Work Reception Research Articles

Werke (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 417 Hermann Cohen. Werke. Edited by Helmut Holzhey. Vol. 7, System der Philosophie, Teil 2: Ethik des reinen Willens. Introduction by Steven S. Schwartzschild. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1981. Pp. xxxvii + 7o7 . DM xl8.oo. Hermann Cohen (1842--1918), the founder and leader of the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism, stands out as one of the main figures in German philosophy in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cohen's interpretation of Kant and his own systematic thought made the name of the city of Marburg synonymous with a version of transcendental philosophy. Today, Cohen's philosophy of religion is more widely known than his systematic works; his Religion out of the Sources of Judaism is his only major work available in English translation. His attempt to establish the primacy of ethics over the dialectics of history has also insured him a place in the history of social democratic thought. But Cohen's interpretation of Judaism and his conception of socialism are themselves aspects of a philosophical conception which has been neglected since the decline of Neo-Kantianism as a movement . Most of Cohen's writings have been out of print for decades. The need to make Cohen's work available again has now been optimally met with the publication for the first time of his complete works in a single edition. The Werke reproduces the last editions that Cohen hiimself corrected, supplementing them with new introductions and critical appendixes. An exception to this rule is Cohen's foundational work Kants Theorie der Erfahrung which, because of significant changes in the expanded second edition, will be reprinted in both its first and final forms. Volumes 1-4 will include Cohen's critical writings on Kant, volumes 5-9 writings on his own "system of philosophy," and volumes lo-11 the philosophy of religion. Volumes 12-x6 will contain all Cohen's smaller writings in chronological order. To illustrate Cohen's influence the two Festschriften published in celebration of his seventieth birthday will appear in a supplementary series to the Werke. The Ethik des reinen Willens, along with the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis and Aesthetik des reinen Gefi~hls, is part of Cohen's own system of transcendental philosophy. The ethics pursues the monumental task of justifying the validity of the Hebrew-Christian tradition of ethics within the framework of the secular state as a legal community by means of a transcendental philosophy of the pure will and virtue. The ethics combines what Kant treated separately in his works on the pure principles of morality and in the doctrine of law and doctrine of virtue in the Metaphysic of Morals. Steven Schwarzschild concentrates in his introduction, which is in English, on Cohen's union of ethics and the philosophy of law. He also provides a helpful discussion of the work's reception and points to its bearing on contemporary work in ethics. Cohen's ethics employs what he calls the "transcendental method." This seeks to generalize Kant's basic insight by conceiving every Faktum of experience as a construction depending upon a priori determinations. Cohen eliminates everything static or assumed in Kant's philosophy. Neither sensibility, the categories, nor the self as the giver of the moral law can be regarded as "given"; each depends upon a priori generation . Cohen calls this constructive element of experience Reinheit (purity). For this operational interpretation of transcendental philosophy the gegeben (given) is always 418 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY aufgegeben (a task). "Pure will" is a name for the task of forming moral self-consciousness , inherent in the orientation towards the future found in any law. The derivation of an ethics of the pure will begins with the Faktum of law. Jurisprudence for Cohen is the study of the normative, not merely the legal as it was for Kant. The pure will develops through the law towards an a priori end. This is Kant's "Kingdom of Ends" which Cohen interprets as the Hebrew prophets' "Messianiac Kingdom" of the unity of mankind and the secular socialist vision of society free of exploitation. The ought is not an abstraction for Cohen, a "mere ought" as Hegel would say...