North American Hermann Cohen Society

Myriam Bienenstock, Cohen face à Rosenzweig

2011-10-27T20:47:00.001-04:00

Review by Chiara Adorisio

Myriam Bienenstock, Cohen face à Rosenzweig: Débat sur la pensée allemande. Paris: Vrin, 2009. 250 pp.

In her book, “Cohen face à Rosenzweig: Débat sur la pensée allemande”, Myriam Bienenstock analyzes and compares the works of Hermann Cohen and his disciple, Franz Rosenzweig, with particular emphasis on the ways in which these two German-Jewish philosophers sought to appropriate the theories of German idealism.

Since a real debate between the two philosophers never took place, Bienenstockʼs book aims to create a sort of virtual debate between them. The first chapter contains biographical references necessary to understanding the relationship between Cohen and Rosenzweig and their common interest in German idealistic philosophy. In the central chapters, Bienenstock (the author) reconstructs Cohenʼs and Rosenzweigʼs approach to aesthetics (chapters II and III), ethics (chapters IV and V) and the philosophy of history (chapters VI and VII). The eighth and final chapter deals with the way in which Cohen and Rosenzweig influenced Emmanuel Levinasʼs and Martin Buberʼs interpretations of German idealism. Thus, Bienenstock discusses both Cohenʼs and Rosenzweigʼs original (re-)interpretations of German idealism and the impact of their ideas on their most important successors.

Throughout her book, Bienenstock argues that Cohenʼs and Rosenzweigʼs debt to German idealism has too often been neglected, while their debt to their Jewish sources has often been interpreted in a monolithic way. She succeeds in showing that Cohen and Rosenzweig are, in fact, as much indebted to German idealism as they are to their Jewish sources. Bienenstock, furthermore, rediscovers and reconsiders their fundamental contribution to the interpretation of German idealistic thought: beyond serving as key instruments for its understanding, their works can also be considered as original re-interpretations of German thought in general, which had such a considerable impact on the development of modern philosophy – in particular in the fields of ethics and esthetics.

Last but not least: the author also discusses Cohenʼs and Rosenzweigʼs positions vis-à-vis the difficult problem of the German–Jewish dialogue in the nineteenth century. Referring to, on the one hand, Scholemʼs critical stance against that dialogue, and, on the other, Habermasʼs attempt to revive it in his book, “The German Idealism of Jewish Philosophers” (1961), Bienenstock argues that the German–Jewish dialogue had been facilitated also by the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, who provided the ground on which it developed.

While emphasizing their importance as interpreters of German idealism, Bienenstock also rightly stresses the fact that the differences between their philosophical, religious, and political positions outweigh the similarities. Whereas Rosenzweig was (deeply) influenced by Hegelian philosophy– an influence evident in his important work, Hegel and the State – Cohen (attempted) to build a neo-Kantian system and was (fiercely) critical of Hegel.

Bienenstock reveals that Rosenzweig, although a disciple of Cohen, was much more influenced by Hans Ehrenberg than by Cohen himself, and was, in fact, rather critical of Cohenʼs philosophy. This is, for example, focus of the second and third chapters, “La ʻdivinisationʼ de lʼart: Rosenzweig et lʼidéalisme allemande,” and “ ʻLe dieu monothéiste a rendu toute ironie impossible...ʼ: Lʼironie de lʼart, selon Hermann Cohen,” in which the author demonstrates that the central issues of Rosenzweigʼs critique of Cohen was aesthetics – in particular, his discussion of the relationship between art and idolatry. Though both Rosenzweig and Cohen considered poetry as very significant for religious consciousness, they nevertheless differed in their conclusions: whereas Rosenzweig, in his association of religion to myth and poetry, remained close to the romantic author of the “oldest systematic program of German idealism”, Cohen, by contrast, faulted romantic philosophy for its pernicious influence on the development of ethics. [...]

Cohen face à Rosenzweig… in which, Myriam Bienenstock, throughout the whole chapters, analyzes also various aspects of Cohenʼs and Rosenzweigʼs intepretation of Spinoza in order to demonstrate their different positions regarding German idealismʼs interpretation of the great philosopher from Amsterdam, is a perfectly structured and profound contribution to the study of Hermann Cohen’s thought, that should be considered as essential reading by all who are concerned with the problems of twentieth century Jewish philosophy and with the relationship between philosophy and Judaism in the modern tradition.

(a full lenght review of Bienenstock’s book appeared in Iyyun, The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, published by the S. H. Bergman Center for Philosophical Studies the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Volume 60, January 2011, p. 99-101, http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/english/units.php?cat=759&incat=758).

(Chiara Adorisio, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”)

Unità della ragione e modi dell’esperienza. A review

2011-10-01T14:21:00.001-04:00

Unità della ragione e modi dell’esperienza. Herman Cohen e il Neokantismo. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi [Salerno 21-22-23 maggio 2007]

Unity of reason and modes of experience. Hermann Cohen and Neokantianism. Acts of the International Study Conference, Salerno, 21st-23rd May 2007.

Edited by Gian Paolo Cammarota. Published by Rubbettino. Collection Università degli Studi di Salerno-Collana Scientifica (254 pages, 2009, 23 €)

[Editor’s note: The following review, prepared by Mr. Leoni, introduces a recent collection of essays related to Hermann Cohen and neo-Kantianism that emerged from a conference held at Salerno/Italy, in 2007. We plan to introduce such publications to the American reader on a regular basis, but book notes, such as the following, cannot replace critical discussion. We hope that some of our readers and colleagues will contribute critical book reviews to this web-publication in the future. If interested, please contact mzank@bu.edu.]

This volume, dedicated to the President of the Hermann Cohen Gesellschaft, Prof. Helmut Holzhey, collects papers presented at a 2007 conference held in Salerno, Italy.

The book (like the conference) is divided in four sections, containing between three and five papers each, of which we will give a detailed summary later. Most sections are thematically coherent, except the first section, which gives the impression of having collated every subject that did not fit neatly into any of the other sections.

