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JEWISH RATIONALISM, , AND REVOLUTION: HERMANN COHEN IN NEVEL

Elena Namli

In 1912 Hermann Cohen, at that time the world’s most influential neo-Kantian philosopher, retired from his chair in Marburg and moved to and the Academy of Jewish Sciences. Now he had time to complete his seminal work Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism—the last great systematic expression of Jewish rationalism in the twentieth century. Cohen’s firm belief in the power of reason is, of course, a feature of neo-Kantian and originates from the passionate rationalism of Kant and the Enlightenment. However, most neo-Kantian philosophy has been shaped within Christian contexts, which makes Cohen’s rationalism especially interesting. As a European Jew and one of the leading German philosophers, Cohen confronted the growth of anti-Semitism by reclaiming what he thought was the liberating power of universal human reason. Listening to many sad stories told by his Jewish students from almost all over Europe, Cohen still insisted that the emancipation of Jews cannot be separated from the liberation of the entire humankind and that this universal liberation should be grounded in human reason alone. In this chapter, I will analyze Cohen’s ethical and religious rationalism alongside his vision of liberation, and argue that, despite many historical failures of universalistic and rationalistic projects, Jewish rationalism and universalism has great moral and political potential and still can inform current philosophical discourse on social revolution. I will first present some fundamental features of Cohen’s religious rationalism. Hermann Cohen suggested a variant of universalist ethics that was simultaneously informed by Kantian rationalism and based upon what Cohen argued was the most important meaning of the Jewish monotheism and messianism. Secondly, I will analyze this rationalism in relation to a philosophical and political controversy that appeared among Hermann Cohen’s Russian students in post-revolutionary Nevel and Vitebsk. I will show how Matvei Kagan was using Cohen’s ethics and religious rationalism in order to develop a morally legitimate vision of social revolution, and contrast Kagan’s interpretation of Cohen with ’s severe criticism of Cohen’s rationalistic ethics. Lastly, I will argue that the current political situation both invites us to reclaim the tradition of Jewish rationalism 128 ELENA NAMLI and its universalistic ethics, and also calls for a certain modification of that tradition.

1. Jewish Monotheism as a Vision of Justice on Earth

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to analyze Hermann Cohen’s entire system. It is widely recognized as a well-structured and complete version of neo-Kantian philosophy, including a theory of knowledge, logic, ethics, and a philosophy of religion. Regarding the latter, a nuanced analysis of the Jewish tradition, in an explicit and well-informed dialogue with Christian theology, makes Cohen’s philosophy of religion a unique philosophical heritage. Let us recall its main content. Being a variant of the neo-Kantian tradition, Cohen’s philosophy of religion is rationalistic in that religion is explained and practiced, first of all, as morality within the borders of human reason. The central thesis of Cohen’s interpretation of the Jewish religion is his statement that Jewish monotheism contradicts every form of ethical particularism. Following Jewish thinkers such as Saadia Gaon and Maimonides, Cohen insists that Judaism as a monotheistic religion is necessarily bound to a universalistic and rationalistic vision of social justice. Jewish monotheism is interpreted by Cohen as a belief in a unique God, rather than a belief in one God. Chapter I in Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, the first edition of which was published in Leipzig in 1919, has the title “God’s Uniqueness” and in its very first line Cohen states: “It is God’s uniqueness, rather than his oneness, that we posit as the essential content of monotheism” (Cohen, 1995, p. 35). According to my reading of Cohen, the main meaning of this is that Judaism, as an authentic monotheism and in opposition to both polytheism and Christian traditions, denies a tendency towards the deification of the human and the humanization of God. Cohen’s philosophical idealism finds its theological parallel in the confession that “[o]nly God has being. Only God is being. And there is no unity that would be an identity between God and world, no unity between world and being” (Cohen, 1995, p. 41). This radical monotheism becomes, then, a foundation of Cohen’s view of the relation between God and the human as a correlation. There are several descriptions of the correlation of God and the human in Cohen’s Religion of Reason but there is one which is absolutely crucial for his argument in defense of ethical universalism:

Out of the unique God, the creator of man, originated also the stranger as fellowman. […] “Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as for the homeborn; for I am the Eternal your God” (Lev. 24:22). This reasoning is quite instructive: it deduces the law pertaining to the stranger from monotheism. And it is particularly instructive that monotheism is expressed here through an appeal to “your God”. Because