of ethical history.23

By reconciling the two viewpoints: the value of vicarious suffering and the denial of suffering as a value as such and as an end, Cohen formulates an anti-eudaemonistic view of history, for which: every eudaemonistic appearance is nothing but an illusion; and […] the genuine value of life for the entire history of peoples lies in moral ideas and is therefore represented among men only by those who are accredited as carriers of these ideas.24

22

‘For “man doth not live by bread only”. Bread stands here for earthly happiness in general. This saying wards off the idea of eudaemonism. The value of human life lies not in happiness but rather in suffering’, Religion der Vernunft, 307; Eng. transl., 263. 23 Religion der Vernunft, 246, 308; Eng. transl., 149, 263f. 24 Religion der Vernunft, 309; Eng. transl., 264f.

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Therefore, the protagonists of history are the poor and the suffering, who take on the messianic role of universal salvation. Here Cohen is not indulging in a tragical view of history,25 but favours an anti-eudaemonistic conception, in which the historical value of ‘humility’ is contrasted with ‘the acceptance of superficial human reality as displayed in power, in splendor, in success, in dominion, in autocracy, in imperialism’.26 Suffering and humility are the characteristics of the Messiah, of the ‘ideal man’, who ‘will restore justice and peace on earth’.27 Inasmuch as he takes upon himself this responsibility of vicarious suffering, the people of Israel assume the messianic, concretely historical meaning of the ‘Servant of the Eternal’: Every injustice in world history is an accusation against mankind, and consequently the misery of the Jews has been at all times a great rebuke against the other peoples. But from the messianic point of view, a light of theodicy is cast even upon this riddle of world history. Considered from the point of view of eudaemonism, the suffering of the Jews is, to be sure, a misfortune. But the messianic calling of Israel sheds another light upon its own earthly history. As Israel suffers, according to the prophet, for the pagan worshipers, so Israel to this very day suffers vicariously for the faults and wrongs which still hinder the realization of monotheism.28

All peoples and all men, the pious peoples of the world, are involved in this messianic responsibility, inasmuch as they understand and accept vicarious suffering as the only authentic meaning of history.29 This clear evaluation of suffering, not only as a means, but also as absolute historical and moral dignity, as I pointed out above, does not replace the ideal of freedom from suffering, but 25 ‘It does not have to be the case, and certainly it shall be different in the future, that there should be only tragic representatives of morality. This is a conception of dramatic poetry, to which ethics in no way has to consent.’, Religion der Vernunft, 309; Eng. transl., 265. 26 Religion der Vernunft, 309f.; Eng. transl., 265. 27 Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 310; Eng. transl., 266. 28 Religion der Vernunft, 312f.; Eng. transl., 268; cf. also 311-313, 330, 332, 333; Eng. transl., 266-268, 283f., 285, 286. 29 Cf. Religion der Vernunft 313; Eng. transl., 268.

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co-exists with it, as Cohen observes when commenting on Isaiah 25:6-8, and has peace as its final ideal: ‘And the solution of this world-historical riddle provided by theodicy is formulated in the line “chastisement for our welfare” […]. Israel’s suffering is the tragic chastisement which is to bring about peace among men’.30 Cohen thus appears to occupy the middle ground between two alternatives, neither of which is acceptable in itself. On the one hand, he had conducted such a detailed, profound exploration of the ethical and historical value of suffering, so much so as to be no longer able to restrict its meaning to a mere instrumental value, whose ethics would be kept within the limits of eudaemonism. On the other hand, the exaltation of the dignity of suffering as an absolute value and ultimate sense of history, if it is unilaterally pushed to its ultimate consequences, would inevitably transform Cohen’s argument into a mystical cult of pain, which is quite alien to his critical philosophy. It is possible to avoid this alternative that leads nowhere by following the classic route offered by eschatology, which keeps the option of an eventual overcoming of suffering, while at the same time placing this final stage beyond history, and preserves the immanent value of suffering by warding off eudaemonism. However, eschatology appeared to be unacceptable to Cohen, since it was still too mythical, and, in the end, not sufficiently cleansed of every trace of eudaemonism. He saw it as a utopian flight into the next world of history, draining the ideal of its potential for historical realization. He thought he could replace eschatological hope in the ‘future world’ with the historical hope for future ‘peace’ in this world. Peace is the ultimate end of eternal historical progress together with messianic hope and suffering. As the ultimate end which is totally immanent in history, even though it is purely ideal, peace is both the horizon determining the direction of the historical progress of humanity and hope for the moral engagement of the individual, who can thus make his suffering significant, though giving up any interested expectation of a reward for the individual I. Among the many sections of Cohen’s works dealing with this problem,