Half of the featured articles are in German, the other half is in Italian. The very first paper, by Helmut Holzhey, is an Italian translation prepared by the volume editor from the German, and there is another chapter that constitutes a translation from German to Italian. No reason is given why these chapters are given in translation. The volume includes a second paper by Professor Holzhey, this one in German. Language confusion between German and Italian also seeped into some of the articles, where the same books, sections, and chapters are sometimes referred to in Italian and sometimes in German. There is a German Bible quotation in an Italian paper, whereas quotations of Hermann Cohen’s works are usually translated. These editorial flaws do not affect the quality of the papers.

The third section of the book constitutes an homage to Professor Holzhey, whose 70th birthday occurred during the conference.

Section I: Esperienza, logica della conoscenza e questione del metodo (Experience, logic of knowledge, and the problem of method)

In Che cosa significa fare esperienza? Professor Holzhey analyzes the different meanings of the term “experience”, focusing on experience “in life” rather than on experience in the Kantian sense of sensory perception, as one might have expected. Holzhey recognizes that Cohen did not address this problem extensively, but he tries to give an account that would be consistent with Hermann Cohen’s approach. Following that approach, he proceeds from scientific experience qua experiment, but then he distinguishes between three types of “lived” experience, namely, hermeneutical experience as a negative historicized experience that shakes what one used to believe, religious experience as an illuminating moment made communicable, and philosophical experience, one that is eo ipso connected to a new dimension in thought. The article ends by raising a fundamental question, namely, “How much experience does philosophy need?” One would have liked to see the author expand this question in a stand-alone contribution.

In In Principio era il pensiero. L’antipsicologismo radicale di Hermann Cohen e alcune sue conseguenze (In the beginning was thought. Hermann Cohen’s radical anti-psychologism and some of its consequences), Stefano Poggi (Florence University) gives an account of the strong and structured opposition emanating from Cohen and fellow members of the Marburg School to psychologistic theories of knowledge, despite some apparent convergences between logic and psychology in some definitions of judgment (especially in Logik der Reinen Erkenntnis). This opposition, Poggi says, could not have been maintained “without a decisive move, without any kind of regret, to a level of metaphysical idealism [or better] of a non-departure from such a level.”

This essay situates Cohen’s anti-psychologism in an uninterrupted tradition stretching from Plato’s Sophist to Heidegger’s early works. Despite its brevity, the essay is clear and persuasive. It may be asked, however, whether Poggi exaggerates the debt Heidegger owed to Cohen in regard to the former’s distance from contemporary psychological approaches to consciousness. After all, Heidegger’s teacher Edmund Husserl similarly denied the relevance of empirical psychology in matters of first philosophy.

In a chapter titled Hermann Cohens systemtheoretische Subjektslehre (Hermann Cohen’s system-theoretical doctrine of the subject), Werner Flach (Emeritus Professor at Würzburg University) gives a short but well-rounded depiction of the role of the subject in Cohen’s system, particularly in the moments of aesthetic perception and understanding, of the relation between the perceptional subject and the propositional subject, and finally of the role of the subject in Cohen’s philosophy of religion. This is a mainly expository paper providing a comprehensive overview on a major topic in the study of Cohen’s transcendental philosophy.

Hartwig Wiedebach, a prolific member of the executive board of the Hermann Cohen Gesellschaft and Professor at Zurich University, contributes an essay (in Italian translation) titled Logica della scienza vs teoria della creazione. Il ruolo dell’annientamento nella logica dell’origine di Cohen (Logic of science versus theory of creation. The role of annihilation in Cohen’s logic of origin). Wiedebach focuses on the role of Vernichtung (annihilation): at first as a necessity in science (providing the possibility of a law of thought concerning the concept of a lie), whereby what is annihilated is a positively false “not-A” (with A being the internal truth of a judgment). The second and greater part of the essay depicts the role of annihilation in the philosophy of religion, as a necessary prerequisite for access to the relation between God and nature (the latter being the created non-A, i.e., not-God). This reader was struck by the philosophical depth of this essay, which stands out among the other contributions.

In Die “Urteile der Methodik” und die Methode der Philosophie bei Hermann Cohen (The “judgments of methodology” and the philosophical method in Hermann Cohen), the late Reiner Wiehl (emeritus at Ruperto Carola University Heidelberg) describes the reciprocity between method, judgment and origin in Cohen as fundamental to the approach by which concepts are moved from philosophical eclecticism towards a critical idealism, a process Cohen refers to as Reinigung (cleansing/purification). Covering a wide range of examples from the entire work of Cohen, Wiehl highlights that Cohen was consistent in attributing a fundamental role to method and clearly conveyed the epistemic process that it entails and engenders.

Section II: Conoscenza e forme dell’esperienza (Knowledge and forms of experience)

Massimo Ferrari (Turin University) deals with the forms of scientific knowledge in Cohen and Helmholtz (Le forme della conoscenza scientifica. Cohen e Helmholtz). Focusing on the historical differences between Cohen and Helmholtz, who was influential both as a scientist and as a philosopher of science, Ferrari compares and contrasts a few seminal works of these two philosophers, mainly Cohen’s early Kants Theorie der Erfahrung and Helmholtz’s Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung and Zählen und Messen. Ferrari suggests that while the two scholars maintained a close dialogue and shared many significant views, Cohen’s approach to the theory of knowledge was the one that prevailed among the neo-Kantian and critical idealist trends of academic philosophy down to Husserl who, while speaking from a different standpoint than Cohen, raised decisive objections to Helmholtz’s “nominalism” that were remarkably similar to Cohens, at least in regard to their pars destruens (in Ferrari’s words).

Though Ferrari has little to say about Cassirer, about whom he has written elsewhere, his chapter must be deemed the most historically descriptive and meticulously researched contribution of this volume.

Gian Paolo Cammarota (University of Salerno), who also served as the director of the conference and the editor of the volume, contributes an essay on ethical knowledge and moral experience in Hermann Cohen (Conoscenza etica ed esperienza morale in Hermann Cohen) that highlights the deep originality of Cohen’s late concept of “the knowledge of ethics:” in the third edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (Kant’s theory of experience), published months before his own death, Cohen distinguished himself from Kant, at least in the field of ethics, by virtue of his so-called “messianic idealism.” Here, Cammarota refers to his previous work on the subject

, without dealing thoroughly with it, but we could summarize it as the “overcoming of human experience in a messianic future”

, since in our present concrete experience tends to exert a ‘tyranny’ on our spirit. Cammarota affirms the value of this reflection on experience in today’s philosophical discussions on morality and science and on the possibility of a science of ethics. Without coming to a definitive conclusion on the issue of morality, he suggests the possibility of a reversal of the order of factors in the knowledge process, with thought about the knowledge sought coming before acquisition of knowledge: ethics would take its contents from experience, without being subjected to it.

