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This book is the first complete intellectual biography of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and the only work to cover all his major philosophical and Jewish writings. Frederick C. Beiser pays special attention to all phases of Cohen's intellectual development, its breaks and its continuities, throughout seven decades. The guiding goal behind Cohen's intellectual career, he argues, was the development of a radical rationalism, one committed to defending the rights of unending enquiry and unlimited criticism. Cohen's philosophy was therefore an attempt to defend and revive the Enlightenment belief in the authority of reason; his critical idealism an attempt to justify this belief and to establish a purely rational worldview. According to this interpretation, Cohen's thought is resolutely opposed to any form of irrationalism or mysticism because these would impose arbitrary and artificial limits on criticism and enquiry. It is therefore critical of those interpretations which see Cohen's philosophy as a species of proto-existentialism (Rosenzweig) or Jewish mysticism (Adelmann and Köhnke). Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography attempts to unify the two sides of Cohen's thought, his philosophy and his Judaism. Maintaining that Cohen's Judaism was not a limit to his radical rationalism but a consistent development of it, Beiser contends that his religion was one of reason. He concludes that most critical interpretations have failed to appreciate the philosophical depth and sophistication of his Judaism, a religion which committed the believer to the unending search for truth and the striving to achieve the cosmopolitan ideals of reason.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Early Years, 1842-1865
- 2: The Young Volkpsychologist
- 3: Early Jewish Writings
- 4: The Debut of a Neo-Kantian
- 5: Encounter with Friedrich Albert Lange
- 6: The Neo-Kantian Philosopher in the 1870s
- 7: Jewish Writings 1880-1889
- 8: Neo-Kantian Writings in Marburg 1880-1889
- 9: Jewish Writings, 1890-1899
- 10: A Very Important Postscript
- 11: Cohen s Logic
- 12: Jewish Writings, 1900-1909
- 13: System of Ethics
- 14: Aesthetics of Pure Feeling
- 15: Jewish Writings, 1910-1915
- 16: Causes and Controversies, 1914-1917
- 17: Last Jewish Writings, 1915-1918
- 18: A Religion of Reason
About the author
Frederick C. Beiser was born and raised in the USA. He studied in the UK at Oriel College and Wolfson College, Oxford and then in Germany for many years, receiving stipends from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Humboldt Stiftung during that time. He has taught in many universities in the USA including Yale, Harvard, Penn, Wisconson, Colorado, and Indiana. Beiser is currently professor of philosophy at Syracuse University, New York. In 2015 the Bundespräsident Joachim Gauck awarded him the Bundesverdienstkreuz for his work on German philosophy.
Summary
This book is the first complete intellectual biography of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and the only work to cover all his major philosophical and Jewish writings. Frederick C. Beiser pays special attention to all phases of Cohen's intellectual development, its breaks and its continuities, throughout seven decades. The guiding goal behind Cohen's intellectual career, he argues, was the development of a radical rationalism, one committed to defending the rights of unending enquiry and unlimited criticism. Cohen's philosophy was therefore an attempt to defend and revive the Enlightenment belief in the authority of reason; his critical idealism an attempt to justify this belief and to establish a purely rational worldview. According to this interpretation, Cohen's thought is resolutely opposed to any form of irrationalism or mysticism because these would impose arbitrary and artificial limits on criticism and enquiry. It is therefore critical of those interpretations which see Cohen's philosophy as a species of proto-existentialism (Rosenzweig) or Jewish mysticism (Adelmann and Köhnke). Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography attempts to unify the two sides of Cohen's thought, his philosophy and his Judaism. Maintaining that Cohen's Judaism was not a limit to his radical rationalism but a consistent development of it, Beiser contends that his religion was one of reason. He concludes that most critical interpretations have failed to appreciate the philosophical depth and sophistication of his Judaism, a religion which committed the believer to the unending search for truth and the striving to achieve the cosmopolitan ideals of reason.
Additional text
provides an excellent explanation of what made Cohen so prominent ... Highly recommended.
Report
Although Beiser generally refrains from discussing the extensive secondary literature on Cohen, this intellectual biography is a momentous contribution to scholarship that can serve as a springboard for studies of Cohen's writings by scholars of both philosophy and religious studies. It provides a nuanced and clear account of Cohen's thought. Brian Hillman, Religious Studies Review