30

Religion der Vernunft, 319f., 321, 331; Eng. transl., 274, 275, 284.

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ANDREA POMA

Chapter XV of the Religion der Vernunft on immortality and resurrection is one of the most significant.31 The essay ‘Die Messiasidee’ is also explicit: This idealization of the personal Messiah in the messianic age required, as could be expected, further mediation. Such a crucial idea grew together with the most secret premonitions of the human spirit. One of these is the thought of resurrection, a feature of general mythology, learnt by the Israelites in Persia and developed, on the one hand, into the idea of the immortality of the soul, and, on the other, linked with their messianic hopes. This mixture, which is preserved in the prayers of later ages, is to be found in our most recent canonic writings. Traces are to be found in Isaiah, Ezekiel and Malachi. Malachi relates this thought to the saga of Elijah, whom he presents as the precursor of the Messiah. This is the Elijah seen in the Book of Sirach by the blessed, ‘those who have fallen asleep in love’. It is finally and above all in Daniel that there is the hope that ‘those who sleep will awake in the dust of the earth’. This is connected to hope for the kingdom of God, brought by the ‘son of man’. This son of man is also the Messiah, resulting from the generalization of the servant of God. Now, however, the connection of ‘eternal life’, to which the pious are aroused, the Messiah’s kingdom of God, raises the crucial question: whether this connection can remain standing. The decisive question arises on the contingent relationship between religion and independent pure morality: the question on the relationship between eternal life after death and eternal peace on earth. In a way one idea is the correction of the other. Only the good rejoice in eternal life. But the bad, in a historical sense, should no longer exist in eternal peace. And the prophets, who insist on this faith, assure us that this pious desire is not a fantastic religious desire, originating in a ‘superficial’ human morality. If the idea of the Messiah had to be purified in the idea of universal peace, it was important to establish the difference between the resurrection of the dead and the future age. This difficult task belonged to the talmudic age of messianic Judaism: the distinction between the ‘future world’ and ‘future time’.32

But has everything been resolved in this way? Certainly, from the universal point of view of humanity, the immanent ideal of peace allows idealistic thought to avoid the two dangers which, with Kant, could be called empiricism and mysticism, i.e. the risk of being limited to an unsatisfactory empirical datum of the historical society as such, on the one hand, and seeking refuge in the 31 32

Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 344ff.; Eng. transl., 296ff. ‘Die Messiasidee’, 117f.