Both Gianna Gigliotti with Hermann Cohen e la fondazione kantiana dell’estetica (Hermann Cohen and the Kantian foundation of Aesthetic) and Ezio Gamba with Erlebnis. La questione dell’esperienza estetica nel pensiero di Hermann Cohen (Erlebnis. The question of aesthetic experience in the thought of Hermann Cohen) deal with a subject that Gamba deals with, in greater detail, in La Legalità’ del Sentimento Puro, Mimesis Edizioni, Milan-Udine, 2008, that we have already reviewed on this site at http://criticalidealism.blogspot.com/2010/10/review-of-ezio-gamba-la-legalita-del.html.

Gigliotti (who has to be given a great merit for the revival of Neo-Kantian studies in Italy in the ‘90s, with her works on Nartorp and Cassirer) focuses on Cohen’s utilization of Kant’s third critique as reference for the question of aesthetics, pointing out, however, that

«it is not clear how [..] sentiment comes to be, so to speak, at the same time as the third and a forth direction of conscience», which makes the essay interesting but somehow incomplete.

Il caos nella cultura: dal principio di origine all’unicità di Dio (Chaos in culture: from principle of origin to the uniqueness of God) by Irene Kajon (University of Rome 1) tells the story of the complicated relation between God, reality, and uniqueness as it evolved in Cohen. This analysis ranges over the very early writings (concerned with the problem of Logos and mythology in the Hebrew Bible) up to a more mature conception of the “identification of the Hebrew monotheistic principle with the idealistic spirit as creator of the entire reality as human experience”

; then, it deals with the rupture with the mythical dimension that finally led to a personal relation with theodicy. Including large quotes from Cohen’s works, this paper is probably the most complex to understand if the reader has not already dealt with the problem of uniqueness in Cohen specifically.

Section III: Ragione critica ed esperienza del pensiero (Critical Reason and the experience of tought)

This section is dedicated to Professor Holzhey and therefore more focused on his contributions to the study of Cohen than on Cohen himself. We shall just mention the titles of the contributions alongside with the author.

Pierfrancesco Fiorato, Il logos della domanda: pensiero dell’origine e problematologia (Logos of the question: the thought about origin and the study of problematics)

Helmut Holzhey, Kritische Liebe zur Metaphysik - eine Zwischenbilanz (Critical Love for Metaphysics - a provisional summary)

Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Gedanken zu Helmut Holzheys Zwischenbilanz (Thoughts on Helmut Holzhey’s provisional summary)

Enno Rudolph, Anmerkungen zu Helmut Holzheys Zwischenbilanz, (Comments on Helmut Holzhey’s provisional summary)

Reiner Wiehl, Diesseits und jenseits der Ursprünge (On this side of the Origins and beyond)

Section IV: Mito, religione e filosofia. Hermann Cohen ed Ernst Cassirer (Myth, religion and philosophy. Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer)

Ernst Wolfgang Orth (Universität Trier), in a paper titled Ernst Cassirers Cohen - Verständis (Ernst Cassirer’s view of Cohen), and Enno Rudolph (Universität Luzern), in Hermann Cohen - Ernst Cassirer: Lehrer und Schüler im Widerstreit. Zu Cassirers Cohenkritik (Hermann Cohen - Ernst Cassirer: teacher and student in conflict. Cassirer’s criticism of Cohen) both give an account of the complex philosophical relationship between Cohen and Cassirer.

Orth’s essays deals with their respective approaches to the problem of subjectivity and the subject process of knowledge, while Rudolph focuses primarily on the correlation between religion and myth as Todesangst (fear of death). The second part of Rudolph’s essay is dedicated to the problem of messianism, a problem on which Cohen and Cassirer are ‘incompatible’, since the latter seems to espouse a “Kulturrelativismus avant la lettre.” Both articles are well written and accessible, providing analysis and exposition, rather than elaboration, of the respective approaches of the two philosophers.

The closing article of the volume, Peter A. Schmid’s, Kontinuität und Geschichtsoptimismus bei Cassirer und Cohen (Continuity and historical optimism in Cassirer and Cohen) deals with the their respective views on the discipline of history. Though Schmid discerns a structural similarity in their respective approaches to historiography, he finds that Cassirer arrives at a more pessimistic assessment of history.

In sum, the volume is rich in ideas and detail, and it offers a useful panorama of current European Cohen scholarship. The papers are of high quality. However, as often in a volume of conference proceedings, the respect of the contributors for the thinkers analyzed (here: Cohen and other figures of or related to the Marburg School) sometimes prevents these scholars to go beyond their subject. There is a tendency, perhaps not untypical for European philosophical scholarship, to limit oneself to the description of the thought of a historical thinker or to the exposition of a particular detail or problem within that thinker’s work. While this attitude contributes to more careful reading and analysis and certainly helps avoid distortion and simplification of the theories in question, it deprives us of the more original contributions that these scholars might be able to make.

Nonetheless, the volume remains valuable to as an introduction to a range of problems in the study of Hermann Cohen in general, and to his contribution to the philosophical concept of experience in particular.

Review of Robert Erlewine's Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason

2011-09-16T10:56:00.005-04:00

Toward a Non-Violent Intolerance: A Review of Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason, by Robert Erlewine

Indiana University Press, 2010 246 pages

A review by Ingrid Anderson (Boston University)

Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason addresses what its author, Robert Erlewine, calls the "repeated demand" for the adoption of “contemporary values of tolerance and pluralism...[which continue to] pose significant challenges” for the “Abrahamic-monotheistic religions” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Erlewine notes that “as the calls for tolerance and pluralism, usually made by secularists and religious liberals, grow stronger in the public arena, one cannot help but notice the growing backlash against them.”^¹It is refreshing that, rather than disregard claims that values such as “tolerance” and “pluralism” are at odds with monotheism's “structural antagonism and hostility toward the Other,” Erlewine takes these claims seriously, and agrees that demands for tolerance and pluralism will understandably go unheeded by traditional religious practitioners if those who make such demands fail to respect, and take into account, the “symbolic or discursive structure shared by Abrahamic religions”^² which, at its core, requires intolerance, or even the obliteration of, the Other.

