MAIMONIDES ON CREATION, KANT’S FIRST ANTINOMY, AND HERMANN COHEN

Mark A. Kaplowitz University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, [email protected]

Abstract

This paper describes a “double move” made by Maimonides, Kant, and Hermann Cohen when they simultaneously dismiss and resolve the cosmological problem of the origin of the universe in time in order to represent creation as a moral issue. Maimonides claims to lack a compelling metaphysical argument regarding creation. However, a reading of Maimonides inspired by the views of Hermann Cohen finds him to be a Platonist who accepts creation from absolute privation so as to establish a moral world in which revelation establishes a correlation between humans and God. For Kant, metaphysics also cannot address the origin of the universe, but he positively describes the regress towards the origin as indeterminately large to derive the unconditioned ideal of reason that supports the regulative use of reason. Cohen, therefore, follows the precedents set by Maimonides and Kant when he claims that the Jewish concept of creation is an ethical and logical problem rather than a cosmological one, even though his account of creation presupposes his era’s dominant scientific model of the eternity of the universe.

Keywords Maimonides; creation; Kant; Hermann Cohen

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason. . . . The battlefield of these endless controversies is called metaphysics.1

This paper has benefited greatly from comments made by participants at the conference convened by the Academy for Jewish Philosophy and the Hermann Cohen Society at Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona, October 31–November 1, 2004), and by the reviewers and editors of this journal, especially Hartwig Wiedebach, but all remaining deficiencies are the fault of the author. 1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, CPR) A vii–viii. Citations including the letter A refer to the first edition of CPR (1781); page numbers with- out a letter refer to the second edition (1787). Translations follow Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, eds., Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Kant’s emphases are not retained. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 JJTP 20.2 Also available online – brill.nl/jjtp DOI: 10.1163/1477285X-12341236 148 mark a. kaplowitz

So begins the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant explains that the arguments to be found in his book are incomparably more moderate than those of any author of the commonest program who pretends to prove the simple nature of the soul or the necessity of a first beginning of the world. For such an author pledges himself to extend human cognition beyond all bounds of possible experience, of which I humbly admit that this wholly surpasses my capacity.2 The question of the beginning of the world plays a central role in Kant’s conception of the purpose of his philosophical project, as well as in that of Maimonides and Hermann Cohen. Yet if it is to be conceded that the mere exercise of reason cannot grant knowledge of cosmology, perhaps philosophers ought to consider remaining silent on this topic. Nevertheless, they do not. Neither Maimonides nor Kant can answer with confidence whether the universe was created or if it is eternally old, yet both of them feel the need simultaneously to dismiss and to resolve this issue. This paper aims to address how this double move plays out in the systematic philosophies of Maimonides and Kant, and the influence that these double moves have on Cohen’s own philosophy of origin and on his philosophic understanding of the doctrinal teachings of Judaism. The first part of this paper presents a Cohenian reading of Maimonides on creation and whether the world is eternal a parte ante. Notwithstanding Maimonides’ avowed Aristotelianism, moral considerations lead Cohen to consider Maimonides’ philosophy as having strong affinities to Platonic philosophy.3 Once Cohen’s general philosophical outlook is taken into account and brought into contact with contemporary Platonic and Neoplatonic readings of Maimonides’ doctrine of creation, a stronger version emerges of Cohen’s argu- ments regarding Maimonides’ otherwise unsatisfactory resolution of the debate over eternity and creation than Cohen himself would have had access to.4

2 CPR A xiv. 3 There is no need for this paper to inquire into whether the so-called Aristotelian and Platonic positions can properly be attributed to Aristotle or to Plato. It is suf- ficient that they have been known historically as the Aristotelian and Platonic positions. 4 The Cohenian reader posited by this section of the paper does not necessarily reflect statements on Maimonides made by Cohen, nor does this section of the