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imaginary representation of a utopian paradise, on the other. Thus the ideal remains within its correct limits, which are its reality and historical effectiveness: ‘completeness, fulfillment, the incompleteness of fulfillment’.33 If an anti-eudaemonistic prospect for ethics is accepted, the ideal of universal peace is a sufficient end for historical action and for the acceptance of suffering of the individual as well, when sufficiently purified for free acceptance of the determining motive of moral law and thus free from concern about a reward for his individual ‘I’. This is certainly sufficient for the individual to reject courageously any sceptical temptation concerning the sense of history and his own engagement therein. But is it possible for the individual to keep up a day to day existence in pain, depriving himself, on the one hand, of all hope of consolation and, on the other, rejecting the leaden mystique of suffering? This is the further question. We are dealing with the problem of a horizon of redemption for the individual, not only in the ideal of the universal peace of humanity, but also in the hope of individual salvation beyond suffering. Redemption is certainly a strong driving force for the individual in his moral and historical engagement, which is continually renewed and never fulfilled: Redemption is liberation from sin. In suffering sin became thinned out. Thus redemption is also liberation from suffering. In religious existence, so far as it is regulated and developed by the guiding thread of morality, everything is only valid for moments of ascent and transition. There is no fixed, rigid existence, rather everything is transition. Hence liberation from suffering, too, is only a moment in the course of moments, and suffering has to become again the disciplinary means for the self-discipline of man. Moreover, the feeling of joy in being liberated from suffering has its validity only as a moment. Such a moment is redemption. Also the place upon which the self sets itself up and builds its sheltering booth is such a moment. It gives protection only for the moment. Only for the moment does the I have stability. Only for a moment can it demand and use redemption. This difference between the moment of ascent and stabilized existence brings about the separation with regard to redemption between pure monotheism and other creeds. We are not yet discussing immortality. We have not even finished with the human world below. but since we have

33

Ethik, 424.

426

ANDREA POMA now set up, beyond the fellowman, the man as I, we need for the concept of his redemption from sin the limit determining the moment of redemption. Redemption is to be thought of only for one moment’s duration. Only for one moment, which may be followed by moments of sin. No matter! They also will again be relieved by the moment of redemption.34

But this is insufficient both for the individual and humanity. The hope for final redemption from sin and suffering accompanies engagement in day to day historical progress and cannot be drained of meaning, cannot be declared illusory, without the ideal of messianic redemption being hopelessly diminished: However, the unique God is the forgiving God for each human individual, and therefore also for all men. The liberation of men from the burden of sin is therefore provided for in the very concept of this God. It is not possible for the matter to remain at the fact that men always sin and that God always merely forgives.35

If this hope for the whole of humanity can and must be ‘peace’, seen as an immanent ideal in history, not a utopia beyond it, the individual, who does find a sense in his engagement in active participation in this ideal of humanity, still has the inalienable, legitimate need for his individuality, elevated to this ideal of humanity, not to be annulled in it, but preserved, and, with it, a legitimate hope for definitive redemption as an individual. This ‘peace’ should be reachable and expected by the individual. Individual ‘peace’, however, cannot be legitimately conceived as a historical moment, except in the prospect of expectation: but this is only grounded in correlation with final peace. The Friede-Zufriedenheit correlation, dealt with by Cohen in the last chapter of the Religion der Vernunft, contains important implications in this context. The notion of Zufriedenheit, as we have seen, had already been chosen by Kant to elaborate the moral individual’s passage from the historical experience of his moral engagement to eschatological hope for the supreme good, in a non eudaemonistic context. Kant, in this conceptual elaboration, refers to Zufriedenheit, seen as ‘self-contentment’ (Selbstzu34 35

Religion der Vernunft, 268f.; Eng. transl., 230f. Religion der Vernunft, 342; Eng. transl., 293.

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friedenheit),36 ‘contentment with one’s own person’ (Zufriedenheit mit seiner Person),37 in correlation with divine ‘bliss’ (Seligkeit).38 Cohen, on the other hand, interprets Zufriedenheit as certainty of historical progress, of the actual realization of the ideal, and correlates it with divine Friede. The fact that in Cohen the notion of Zufriedenheit, although preserving a fundamental Stimmung of happiness and joy, does not keep Kant’s emphasis on the character of satisfaction, and is considered in the context of suffering (which is alien to Kant)39 and with reference to ‘humour’,40 is connected with this shift in the prospect of the individual from himself to humanity. Zufriedenheit as a daily, real anticipation of redemption in the life of the individual is correlated with peace, which is both a divine attribute and an ideal of humanity. Elimination of any form of eschatology also seems active and effective here. But the final pages of the Religion der Vernunft (among the finest ever written by Cohen, in my view) offer a faint, but significant glimpse of an unexpected prospect. It is a hope of realized peace, of achieved redemption, even for the individual as such, not only as a participator in humanity. These few pages, as is well known, do not deal with the classic themes of individual eschatology, such as immortality and resurrection. On the contrary, they concern death. And yet, in a glimpse, they open up a prospect of individual redemption, which, owing to its explicit character as an ultimate event, on the extreme limit of the individual’s historical life and looking beyond it, must be acknowledged in its authentic eschatological traits: Human life has its conclusion in death. Death is not the end but a conclusion, a new beginning. It is significant for the Jewish consciousness that it also thinks of death as, and calls it, peace. ‘Peace be upon him’: this is the phrase by which Jewish usage designates the deceased. Peace takes away from death its sting. It also gives a solution to the riddle of death. The man who is torn from life is not removed from peace, but rather brought nearer to it. He is now directly under the reign of God’s peace […]. Death is the world of peace. One cannot praise death better