Erlewine's understanding that modern secularism's demands are incommensurate with elective monotheism's most important values is precisely what makes his study valuable, since many progressive politicians and scholars who work to end—or at least ameliorate--violent intolerance cannot or will not take the values and mores of religious people seriously, even as they make endless suggestions for how religions should change in response to modernity. Erlewine does not, like so many others, demand an “unqualified celebration of the principles of tolerance or pluralism,” but instead insists that if “monotheistic traditions are going to constructively deal with their predisposition to agonistic relationships with the Other, and thus to intolerance, then such measures must originate and find their basis within these traditions themselves.”^³ Erlewine turns to the work of Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant and Hermann Cohen for answers, whose attempts to reconcile the basic structure of the monotheistic worldview with modern existence he considers far more promising than the plethora of secular philosophical and liberal theological alternatives he has encountered thus far.

For Erlewine, Mendelssohn, Kant and Cohen are part of what he calls the “religion of reason trajectory,” but while Kant is the most well-known and influential of the three, Erlewine ultimately considers his status “marginal” within this trajectory. In Erlewine's project, Kant serves mostly as a transitional figure between the work of Mendelssohn and Cohen, whose separate but not dissimilar life experiences as disenfranchised minorities enabled them to create what Erlewine terms “more nuanced, socially acceptable, and even productive forms of religious intolerance” than those practiced by the European Christian majority.^⁴ Erlewine rightly insists that the tendency to dismiss the work of Mendelssohn and Cohen as “mere apologetics” is unfair, and indicates their projects have been largely misunderstood. As Jews, Erlewine argues, Mendelssohn and Cohen were public intellectuals who refused to forfeit their particularity for the sake of the “Emancipation” promised by Enlightenment ideology, and this enriched their work in ways that their Christian contemporaries were largely unable to fully understood or appreciate. Moreover, he suggests that they could clearly see how the Enlightenment's understanding of itself as a-religious or 'secular' was at best problematic, since most secular thinkers “tacitly assumed the universalism of Christianity.”^⁵ And yet even scholars of Jewish thought have largely relegated the work of Mendelssohn and Cohen to the annals of 'intellectual history,' and therefore continue to miss its enduring, immediate value.

It becomes clear that Erlewine has another goal in sight: to show how modern Jewish thought, at least as it culminated in the work of Mendelssohn and Cohen, is relevant beyond Judaism in that it “translates [the] dialectic between particularity and universality into an ethical monotheism grounded in responsibility for the Other.” Erlewine poses a convincing argument, especially when he juxtaposes the work of more recent, 'secular' thinkers like John Hick and Jürgen Habermas with the work of Mendelssohn, Kant and Cohen and, with good reason, finds it wanting. Erlewine passionately states that “we have much to learn from [thinkers like Mendelssohn and Cohen who come] out of the German-Jewish Enlightenment...[because] they offer alternative ways of thinking about monotheism that remain distinctively modern. Such pioneering efforts,” he insists, “cannot be ignored in this time of crisis, when monotheistic intolerance and violence are rampant.”^⁶

Erlewine's analysis of the issues at hand in what has been most famously termed the opposition between 'Athens and Jerusalem' is both subtle and concise. For example, he is able to point to the value of Hick's hypothesis that “Yahweh and Shiva are not rival gods, but rather two different historical personae in terms of which ultimate divine Reality is present”^⁷ while ultimately insisting that “such a position does great violence to the discursive structure shared by the elective monotheisms [since] the pluralist hypothesis eradicates the tense dynamic between universalism and particularity which is at the heart of [monotheism's] scriptural universalism” and its central themes of “revelation, election, history/historical mission, and eschaton...”^⁸ In other words, most traditional or fundamentalist practitioners are likely to find Hick's theology unappealing and inauthentic, since it does away with the very things that make elective monotheism what it is.

On the other hand, argues Erlewine, philosophical approaches to the problem of intolerance, even when well-intended, also fall short because they indicate an insensitivity to and unawareness of religious concerns. Habermas' insistence, for example, that monotheisms “severely curtail their prior exclusivist claims and dramatically revise their attitudes toward the Other” fails to appreciate that “any sort of symmetrical relationship with the Other” would result in treating these religions as “monotheistic in name only, but whose content is something else.”^⁹ And yet Erlewine does not dispute that monotheism must adapt to modernity's call for greater tolerance.

Erlewine carefully delineates competing definitions of what tolerance looks like for Hick and Habermas, as well. Their shared notion that true tolerance must involve inclusion of the Other as symmetrical in every way is, for Erlewine, in fact the most significant failure of their projects. And Erlewine's own decision that Cohen, rather than Mendelssohn or Kant developed the most authentic re-imagining of the monotheistic imperative of the ultimate universal homogeneity of religious and ethical practice also hinges on how we might develop a definition of tolerance that can be realistically shared by secularists and traditional monotheists alike. Kant falls short for Erlewine because, in the end, he privileges 'rational universalism' over 'scriptural universalism,' a move he insists is unfeasible for any traditional faithful monotheist. Too, Kant “treat[s] all religions (with the exception of Judaism, which is not recognized as a religion) as rooted in anthropomorphism and as a result prone to the errors of scriptural universalism.” 'Rationalizing' would mean “reconfiguring their structural moments upon a conception of universal reason...” and Kant “never really acknowledges non-theistic religions, much less what rationalizing them would entail.”^¹⁰ Mendelssohn fairs better in Erlewine's analysis, precisely because Mendelssohn recognizes that scriptural universalism, election and revelation can be placed in the service of, but cannot ultimately be subjugated to, universal rationalism. This is the most salient of Mendelssohn's gifts to Erlewine's 'religion of reason trajectory,' even though “all of Mendelssohn's eternal truths...have been rendered questionable if not indefensible in light of subsequent philosophical developments.” In the final analysis, Erlewine declares Mendelssohn's “notion of the 'religion of reason'...too anachronistic to maintain useful function today.”^¹¹

