Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism

Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism PDF Author: Reinier W. Munk
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402040474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) is an original systematic thinker and representative of the Marburg School of Critical Idealism. The Marburg School was a leading school in German academic philosophy and in German Jewish philosophy for a period of over thirty years preceding the First World War. Initially standing at the front of the ‘Return to Kant’ movement, Cohen subsequently went beyond Kant in developing a system of critical idealism in which he offered a critique of and alternative to absolute idealism, positivism, and materialism. A critical idealist in heart and soul, Cohen is also recognized as a man who embodied German Jewish culture. Publications on Cohen in the English language are small in number and this volume aims to fill the gap. It offers an analysis of Cohen’s System of Philosophy - the three-volume classic on logic, ethics, and aesthetics - and his writings on Judaism and religion. The book highlights Cohen’s contributions in these fields, including his discussions with Maimonides, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel. It demonstrates the congeniality of Cohen’s critical idealism as expounded in the System and his writings on Judaism, and offers an overview of contemporary Cohen research.

The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen

The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen PDF Author: Andrea Poma
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438416296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
This is a translation of Andrea Poma's La filosofia critica di Hermann Cohen, which first appeared in 1988. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the German philosophical scene had witnessed the extinction of absolute idealism and the predominance of the naive materialism of the adherents of scientism. Hermann Cohen's philosophy stood out in favor of the value of critical reason, on which scientific idealism, in the form of a revival of authentic rational idealism, is founded. His standpoint rejected the opposite extremes of both absolute idealism and naive materialism. The Marburg school, one of the great German philosophical schools at the turn of the century, grew out of Cohen's philosophy, which inspired a large number of twentieth-century thinkers. Cohen was, without doubt, one of the principal adherents of the "return to Kant" as a fundamental point of reference of "Critical Idealism." He based this revival on a long, historical, philosophical tradition, represented by Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, and others, apart from Kant himself. Although Cohen saw himself as Kant's heir, he went beyond Kant in his development and deepening of the meaning of critical philosophy in his own philosophical system. He followed an original path, which revealed a great deal of the hitherto concealed potential of this type of philosophy. In his later years Cohen turned his attention mainly to the philosophy of religion, but his last works are not simply what would be termed the Summa theologica of contemporary Judaism. They also belong to a continuous line connecting them to his previous thought, deepening the meaning and extending the potentiality of critical philosophy and its connection to religious problems, satisfactorily developing the aspect of thought on the limit of reason, which, for critical philosophy, is a necessary complement to thought within the limits of reason.

Hermann Cohen

Hermann Cohen PDF Author: Frederick C. Beiser
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198828160
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
This book is the first complete intellectual biography of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and the only work to cover all his major philosophical and Jewish writings. Frederick C. Beiser pays special attention to all phases of Cohen's intellectual development, its breaks and its continuities, throughout seven decades. The guiding goal behind Cohen's intellectual career, he argues, was the development of a radical rationalism, one committed to defending the rights of unending enquiry and unlimited criticism. Cohen's philosophy was therefore an attempt to defend and revive the Enlightenment belief in the authority of reason; his critical idealism an attempt to justify this belief and to establish a purely rational worldview. According to this interpretation, Cohen's thought is resolutely opposed to any form of irrationalism or mysticism because these would impose arbitrary and artificial limits on criticism and enquiry. It is therefore critical of those interpretations which see Cohen's philosophy as a species of proto-existentialism (Rosenzweig) or Jewish mysticism (Adelmann and Kohnke). Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography attempts to unify the two sides of Cohen's thought, his philosophy and his Judaism. Maintaining that Cohen's Judaism was not a limit to his radical rationalism but a consistent development of it, Beiser contends that his religion was one of reason. He concludes that most critical interpretations have failed to appreciate the philosophical depth and sophistication of his Judaism, a religion which committed the believer to the unending search for truth and the striving to achieve the cosmopolitan ideals of reason.

