Hermann Cohen – Writings on Neo–Kantianism and Jewish Philosophy

Samuel Moyn is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World and A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France. Robert S. Schine is the Curt C. and Else Silberman Professor of Jewish Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author of Hermann Cohen: Spinoza on State and Religion, Judaism and Christianity, an annotated translation, with introduction, of Cohen’s 1915 essay.

“This new collection is a great gift for our time. Hermann Cohen was Germany’s great philosopher of Judaism and champion of Kantian ethics at the turn of the twentieth century. He drew powerful affinities between Kant’s moral philosophy and Jewish ethics, emphasizing how both point towards perpetual peace. In our divided world today, struggling for a universal ethics, Cohen’s writings offer powerful reasons to hope and strive for a world of peace and wellbeing.”

• Introduction, Note on Translation, Part 1: The Ethics of Pure Will, Introduction, God, Part 2: Essays, Internal Connections of Kantian Philosophy to Judaism, The Social Ideal in Plato and the Prophets, The Significance of Judaism for the Religious Progress of Humanity, Autonomy and Freedom, Part 3: Coda, Franz Rosenzweig, “Introduction to Hermann Cohen’s Jewish Writings” (1924), Alexander Altmann, “Hermann Cohen’s Concept of Correlation” (1962), Ernst Cassirer, “Hermann Cohen: Words Spoken at His Grave on April 7, 1919”