One could argue—and many have--that Cohen's project, like Mendelssohn's, is also anachronistic. Erlewine addresses these concerns carefully, as well. He acknowledges that critics contend Cohen works too hard to harmonize German thought and Jewish thought, and in fact fails at this endeavor; that Cohen's neo-Kantian project has been successfully overthrown by phenomenology; that neo-Kantianism is a form of German Idealism whose “totalizing tendencies” have been debunked by modern philosophy; and finally that even Jewish thought has moved away from rationalism and toward existentialist theology, rendering Cohen's religion of reason a dinosaur. Erlewine insists that Cohen's thought remains distinct from, and indeed critical of, the forms of idealism and rationalism he is typically associated with, and that his “conception of monotheism provides for a more responsible foundation for contemporary Jewish thought, especially in regard to the concerns of our time...” As such, Erlewine claims, “it bears significance not only for Judaism but for Christianity, and perhaps for Islam as well, in that it offers powerful resources for mitigating the potential violence of monotheistic intolerance while nevertheless preserving the integrity of their discursive structures.”^¹²

What makes Cohen so successful, according to Erlewine, is his embrace of the 'Socratic story,' which “holds that morality is a matter of discovery, of breaking with the past.”^¹³ Morality, history, revelation and reason are for Cohen, indeed connected to the messianic, in that they are always in process, always 'becoming.' And most importantly for Erlewine, Cohen argues that monotheisms “can produce, or develop from within, a form of intolerance that is nevertheless ethical.” Thus, monotheistic intolerance is “permeated with ethical and rational significance,”^¹⁴and opposites remain distinct from one another while entering into inescapable obligation for one another. Harmonization of the self and the Other takes place without Hegelian sublation or dissolution. Harmony is not even a destination for Cohen, but a process, a goal to be striven for. Erlewine is careful to point out that, for Cohen, religion serves, or should serve, to “open new insights that are closed to ethics, such as the correlation between God and the human being, and the correlation between human beings themselves, the I and Thou encounter, and the recognition of the suffering of the Other.”^¹⁵Ethical teachings cannot, for Cohen, even be reached through reason alone, but must be taught by literary sources which document the history of community experience. More specifically, ethical behavior is best taught by the literary traditions of Judaism, the harbinger of universal humanity from within particular experience. But because the Jews are a “not yet” people, they, like the Others, are imperfect.^¹⁶ Through such formulations, Erlewine insists that Cohen preserves the monotheistic notion of election without placing the Other in complete asymmetrical relation with the monotheistic self.

As for violence against the Other, supported openly in some Biblical texts, Cohen claims that the Jewish literary sources—including the Bible—soon “recognized this radical opposition...is inconsistent with the idea which secures ethics and generates the ideal of humanity...[if it is construed as] a call to violence against idolators, especially foreigners.”^¹⁷ Jews must therefore oppose idolatry without violating ethics. In short, “the Jew can oppose the idolatry of the Other without effacing the Other's humanity, i.e., without herself falling victim to humanity.”^¹⁸

Erlewine's faith in Cohen's system is evident, and his knowledge of Cohen's corpus and of the scholarship of Cohen scholars is clear . Yet while he is perhaps correct in his assertion that Cohen's system is not anachronistic, Erlewine fails to acknowledge that the intricacy of Cohen's system, coupled with its willingness to bring Enlightenment values into correlation with the sources of Judaism make it impossible for most religious practitioners—or secularists—to fully embrace. After all, it is at least in part, Cohen's encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish, Greek and German literary sources that makes his work so brilliant and so compelling in its scope and magnitude. And what does such knowledge, in the most practical sense, have to do with monotheistic practice and politics? Perhaps it is best to see Erlewine's project as a decisive move toward newer, more realistic expectations of what tolerance and pluralism, developed from within monotheistic traditions, might look like, or at least a move toward improved understanding of monotheistic values from within the academy and the secular world. Erlewine acknowledges that his work may or may not ring true for practitioners of Islam, and so this, too, needs addressing if we are to have any real sense of Cohen's embrace of 'non-violent intolerance' remaining as timely as Erlewine hopes it is.

1Erlewnine, p 3.

2Ibid.

3Ibid., p 4.

4Ibid., p 5.

5Ibid., pp 4-5.

6Ibid., p 7.

7Ibid., p 20.

8Ibid., p 21.

9Ibid., p 25.

10Ibid., p 124.

11Ibid., p 79.

12Ibid., pp 133-134.

13Ibid., p 131.

14Ibid., pp 132-133.

15Ibid., p 138.

16Ibid., p 152.

17Ibid., p 154.

18Ibid., p 167.

Francesca Albertini in memoriam

2011-04-07T14:59:00.000-04:00

Reiner Wiehl in memoriam

2011-01-12T09:04:00.001-05:00

Reiner Wiehl served as ordinarius Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg University since 1976. His thought combined strands of tradition of a developed systematic Kantianism, Existentialism (he was president of the Karl Jaspers Foundation), and the natural philosophy of Whitehead. As shown by the three volumes of his collected essays (Suhrkamp, 1996-2000), but also by the festschrift in his honor (Zeit und Welt, 2002), the deceased made significant contributions to contemporary philosophy, especially a critique of an “experience without metaphysics,” with his philosophical reflexions on time, and with the elaboration of a conception of concrete subjectivity oriented on Whitehead. Just as he analyzed “The principle of fidelity [Treue] in the Hermann Cohen’s ethics and philosophy of religion” (1997), the virtue of fidelity in love for philosophy also determined his own work “between metaphysics and experience.” Reiner Wiehl illuminated Cohen’s logic of origin not only in contrast with Rosenzweig’s “meta-logics” (1988), but he associated it with the idea of a pure monotheism that is found in the religion of reason from the sources of Judaism in a more original form than in any philosophy.

In our Hermann Cohen Society, we will keep the memory of Reiner Wiehl, the endearing man and the philosopher of the gentle voice dedicated to the eternal search for truth.

Helmut Holzhey, January 10, 2011

Why Study Hermann Cohen?

2010-11-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

Reinier Munk will raise this question on Nov 29, 2010, at a conference in Boston.