The Tragedy of Optimism

The Tragedy of Optimism PDF Author: Steven S. Schwarzschild
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438468377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
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 Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880

The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880 PDF Author: Frederick C. Beiser
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198722206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 625

Book Description
Neo-Kantianism was an important movement in German philosophy of the late 19th century: Frederick Beiser traces its development back to the late 18th century, and explains its rise as a response to three major developments in German culture: the collapse of speculative idealism; the materialism controversy; and the identity crisis of philosophy.

The Space of Culture

The Space of Culture PDF Author: Sebastian Luft
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191059099
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Sebastian Luft presents and defends the philosophy of culture championed by the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism. Following a historical trajectory from Hermann Cohen to Paul Natorp and through to Ernst Cassirer, this book makes a systematic case for the viability and attractiveness of a philosophical culture in a transcendental vein, in the manner in which the Marburgers intended to broaden Kant's approach. In providing a philosophical study of culture, Luft adheres to important Kantian tenets while addressing empirical studies of culture. The Space of Culture culminates in an exploration of Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and argues for the extent to which Cassirer's thought was firmly rooted in the Marburg School, despite his originality. At the same time, it shows how Cassirer opened up the philosophical study of culture to new horizons, making it attractive for contemporary philosophy.

New Approaches to Neo-Kantianism

New Approaches to Neo-Kantianism PDF Author: Nicolas de Warren
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107032571
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
A collection of new essays examining the impact of Neo-Kantianism on a range of philosophical topics and fields of study.

Walter Benjamin and Political Theology

Walter Benjamin and Political Theology PDF Author: Brendan Moran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135028436X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Tracing Walter Benjamin's convergences with, and divergences from, influential German legal theorist Carl Schmitt, this edited collection contextualizes Benjamin's thinking in the intellectual currents of his time, while also placing him in dialogue with traditions and thinkers from antiquity to the present. At stake is whether Benjamin presents the possibility of a distinctive political theology-a question which the collection addresses without collapsing the tensions internal to Benjamin's thought. Benjamin's thought has been a touchstone, explicitly or implicitly, in numerous efforts to conceive of a 'new' political theology that is not anchored in legitimizing and preserving power, but in justice and liberation. Benjamin interrogates the political-theological complex from what may be construed as a vantage point opposed to Schmitt. Whereas Schmitt excavates the theological elements in modernity in order to shore up liberalism's illiberal inheritance, Benjamin roots out these latent structures in order to dissolve them and liberate us from their oppressive legacy. This volume's multifaceted contributions explore why Benjamin has been such a fertile source for thinking about political theology beyond – and often against – Schmitt. Benjamin indicates how existing political theologies can be challenged or expanded. This book accordingly makes a wide range of relevant work available for study whilst also opening new perspectives on Benjamin's œuvre.

Ethics Out of Law

Ethics Out of Law PDF Author: Dana Hollander
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487506244
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
This is the first book in English to lay out the philosophical ethics and philosophy of law of Hermann Cohen, one of the leading figures in both Neo-Kantian and Jewish philosophy.

100 years of European Philosophy Since the Great War

100 years of European Philosophy Since the Great War PDF Author: Matthew Sharpe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319503618
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
This book is a collection of specifically commissioned articles on the key continental European philosophical movements since 1914. It shows how each of these bodies of thought has been shaped by their responses to the horrors set in train by World War I, and considers whether we are yet ‘post-post-war’. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914,set in chain a series of crises and re-configurations, which have continued to shape the world for a century: industrialized slaughter, the end of colonialism and European empires, the rise of the USA, economic crises, fascism, Soviet Marxism, the gulags and the Shoah. Nearly all of the major movements in European thinking (phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Hegelianism, Marxism, political theology, critical theory and neoliberalism) were forged in, or shaped by, attempts to come to terms with the global trauma of the World Wars. This is the first book to describe the development of these movements after World War I, and as such promises to be of interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy around the world.