Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Judaism

Although little remembered today, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) was both one of Germany’s major philosophers and a leading Jewish intellectual in his own day. Such later thinkers as Leo Strauss and especially Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik engaged with his ideas in depth. Partially responsible for the revival of Kantian philosophy after it had gone out of fashion, Cohen first came to think and write seriously about Jewish ideas after an upsurge of academic anti-Semitism that sounds eerily familiar today. Shira Billet delves into his life and thought—and in particular his ideas about Judaism, revelation, and repentance—in conversation with J.J. Kimche. (Audio, 74 minutes.)