Prof. Munk teaches History of Modern Philosophy and Modern Jewish Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is an internationally renowned specialist in eighteenth century Jewish thought, particularly in the roles played by such figures as Moses Mendelssohn and Solomon Maimon in the German Enlightenment, and in the work of the leading figure of Marburg Neo-Kantianism, Hermann Cohen. His publications include numerous articles and the monograph, The Rationale of Halakhic Man. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish Thought. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought (Amsterdam, 1996).

Prof. Munk will be preceded by Frederick Beiser who will speak on Herman Cohen's discovery of the transcendental.

Dr. Beiser, Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University, is the author of numerous acclaimed books on the history of German thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, e.g., The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard, 1993) and The Romantic Imperative (Harvard, 2003); Schiller as Philosopher (Oxford, 2005); and Diotima's Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing (Oxford, 2010).

The conference is organized by Daniel Dahlstrom, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Michael Zank, Professor of Religion, and the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies (Steven T. Katz, Director).

For more information call 617.353.4434.

Review of Ezio Gamba, La Legalità del Sentimento Puro

2010-10-14T14:08:00.001-04:00

Ezio Gamba, La Legalità’ del Sentimento Puro. L’Estetica di Hermann Cohen come modello di una filosofia della cultura. (The Lawfulness of Pure Feeling. Hermann Cohen’s Aesthetics as Model of a Philosophy of Culture). Mimesis Edizioni, Milan-Udine, 2008
352 pages. Euro 12.

Reviewed by Giacomo Leoni (Boston University)

In his 2008 book on the “lawfulness of pure feeling” (reines Gefühl), Ezio Gamba, Research Fellow at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, aims to demonstrate (as he explains in the introduction) how Cohen not only addressed aesthetic issues as such, but rather considered aesthetics as a foundational element in his theory of culture. Nevertheless, says Gamba, there has not been any study focusing on this aspect of Cohen’s philosophical thought. His study intends to remedy this lacuna in the study of Cohen.

For the full text of the review, please go HERE.

AMSTERDAM 2010 COLLOQUIUM JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

2010-01-29T15:02:00.001-05:00

The Center for Jewish Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy, VU University, Amsterdam will host a conference on the theme:

Die Natur des Denkens und das Denken der Natur – Spinoza, Trendelenburg, und H. Cohen.

The conference is organized in collaboration with the Hermann Cohen Gesellschaft, in Zürich.

The list of speakers includes: Franco Biasutti ( Padua ), Emanuela Scribano ( Siena ), Detlev Pätzold ( Groningen ), Andrea Poma ( Turin ), Ursula Renz ( Klagenfurt ), Wouter Goris ( Amsterdam ), Marco Giovanelli ( Turin ), Erik Kreiter ( Amsterdam ), Pierfrancesco Fiorato ( Sassari ), Robert Gibbs ( Toronto ), Luca Bertolino ( Turin ), and Reinier Munk ( Amsterdam ). The two languages of the conference will be English and German.

The colloquium is scheduled to take place June 21-23, 2010. Venue of the colloquium will be the Conference Hotel ‘Oud Poelgeest’, which is located in the vicinity of Leiden , The Netherlands.

If you would like to participate in the conference, please let us know by returning email at: NaturDesDenkens@gmail.com You will subsequently receive information about the conference fee and the full program of the colloquium. The program offers the possibility for PhD-students in the field of Neo-Kantianism and esp. Cohen to present their research program. We would like to welcome proposals for PhD-presentations at the email address mentioned above, and encourage PhD-students to apply.

Please be informed that there is a maximum number of 35 participants for this conference.
We look forward to receiving your reply.

Best regards,

Dr Erik Kreiter
Prof. Reinier Munk

Please send all your emails related to the colloquium to the conference’s email address: NaturDesDenkens@gmail.com

Prof. Reinier Munk
Chair History of Modern Philosophy and Modern Jewish Philosophy
Faculty of Philosophy
VU University
Amsterdam

Panels at the Eastern APA

2009-12-22T07:46:00.000-05:00

Kant’s Responses to Newton on Space and Causality
Wednesday, December 30, 2009, from 11:15 AM - 1:15 PM

Abraham Stone (University of California–Santa Cruz) “Kant’s Qualified Defense of Newton’s Thesis that Space is a Direct Emanation of the First Cause”
Lydia Patton (Virginia Polytechnic Institute) “Why Kant Needs the Principles”
Robert DiSalle (University of Western Ontario) “Kant and Newton”

Neo-Kantianism and Twentieth Century Philosophy
Monday, December 28, 2009, from 9 AM - 11 AM

Scott Edgar (University of British Columbia): “The Neo-Kantian Origins of Mach’s Positivism”
Alan Kim (Colgate University): "Natorp and Husserl on Space”
Hartwig Wiedebach (University of Zurich): “Kantianism versus Religious Aesthetics: Hermann Cohen’s Concept of God”

The location of the panels will be advertised in the conference program.

Classical Neo-Kantianism conference at Cornell: Philosophical Forum issue

2009-06-09T16:24:00.000-04:00

Articles and responses by Paul Guyer, Michael Friedman, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Vasilis Politis, Dina Emundts, Frederick Beiser, Andrew Chignell, Peter Gordon, Peter Gilgen, and Michelle Kosch.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120736308/issue

The new Nicolai Hartmann Society

2009-04-18T15:29:00.000-04:00

Founded in March 2009, the Nicolai Hartmann Society is a learned society bringing together scholars interested in Hartmann’s philosophy. The Society’s goal is to promote and foster the study of the philosophy of Hartmann, its situation in the history of philosophy, and its contemporary relevance. A temporary homepage of the Society was built (http://nicolaihartmann.blogspot.com). The page will provide a platform to host contributions on Hartmann, keep an updated bibliography of works on his philosophy, and advertize relevant events. The Society entertains a number of projects, among which is to organize “Hartmann conferences.” The first of these conferences shall serve as an occasion to inaugurate the Society. A mailing list is available to each member; it is intended to broadcast new information posted on the website, such as upcoming events. Membership subscription is provisionally free of charge. If you intend to become Member of the Society, please
click here to express your interest by sending an email to Roberto Poli..