36 37 38 39 40

Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 117. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 118. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 118. Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 527-531; Eng. transl., 456-460. Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 529f.; Eng. transl., 458f.

428

ANDREA POMA and more blissfully than by distinguishing it from the world of struggle, from the life of error and conflict. Life ought to seek peace; it finds it in death. Death is therefore not the actual end of human life but rather its goal, the trophy of life and all its striving.41

This idea of death as the individual’s ultimate redemption is certainly linked by Cohen with the meaning of peace as the eternal historical ideal of humanity,42 but this cannot hide its eschatological traits. Admittedly this eschatology is solely limited to the individual. The guarded argument is also conducted with the discretion appropriate to critical philosophy, which is aware of being on the limit, to be followed but never crossed. And yet in these last pages of his last work, in his final words, in this requiem for himself and for all, Cohen communicates a breath of hope for the individual, which up to this point had been missing from his wide ranging elaboration of the messianic theme.

41 42

Religion der Vernunft, 531f.; Eng. transl., 460. Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 532f.; Eng. transl., 461f.

CONTRIBUTORS

ASTRID DEUBER-MANKOWSKY, Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany. PIERFRANCESCO FIORATO, University of Sassari, Italy. WERNER FLACH, University of Würzburg, Germany. ROBERT GIBBS, University of Toronto, Canada. GIANNA GIGLIOTTI, University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Italy. HELMUT HOLZHEY, University of Zürich, Switzerland. ARTHUR HYMAN, Yeshiva University, New York, U.S.A. IRENE KAJON, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Italy. MARC DE LAUNAY, CNRS, Paris, France. REINIER MUNK, Leiden University and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. DAVID NOVAK, University of Toronto, Canada. ANDREA POMA, University of Turin, Italy. PETER A. SCHMID, Technical Highschool, Zürich, Switzerland. NORMAN SOLOMON , University of Oxford, United Kingdom. URSULA RENZ, Technical Highschool, Zürich, Switzerland. REINER WIEHL, University of Heidelberg, Germany.

INDEX

Abraham ibn Daud, 358 Abraham ibn Ezra, 358 Adelmann, D., 257 Adorno, T., 307 Ahad Ha’Am, 270–271 Akiva, R., 405 Altmann, A., 361 Aquinas, Th., 243 Aristotle, 236, 243, 247, 248 atonement, 395–411 Augustine, 243 Bach, J.S., 308, 322 Bahya ben Asher, 410 Bahya ibn Pakuda, 358 Baudelaire, C., 164

Beethoven, L. van, 116,117, 308, 322–324 Benjamin, W., 161–190 Bergman, S.H., 396 Bernet, R., 124 bi-sh’gaga, 401 Bismarck, O. von, 266 Bloch, E., 147 Boeckh, A., 7 Bois Reymond, E. du, 7 Brentano, F., 129 Bridgman, L., 343 Buber, M., 33, 208, 357 Büchner, L., 3 Cantoni, C., 4 Cassirer, E., 6, 97, 101, 107, 327–353

consciousness, cultural, 340–344 correlation, 36, 67–95, 238, 250, 252, 286, 288–290, 292, 313, 315–317, 363–364, 366, 380, 404–405 critical idealism, 327–353, 371–394 culture: and system, 29–31, 332–335; and nature, 241–242, 323; philosophy of, 34, 303–304, 309, 344–348; concept of, 327–353, 386 Derrida, J., 124, 193 Descartes, R., 89 Elijah, 424 Elsenhans, T., 121, 122, 123 Enlightenment: religious, 381 ethics, 5, 19, 21–22, 94, 151–153, 157, 172, 193–230, 231–233, 362, 378–379, 403; and religion, 32–36, 74, 278, 361–363, 380, 398–399, 403, 418; and virtues, 231–257;

