Hermann Cohen S Philosophy Of Judaism

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was among the most accomplished Jewish philosophers of modern times--if not the single most significant. But his work has not yet received the attention it deserves. This newly translated collection of his writings--most of which are appearing in English for the first time--illuminates his achievements for student readers and rectifies lapses in his intellectual reception by prior generations. It presents chapters from Cohen's Ethics of Pure Will, conflicting interpretations of Cohen by Franz Rosenzweig and Alexander Altmann, and finally the eulogy to Cohen delivered at graveside by Ernst Cassirer. Containing full annotations and selections that concentrate both on the philosophical core of Cohen's writings and the politics of interpretation of his work at the time of his death and after, Hermann Cohen truly brings to light all of Cohen's accomplishments.

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) was a leading figure in the Neo-Kantian philosophical movement that dominated European thought before 1918. He is also the inaugural figure for what is meant by "modern Jewish philosophy" in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book explores Cohen’s striking claim that ethics is rooted in law – a claim developed in both his philosophical ethics and his philosophy of Judaism, in particular in his writings on "love-of-neighbor," up to and including his well-known Religion of Reason. Dana Hollander proposes that neither Cohen’s systematic philosophy nor his "Jewish" philosophy should be seen as the dominant framework for his oeuvre as a whole, but that his understanding of key philosophical questions takes shape in the passages between both corpuses, a trait that could be seen as paradigmatic for modern Jewish philosophy. Ethics Out of Law taps into one of the prime topics of current interest in the field of Jewish philosophy: the nature of Jewish political existence and the changing configurations of "law" that this entails.

Zank (Boston U.) reappraises the work of German Judaic scholar Cohen (1842-1918) and aligns him with the tasks of Jewish philosophy first taken up in the period of Jewish-Muslim philosophical symbiosis. He considers his position between Judaism and philosophy; atonement in his project of renewing the Jewish philosophy of religion and ethics; and substance, self-consciousness, and concrete subjectivity. He developed the study from his 1994 doctoral dissertation for Brandeis University. He substitutes a detailed table of contents for an index. Distributed in the US by the Society of Biblical Literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Zank (Boston U.) reappraises the work of German Judaic scholar Cohen (1842-1918) and aligns him with the tasks of Jewish philosophy first taken up in the period of Jewish-Muslim philosophical symbiosis. He considers his position between Judaism and philosophy; atonement in his project of renewing the Jewish philosophy of religion and ethics; and substance, self-consciousness, and concrete subjectivity. He developed the study from his 1994 doctoral dissertation for Brandeis University. He substitutes a detailed table of contents for an index. Distributed in the US by the Society of Biblical Literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Complete collection of Schwarzschild’s essays on the neo-Kantian Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen. Steven S. Schwarzschild (1924–1989) was arguably the leading expositor of German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), undertaking a lifelong effort to reintroduce Cohen’s thought into contemporary philosophical discourse. In The Tragedy of Optimism, George Y. Kohler brings together all of Schwarzschild’s work on Cohen for the first time. Schwarzschild’s readings of Cohen are unique and profound; he was conversant with both worlds that shaped Cohen’s thought, neo-Kantian German idealism and Jewish theology. The collection covers a wide range of subjects, from ethics, socialism, the concept of human selfhood, and the mathematics of the infinite to more explicitly Jewish themes. This volume includes two of Schwarzschild’s previously unpublished manuscripts and a scholarly introduction by Kohler. Schwarzschild shows that despite its seeming defeat by events of the twentieth century, Cohen’s optimism about human progress is a rational, indeed necessary, path to peace. “The Tragedy of Optimism gives us excellent—perhaps unparalleled—insight into the thought of Hermann Cohen. Although Cohen was one of the most important thinkers in the history of Jewish philosophy, he is often misread or simply ignored. Schwarzschild shows in painstaking fashion why the standard criticisms of Cohen miss the point. What emerges is a picture of Cohen as a more sophisticated thinker than what we usually get in histories of the period.” — Kenneth Seeskin, author of Autonomy in Jewish Philosophy

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

Through explorations of Hermann Cohen’s Ethics of Pure Will, an international set of scholars opens questions both about the text itself and about the relation of ethics and the Jewish tradition. Originally published as Volume 13 (2005) of The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy.

Weiss examines the style and method of Hermann Cohen's magnum opus, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. Through philosophical and scriptural analyses, Weiss argues for a new reading of this long-misunderstood book, demonstrating Cohen's continuing significance for Jewish thought and for philosophy of religion more broadly.