Kant, Copernicanism, and cosmology

2009-02-08T12:06:00.000-05:00

*Collapse V: The Copernican Imperative*

This volume contains in-depth interviews with philosopher of science James Ladyman, philosopher of neuroscience Thomas Metzinger, theoretical physicist Julian Barbour, mathematician Ian Stewart, and reproductive biologist Jack Cohen; new papers by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, astrobiologist Milan Cirkovic, and philosophers Paul Humphreys, Nick Bostrom, Alberto Gaulandi, Martin Schönfeld, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Gabriel Catren; a new translation of a chapter from Immanuel Kant's 1755 cosmology _Universal History of Nature_; and new work from acclaimed contemporary artists Nigel Cooke, Conrad Shawcross and Keith Tyson. For further details about this volume, please click on the following link:

http://blog.urbanomic.com/urbanomic/archives/2008/12/collapse_v_dela.html

"Natorp's Foundationalism" in Liège, Belgium

2008-12-17T16:13:00.000-05:00

Le fondationalisme de Natorp

Click here for website

26 février 2009, Université de Liège

Infos et inscriptions: Arnaud Dewalque (a.dewalqueulg.ac.be) – +32 (0)4 366 55 92

9h Arnaud Dewalque (ULg): Priorité de la fondation objective dans la théorie natorpienne de la connaissance
10h Julien Servois (Université de Toulouse le Mirail): La fondation logico-transcendantale du nombre chez Natorp
11h Éric Dufour (Université de Toulouse le Mirail): La méthode de reconstruction de Natorp
12h Pause déjeuner
14h Robert Brisart (Facultés universitaires St-Louis): Sur la théorie de l'objet: Natorp vs Husserl
15h Denis Seron (ULg): L’objectif et le subjectif: Questions natorpiennes dans la théorie de la connaissance de Theodor Celms
16h Débat autour de la Psychologie générale de Natorp
17h Fin

Current Neo-Kantian Research

2008-12-17T16:02:00.001-05:00

Current Neo-Kantian Research (Neukantianismus-Forschung Aktuell) is planned as a twice-yearly, brief publication with all the latest secondary and primary literature on Neo-Kantianism, from the Continent, England, and even with some US material. The website for the updates is in German, but many of the texts listed are in English (and French, and Italian).

The publication is edited by Christian Krijnen (Amsterdam), and contributors are: Fabien Capeillères (Caen / Paris), Arnaud Dewalque (Liège), Massimo Ferrari (Torino), Tapani Laine (Tampere), Sebastian Luft (Milwaukee), Dermot Moran (Dublin), Jacco Verburgt (Amsterdam), and Hartwig Wiedebach (Frankfurt/M. / Zürich).

Here is the link: http://neukantianismusforschung.googlepages.com/home

A note on Cohen in translation

2008-12-11T16:13:00.000-05:00

A reader of this blog asked whether Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung or other philosophical works were available in an English translation. The answer is: no. The same reader (Thank you, Matthew Anderson) then provided a link to the French translation of the third edition (1918) of that work, published by Les Editions du Cerf (see http://www.editionsducerf.fr/html/fiche/fichelivre.asp?n_liv_cerf=5390). There is also a French translation of Cohen's commentary on Kant's First Critique (1918), but I would not recommend this highly either as an introduction to Cohen or to Kant. It is really too bad that the first edition of Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung or of Kant's Begründung der Ethik is unavailable in English or any other language, except in the German original. Any volunteers?

"Paul Natorp and the emergence of anti-psychologism in the nineteenth century," by Scott Edgar

2008-11-24T15:43:00.001-05:00

From Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Volume 39, Issue 1, March 2008, pp. 54-65.

Link to the article (A subscription to ScienceDirect is required for access to the full article)

Dieter Adelmann in memoriam

2008-09-30T17:27:00.000-04:00

After a long period of poor health Dieter Adelmann died yesterday, following a heart operation. Adelmann was one of the most important figures in the European revival of the study of Cohen as an original philosopher and a Jewish thinker. Many of us are shaken by this loss. Dieter Adelmann's influence is evident in the work of many younger scholars. He was a natural teacher, a generous and learned man with an original and deep appreciation for the world from which Cohen hailed culturally, intellectually, and politically. Few others have been able to bring the legacy of Cohen's thought to life as Adelmann was able to do. We will miss him as an interlocutor and an inspiration. Our love and sympathy is with his children and friends.

Review of New Literature on Hermann Cohen

2008-09-06T15:52:00.000-04:00

Michael Zank reviews Francesca Albertini, Das Verständnis des Seins bei Hermann Cohen: Vom Neukantianismus zu einer jüdischen Religionsphilosophie (Würzburg 2003) and Andrea Poma, Yearning for Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen's Thought (Dordrecht 2006) in The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Fall 2008) 566-573.

Panels on Neo-Kantianism at the seventh congress of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS)

2008-06-12T06:10:00.000-04:00

The conference took place at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., June 18-21, 2008. For the full conference program, click here.

The Natural and the Neo-Kantian:
Empirical Science and Neo-Kantianism
Chair: Alex Klein

In What Ways Was Helmholtz Kantian?
Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania

Empirical Psychology, Physiology, and the A Priori
Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech

Empirical Psychology and Marburg School Neo-Kantianism on the Object of Psychology
Scott Edgar, Bryn Mawr College

Function and Symbol in Marburg Philosophy of Science
Alan Kim, Hamilton College

Cassirer on Logic, Mathematics, and Science
Chair: Scott Edgar

"Critical philosophy begins at the very point where logistic leaves off":
Cassirer’s response to Frege and Russell
Jeremy Heis, University of California at Irvine

Cassirer and Dedekind: On the significance of structural mathematics
Erich Reck, University of California at Riverside

Conference: Hermann Cohen and the Graphic Arts

2008-06-12T02:45:00.000-04:00

International conference of the Hermann Cohen-Gesellschaft (Zürich), in cooperation with the Cohen-Gesellschaft (Coswig, Anhalt) and the Max Liebermann- Gesellschaft (Berlin). The conference took place from June 15-18, 2008 in Coswig (Anhalt).

Speakers include:

Prof. Dr. Dr.h.c. HELMUT HOLZHEY (Zürich)
"Zum Verhältnis der Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls zu Kants Begründung der Ästhetik"

Prof. Dr. MYRIAM BIENENSTOCK (Tours/Paris)
"Über die Ironie der Kunst: Cohen und Solger"

Prof. Dr. STEFAN NACHTSHEIM (Aachen)
"Der zeitgenössische theoretische Kontext von Cohens Ästhetik"

Dr. LYDIA PATTON (Blacksburg, USA)
"Humor, the Beautiful, and the Ethical Ideal: Hermann Cohen and Kant on Portraiture"

Dr. DIETER ADELMANN (Bonn)
"Hermann Cohens Theorie der Landschaftsmalerei"

For the full program click here.

CFP: Hermann Cohen and the Visual Arts

2007-11-14T12:07:00.000-05:00

Meeting of the Hermann Cohen Society in cooperation with the Max Liebermann Society (Berlin) and the Cohen Society (Coswig)

from the 15th to the 18th of June 2008 in Coswig (Anhalt)

The focus of the conference is Hermann Cohen’s relationship to the visual arts. Systematic interpretations of Cohen’s aesthetics are welcome, not least those that deal with the consequences of Cohen’s theory for contemporary debates. In addition, we welcome biographical or historical studies that put Cohen in the context of the aesthetic and artistic movements of his time.

Contributions in English and German are welcome. Scholars interested in submitting a paper are warmly invited to send a title and a short abstract of up to 300 words to the following address:

Dr. Hartwig Wiedebach,
Martin Buber-Professur für jüdische Religionsphilosophie
J. W. Goethe-Universität
FB Ev. Theologie
Grüneburgplatz 1, Raum BL-7
60323 Frankfurt/M., Germany
wiedebach@freenet.de

Original (German) version of the call for papers is here: http://www.hermann-cohen-gesellschaft.org/deutsch/veranst.htm

Reviews of new books on Hermann Cohen

2007-08-22T15:36:00.000-04:00

Review of Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism, edited by Reinier Munk, Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought Volume 10, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Verlag, 2005, and Andrea Poma, Yearning For Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen’s Thought, edited by Reinier Munk, Studies in German Idealism Volume 5, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Verlag, 2006, by Lydia Patton (Virginia Tech).

Forthcoming in the European Journal of Philosophy.

Click here for the full text of the review

“New Literature on Hermann Cohen,” a review of Francesca Albertini, Das Verständnis des Seins bei Hermann Cohen. Vom Neukantianismus zu einer jüdischen Religionsphilosophie (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003) and Andrea Poma, Yearning For Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen’s Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), by Michael Zank (Boston University).

Forthcoming in Jewish Quarterly Review.

Click here for the full text of the review

Marburg in Russia

2007-08-12T18:13:00.000-04:00

Russian Neo-Kantianism: Marburg in Russia. Historical-philosophical sketches.
Moscow, 2007 (ISBN 978-5-8243-0835-8) 511 pp., in Russian, with a table of contents and a six page summary in German; including also an appendix of letters, an extensive bibliography, and twelve pages of photographic images between text pages 256 and 257. By Nina Dmitrieva. Review by Michael Zank.

The beginning of the review:

"Based on meticulous archival research, Nina Dmitrieva’s monograph documents the intellectual biographies of a group of hitherto neglected Russian philosophers whose work constituted an alternative to the materialism that, for most of the 20th century, was the dominant philosophical doctrine of Stalinist Russia. It so happens that many of these thinkers received their training in Marburg, Germany, a place that in the first decades of the 20th century was a Mecca for philosophically inclined youths from across Europe and the US, among them such well-known figures as Ortega y Gasset, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, T.S. Eliot, and Boris Pasternak. Whereas critical idealism was obliterated in Marburg after Heidegger replaced Paul Natorp in 1924, the Russian reception of Marburg neo-Kantianism was profound and of lasting import, as Dmitrieva documents."

Click here for the full text of the review

Click here for Dmitrieva's brief summary of the work (English)

Ethik des reinen Willens

2007-04-30T10:54:00.000-04:00

The ethics of Hermann Cohen were the topic of a conference held at the University of Toronto, in 2001. The proceedings of this conference are now available in form of a thematic issue of the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy (volume 13, numbers 1-3, 2004), guest edited by Robert Gibbs.

See http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/gjtp/2004/00000013/f0030001.

Hermann Cohen: The Werke Edition

2007-04-30T10:40:00.000-04:00

The writings of Hermann Cohen are now available in a critical edition published by Olms Verlag and edited under the auspices of the Hermann Cohen Archive in Zürich.

For a review see EAJS Newsletter, vol. 16, Spring 2005, on-line at http://www.lzz.uni-halle.de/publikationen/essays/nl16_zank.pdf.

Friedman and Nordmann, eds., The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth Century Science

2007-04-30T09:36:00.000-04:00

A sorely needed collection of essays by the most able scholars in the field. With contributed essays on the Marburg School from Alan Richardson, Michael Heidelberger, and Alfred Nordmann. Essays by Janet Folina and Robert di Salle focus on the intriguing relationship between Kantianism and conventionalism, a topic that is receiving increasing attention.

For a full review of the collection from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=9283

Panels at the Chicago American Philosophical Association

2007-04-26T15:47:00.000-04:00

SESSION ONE: “KARL JASPERS SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA AND THE INTERNATIONAL HERMANN COHEN SOCIETY”

Chair: Michael Zank (Boston University)

Speakers: Hartwig Wiedebach (University of Zurich, Stuttgart Media University)
“Pure Will versus Causality in Hermann Cohen”

Lydia Patton (University of Chicago)
“Ideas in History, Ideas in Opposition: Hermann Cohen and Völkerpsychologie”

SESSION TWO: “KARL JASPERS SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA AND THE INTERNATIONAL HERMANN COHEN SOCIETY”

Chair: Michael Zank (Boston University)

Speakers: James Barham (University of Notre Dame)
“Ernst Cassirer’s Metaphysics of Life”

Timothy Gordon (Bakersfield College)
“The 19th Century and Jesus Christ: Non-Normative Absolutism”

Armin Wildermuth (University of St. Gallen)
“Karl Jaspers’ Philosophic Faith and the Clash of Civilizations”