432

INDEX

Jewish, 271, 275, 276, 366 Ezekiel, 399–400, 424 Fechner, G.T., 3 Fich te, J.G., 89 Fiedler, K ., 114, 115, 116 Fiorato, P., 188 Fischer, K ., 4, 6, 7, 10, 99, 374 Fries, J.F., 98, 99, 121, 123, 130 Geldsetzer, L., 98 genius, 309–313 Gluck, C.W., 323 God: idea of, 342, 363, 368, 375, 379. See also: atonement, correlation Goethe, J.W. von, 288 Graetz, H., 357 Habermas, J., 193 Händel, G.F., 322 happiness, 240, 345, 366, 368, 373, 413–414, 417, 427 Hartmann, E. von, 3 Hasdai Crescas, 358 Haydn, J., 322 Hegel, G.W.F., 175, 209, 267–268 Heidegger, M., 104, 138–139, 141, 142, 327, 344, 350 Heine, H., 372–374, 376 Helmholtz, H. von, 106, 114

Hendrikje Stoffels, 296–301 Heraclitus, 129, 130 Herbart, J.F., 9, 10, 98, 105, 106, 108, 111, 122, 125, 128 Herzl, T., 270–271 Hildebrand, A., 114, 115, 116 Holzhey, H., 120, 141, 164, 173 humour, 156–160, 290–301, 313–317, 322–324, 427 Husserl, E., 84, 97, 98, 100, 101, 105, 117, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 129 Hutcheson, F., 245 ideal, 27, 108, 187, 234–235, 287, 298, 373, 379, 417, 425 idealism . See: critical idealism identity, 77–81, 146, 286 immortality, 375, 417, 424, 427 indifference, 386 individual, the, 363, 399, 418 infinity, 379 Isaac Arama, 358 Isaiah, 424 Israëls, J., 302 Jacobi, F., 309 Joël, M., 367

433

INDEX

Joseph Albo, 358 Judah Halevi, 358 Jung, C.G., 402 Kaplan, S., 158 Keller, H., 343 Kellerman, B., 252 Kern, I., 100 Kierkegaard, S., 410 Klein, J., 25 Krochmal, N., 358 Külpe, O., 6 Lange, F.A., 3, 5, 7, 19, 25, 114, 152 Lask, E., 6 Lazarus, M., 7, 10 Leibl, W., 302 Leibniz, G.W., 6, 108 Leonardo da Vinci, 296–298, 301 Levinas, E., 193, 208, 278 Lewandowski, M., 308 Liebermann, M., 302 Liebmann, O., 3, 4, 114 life: philosophy of, 348–351 Lotze, R.H., 3, 5 Löwith, K., 135–141 Lukàcs, G., 307 Luzzatto, M.H., 410 MacIntyre, A., 247 Mahler, G., 308 Maimonides, 271, 278, 357–359, 366–370, 392, 408

Malachi, 424 Marx, K., 28, 243 Marxism, 26 Mendelssohn, M., 260–262, 265 messianism, 28, 74, 133–136, 141–144, 177, 179, 222, 235, 277–278, 365, 377, 413–428 Meyer, J.B., 3 Michelangelo, 296 Mishpat ivri, 272–277 Moleschott, J., 3 Molière, J.-B.P. de, 310 Mona Lisa, 296–297, 301 Mozart, W.A., 308, 310, 321–324 Munk, R.W., 406, 407 music, 307–325 Natorp, P., 6, 15, 31, 33, 35, 64, 101, 102, 107, 112, 113, 116, 119, 120, 125–131, 327–328, 334 Newton, I., 106 Nietzsche, F., 308–309 Novalis, 315-316 O’Neill, O., 248 origin, 8, 16, 41–50, 53, 54, 56, 59, 91, 146, 166, 189, 329, 335–340, 370, 396, 399 Otto, R., 410

