A Dialogue between Philosophy and Scripture: Rereading Hermann Cohen through Bakhtin

Abstract

While “philosophical novels” are a common category of contemporary writing, the idea of “novelistic philosophy” likely strikes us as strange and less familiar. However, this latter term is one distinctly suited to describe the philosophy of the German Jewish thinker Hermann Cohen (1842–1918). I argue that certain aspects of literary theory—specifically, the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin—can be fruitfully employed to interpret Cohen’s posthumously published magnum opus, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. In particular, Bakhtin’s analysis of novelistic discourse, and his concepts of polyphony and heteroglossia, can help to adjudicate the long-standing debate over the apparently contradictory “voices” that different interpreters have highlighted in Cohen’s text. Religion of Reason is frequently described as one of the most, if not the most, significant books of Jewish philosophy since Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. Nevertheless, Cohen has often been treated merely as a precursor to thinkers like Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, whose writings have received greater attention in the field of modern Jewish thought. Likewise, with regard to general philosophy, Ernst Cassirer—Cohen’s doctoral student and disciple—largely overshadows his erstwhile teacher in terms of recognition and prominence. Although many factors could account for this