Jacob Gordin and the Anti-Spinozist Legacy of Hermann Cohen in France

Abstract

Hermann Cohen is often described as the last in a line of German idealist, or Jewish rationalist, thinkers. This article, instead, takes Cohen as a point of departure, tracing his distinct form of anti-Spinozism which was transmitted to France by the Russian émigré philosopher of religion Jacob Gordin. It considers the engagements by Cohen, Leo Strauss, and Gordin with Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise, and examines the role an essay by Gordin played in bringing Cohen's view to francophone Jewish audiences and in defending Cohen's reading of Spinoza against Strauss's critique. The article then treats the postwar redeployments of Gordin's essay by Emmanuel Levinas and the historian of anti-Semitism Léon Poliakov against the Zionist and Spinozist views promoted by David Ben-Gurion. Attention to the overlooked centrality of Gordin demonstrates the importance of Russian intelligentsia as carriers of Cohen's legacy, highlights the presence of Cohen's anti-Spinozist views in postwar French and French Jewish thought, and introduces another site within the reception history of Spinoza in the twentieth century.