434

INDEX

Parmenides, 386 peace, 426 Pinhas ben Yair, 410–41 Plato, 5, 16, 63, 67, 75–78, 88, 130, 131, 248, 271, 323, 386, 389, 402, 420 Prophets, the, 389, 400 Pufendorf, S. von, 243 purification, 395–411 Pythagoras, 319 Rashi, 401 Rath, 126 reconciliation, 251, 257, 399–400, 402, 405, 408 religion, 70, 193–230, 258, 357–370. See also: ethics Rembrandt, 296–301 Renouvier, C., 4 repentance, 395–411 resurrection, 424 Rickert, H., 6, 101, 107, 121 Riehl, A., 4, 6, 121 ritual bath, 407 Romanticism, 348–353 Rosenzweig, F., 25, 68–71, 74, 80, 84, 91, 193, 208, 262, 361 Rousseau, J.J., 243, 350 Sa’adya Gaon, 358, 368 Schelling, F.W.J. von, 78 Schleiermacher, F., 118 Schmid, P.A., 142, 151, 157 Scholem, G.G., 142, 162 Schopenhauer, A., 308–309, 419

Shakespeare, W., 323 Simmel, G., 350–353 Simon ben Laqish , 402 Simon Duran, 358 Socrates, 88, 235, 248 Solomon ibn Gabirol, 358 Spinoza, B., 78, 260, 362, 373, 374, 376, 389 Steinthal, H., 7 Strauss, L., 371 sublime, the, 290–294, 296, 300, 313–317, 322 suffering, 73, 159, 222, 241–242, 250, 252–254, 341, 345, 352, 362–363, 385–387, 393, 413–428 symbolicity, 335–340 totality, 379, 386; of experience, 167, 172, 183 Treitschke, H. von, 8, 357, 376 Trendelenburg, F.A., 3, 7, 10, 112, 374 Ueberweg, F., 3 Ursprungsdenken, 41–65. See also: origin virtue: theory of, 231–257. See also: ethics Wiedebach, H., 187, 188 Windelband, W., 4, 5, 6, 121 Wundt, W.M., 116 Yohanan, R., 401

Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought PUBLISHED VOLUMES [Vols. 1–6 published by J.C. Gieben, Amsterdam] 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Rotenstreich, Nathan: Essays in Jewish Philosophy in the Modern Era. With an introduction by Paul Mendes-Flohr. Edited by Reinier Munk. 1996. ISBN 90-5063-587-3 Ravitzky, Aviezer: History and Faith. Studies in Jewish Philosophy. 1996. ISBN 90-5063-597-0 Munk, Reinier: The Rationale of Halakhic Man. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish Thought. 1996. ISBN 90-5063-607-1 Boer, Theodore de: The Rationality of Transcendence. Studies in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. 1997. ISBN 90-5063-217-3 Zwiep, Irene E.: Mother of Reason and Revelation. A Short History of Medieval Jewish Linguistic Thought. 1997. ISBN 90-5063-207-6 Harvey, Warren Zev: Physics and Metaphysics in H.asdai Crescas. 1998. ISBN 90-5063-347-1 [from Volume 7 published by Kluwer Academic Publishers]

7. 8. 9. 10.

Harvey, Steven (ed.): The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6242-X Kreisel, Howard: Prophecy. The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-7124-0 Zonta, Mauro: Hebrew Scholasticism in the Fifteenth Century. A History and Source Book. 2005 ISBN 1-4020-3715-5 Munk, Reinier (ed.): Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism. 2005 ISBN 1-4020-4046-6

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