The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Hermann Cohen

1842–1918

Founder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism and the leading German-Jewish philosopher of his generation, whose Religion of Reason found reason's religion in the sources of Judaism.

Lithograph of an elderly man with glasses, seated and writing
Lithograph by Carl Doerbecker.Carl Doerbecker · Public domain · See the original

Hermann Cohen was born in 1842 in Coswig, Germany, into a devout family, took his doctorate at Halle, and after writing on Kant became a lecturer at Marburg, where he stayed for almost four decades. More than anyone, he founded the orthodox neo-Kantianism that dominated German academic philosophy from the 1870s to the First World War, writing on epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, law, politics and aesthetics.

He was also his generation’s foremost German-Jewish public intellectual. After retiring in 1912 he taught at the Academy of Jewish Sciences in Berlin, writing chiefly on Jewish philosophy, and Franz Rosenzweig was among his students there. He died in 1918; his Religion of Reason appeared the following year.

Key ideas

Philosophy is not psychology
Cohen read Kant in a way that kept philosophy independent of empirical psychology without sliding back into uncritical metaphysics. This anti-psychologism defined the Marburg School and, beyond it, the setting from which phenomenology and logical positivism emerged.
Kantian socialism
His ethics and political theory grounded a democratic socialism built on Kant rather than Marx. In public he championed universal suffrage and workers’ right to organise in democratic collectives.
Religion of reason
In his last work Cohen argued that the basic concepts of Judaism, as found in its historical texts, are the original sources of a religion of reason, and he explored the correlation between the individual and God.
Tradition
Jewish
Region
Marburg and Berlin

Influences

Influenced by

Hermann Cohen1842–1918

Influenced

Influenced by

Hermann Cohen1842–1918

Influenced

Where these links come from
  • Hermann Cohen drew on Maimonides. Source: Scott Edgar, Hermann Cohen, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Hermann Cohen drew on Immanuel Kant. Source: Scott Edgar, Hermann Cohen, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Franz Rosenzweig studied with and drew on Hermann Cohen. Source: Benjamin Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Key works

  • Kant's Theory of Experience
  • Logic of Pure Knowledge
  • Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, 1919

Sources

  1. Scott Edgar, Hermann Cohen, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. Benjamin Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy